Isamu Noguchi

September - November 2001

Each year A/D installs an exhibition of historical works by artists who have made functional objects. Isamu Noguchi's mulberry bark paper and bamboo lamps, first designed in 1951, are the most familiar of objects by artists. We are delighted to install a room full of his serene, glowing lights, having chosen several of those that are less often seen.

It was Noguchi's aim to transpose sculpture from the pristine gallery space to a living environment. The Akari lamps represent his lifelong commitment to integrate the fine and decorative arts, breaking down the traditional barriers between form and function. Through their interaction with the surrounding space, Akari--a word that translates into both senses of our word light, as illumination and as weightlessness--embodies Noguchi's conception of sculpture, "the sculpture of space."

"For poor or rich they are a mark of sensibility, not of status, but as an accent of quality, giving light to whatever may be our world. Of East and West, classical or modern, nothing is too elegant or too dismal to be enhanced. It has been said that to start a home all that is needed is a room, a pad and Akari." --Isamu Noguchi, quoted in Isamu Noguchi: Space of Akari & Stone, catalogue of an exhibition organized by The Seibu Museum of Art.

The Akari were inspired by Noguchi's visit to the town of Gifu, known for its manufacture of traditional Japanese lanterns and parasols. He saw, in these simple constructions, a means to extend the investigation he had begun into the relationship between light form with his "Lunar" sculptures and interiors in the 1940s. The lamps are still produced by hand in Gifu by the Ozeki family company.

"Inherent in Akari are lightness and fragility. They seem to offer a magical unfolding away from the material world." --Isamu Noguchi