Panoramic view of.a stairway leading to the sky, reflecting pool, and emphitheater like structure...

Noguchi: Useless Architecture

May 19, 2021 – May 8, 2022
Isamu Noguchi Riverside- Playground Play Terrace Study, 1961

Noguchi: Useless Architecture

May 19, 2021 – May 8, 2022

Noguchi: Useless Architecture is an exhibition of around fifty works mostly drawn from the Noguchi Museum’s collection and occupying its second floor galleries. In 1949 and again in 1960, Isamu Noguchi visited India’s Jantar Mantar in Delhi and Jaipur, two of the original five campuses of astronomical devices created on a grand architectural scale by the 18th-century Maharaja Jai Singh II. Noguchi described the conglomeration of instruments at each site—so large as to be more recognizable as monumental sculpture or architecture than as functioning devices—as “useless architecture, useful sculpture.” The exhibition was directly inspired by this phrase.

  • Photograph by Isamu Noguchi of Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece, 1950s.
    The Noguchi Museum Archives, 04391. ©INFGM / ARS

“Jai Singh’s structures are mystical sculptures that define space,” Isamu Noguchi is quoted in a brief essay accompanying his photographs of the Jantar Mantar in “Astronomical City,” Portfolio: A Magazine for the Graphic Arts, 1, no. 3 (1951): 115. “You might call them useless architecture or useful sculpture. They imply a use—much sculpture does that. Whether or not they were intended so, Jai Singh’s works have turned out to be an expression of wanting to be one with the universe. They contain an appreciation of measured time and the shortness of life and the vastness of the universe.”

In this context, the phrase “useless architecture, useful sculpture” represents an alternative to an architecture that is alienating in its totalitarian self-containment, and to sculpture irrelevant to life and time’s passage. It speaks to Noguchi’s ambition to sculpt spaces free from the specific responsibilities of architecture and to create sculptures imbued with more than purely theoretical, aesthetic purpose.

  • Isamu Noguchi, Model for Slide Mantra, 1966. Plaster. Photo: Kevin Noble. 10081.
    ©INFGM / ARS

Arranged in thematic installations – Ruins, Theater Space, Architectural Metaphors, Terraces and Panorama, Postmodern Akari, Ends – the exhibition explores how Noguchi drew on architecture to supercharge his efforts to make sculpture civic, communal, and environmental. He had a contentious but phenomenally productive relationship with architects and architecture (see, for example, the digital feature Ten Architects). He stated in an interview in 1957, “I always prefer gardens, because I can work there without pressure from anyone. You know how selfishly architects claim the most important role in a building project for themselves. They see our contribution as secondary and they limit our freedom. Which is why landscaping a garden is a solution of sorts.” (Catherine Frantzeskakis, “The American-Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi talks about Greece,” Zygos no. 17 [March 1957], 20.) Focusing on often overlooked public spaces adjacent to architecture such as courtyards, patios, atria, and landscaping, he was able to create timeless, humanistic spaces in a way that would not have been possible had he needed to assume architecture’s programmatic responsibilities.

Ruins
Ruins are an archetype of useless architecture because they retain their associations with the making of civilization, and the suggestion of space shaping, while having shed their actual functions. The Greek temple complex at Delphi is evoked in this installation in an agglomeration of semi-ruins, composed of abstract sculptures such as Ziggurat (c. 1968), Wrapped Figure (1962), Sentry (1958), and Small Torso (1958–62). The centerpiece of the installation, Capital (1939), on loan from The Museum of Modern Art, suggests a vision of what a truly modern order of architecture might look like if developed in the manner of the classical orders represented by Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian capitals. Describing his first visit to Delphi, Noguchi wrote: “To trace the white marble remnants, imagining their use from scanty information: that I take [it] is what imagination is for. All was there to be filled in as we chose.” On a return visit to Greece on his honeymoon, Noguchi photographed his wife Yoshiko “Shirley” Yamaguchi at the Acropolis in Athens in front of the Erechtheion as a caryatid.

  • Isamu Noguchi, Capital, 1939. Georgia marble. Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Jeanne Reynal. Photo: F. S. Lincoln.
    The Noguchi Museum Archives, 01533. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Ziggurat, c. 1968, with photograph by Isamu Noguchi at Temple of Apollo, Delphi, Greece, c. 1949. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Unfinished works in marble. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Yoshiko (Shirley) Yamaguchi in front of the Erechtheion, Athens, Greece, 1953. Photo: Isamu Noguchi.
    The Noguchi Archives, 08272.2. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Riverside Playground, Amphitheater Study, 1961–62. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Riverside Playground, 1965. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. An alternate Deplhi, with Isamu Noguchi’s Capital, 1939 (right column), and Capital #2, 1942 (left column).
    Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. An alternate Deplhi, with Isamu Noguchi’s Capital, 1939 (right column), and Capital #2, 1942 (left column).
    Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. An alternate Deplhi, with Isamu Noguchi’s Capital, 1939 (right column), and Capital #2, 1942 (left column).
    Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Capital, 1939 (left), and Capital #2, 1942 (right). Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Small Torso, 1958–62, Core Piece #1, 1974, and Core Piece #2, 1974.
    Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS

Theater Space
Noguchi’s first design for Martha Graham, for her ballet Frontier (1935), employed a single length of rope to “throw the entire volume of air straight over the heads of the audience” (Isamu Noguchi: A Sculptor’s World: 125) and create “an outburst into space and at the same time an influx toward infinity.” (The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum: 212). In all subsequent sets for Graham—who wanted structure not scenery—Noguchi distilled environments into objects in order to create imaginary spaces. In Seraphic Dialogue (1955) he captured the whole majesty of France in a simple drawing of Chartres cathedral in space, while Embattled Garden (1958) both literalizes and analogizes life in and outside the precinct of Eden.

  • Martha Graham performing Frontier; set by Isamu Noguchi, 1935. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 01508. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Set design for Martha Graham’s Frontier, 1935 (fabricated 2021). Photo: Nicholas Knight.
  • Martha Graham, Embattled Garden; set by Isamu Noguchi, 1958. Photo: Martha Swope. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 01846. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Set design for Martha Graham’s Embattled Garden, 1958. Photo: Nicholas Knight.
  • Martha Graham, Seraphic Dialogue; set by Isamu Noguchi, 1955. Photo: Martha Swope. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 06757. ©INFGM / ARS

Architectural Metaphors
Noguchi did not believe that it was the job of sculpture to decorate buildings. But he was extremely interested in deconstructing and appropriating the strategies and techniques through which architecture wielded its space-making, space-defining authority. In these columns, lintels, beams, peaks, and parts, Noguchi explores materials, structural systems, and architectural features almost as an architecture studio would in doing the basic research required to prepare for a major building project. He also expands the architectonic palette by returning, as in Triple Nest (1979), to nature, the “better craftsman.” The implications this may have for rethinking how we define and delineate human-made environments is seen perhaps most dynamically in Costume for a Stone (1982), in which a rock appears to climb through a freestanding window.

Terracing and Panoramas
Terraces were one of Noguchi’s simplest and most powerful semi-architectural play concepts. (All they do is to change your perspective!) One of the most interesting ways in which sculpture can be said to outstrip architecture is by working with human scale without having to adhere to or serve it functionally—as it does in the context of a playground. The human-scale terracing presented here was excerpted from a playground maquette for Riverside Drive (c. 1961), an unbuilt project Noguchi pursued between 1961 and 1965 with the architect Louis Kahn. These simple changes in level enable an altered view of two panoramas composed of various architecture-adjacent ideas of Noguchi’s.

  • Isamu Noguchi, Riverside Playground: Play Terrace Study, c. 1961 (cast 1963). Bronze. Photo: Kevin Noble. 10030. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Terracing based on Riverside Playground model, c. 1961 (fabricated 2021; Daniel Da Silva). Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Terracing based on Riverside Playground model, c. 1961 (fabricated 2021; Daniel Da Silva). Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Model for Pylon for Philip A. Hart Plaza, Detroit, c. 1972, Folding In & Out, 1982–83, The Angle, 1969, Castle, 1967, Untitled (Waterfall Study), c. 1962, Model element for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, c. 1961–64. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Maquettes for sculpture in plaster. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Maquettes for sculpture in plaster. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS

Postmodern Akari
For Isamu Noguchi’s Space of Akari and Stone at Yurakucho Art Forum, Tokyo (organized by the Seibu Museum) in 1985, collaborating architect Arata Isozaki worked from a cryptic poem that Noguchi gave him to inspire and guide a series of material, scale, and conceptual contrasts. Isozaki emphasized the softness of Akari, as well as their almost boundless capacity to humanize an environment, by juxtaposing them with chain link fencing and corrugated steel. Variations on some of Isozaki’s concepts (a banquette, a cage, and a puppet theater-like enclosure), while useless architecturally, demonstrate just how much Akari can do to organize and naturalize the space around them.

  • Isamu Noguchi and Arata Isozaki, Space of Akari and Stone, Yurakucho Art Forum, Tokyo (organized by Seibu Museum, Tokyo), February 9–20, 1985. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 02898. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Isamu Noguchi, poem sent to Arata Isozaki, November 17, 1984. The Noguchi Museum Archives, MS_AKA_014_004. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Installation view, Noguchi: Useless Architecture, The Noguchi Museum, May 19, 2021 – May 8, 2022. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
  • Noguchi: Useless Architecture. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS

Ends
Temporarily relocated from the garden, End Pieces (1974) is a room that cannot be opened or entered: installed here in another room as what Noguchi would have called a “space of the mind.” What’s inside is a secret.


 

Noguchi: Useless Architecture is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.