ART-PREVIEW:Isamu Noguchi, Self-Interned 1942
Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on 19/2/42, the Executive Order 9066, authorized the evacuation of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland. In the next 6 months, over 100,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry living on the West coast were moved to assembly centers. They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded relocation centers, known as internment camps.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Noguchi Museum Archive
The exhibition “Self-Interned, 1942: Noguchi in Poston War Relocation Center” at Noguchi Museum marks the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066. The exhibition examines Isamu Noguchi’s decision to voluntarily enter the Poston War Relocation Center, in the Arizona Desert. In his 60 years long career Isamu Noguchi, a major American and Japanese sculptor and designer created Abstract works based on both organic and geometric forms. Inspired by traditional Japanese art and by the biomorphic style of some Surrealists Noguchi became internationally known both for his work and his publicly accessible furniture and architecture. After the Pearl Harbor attack on the U.S.A., Noguchi furthered his political actions by protesting against the internment camps. He formed the Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy in 1942 and registered complaints in Washington. That year he also voluntarily spent several months in the Poston War Relocation Center, even though he was living in New York and was not required to be detained. He went there for a couple of months, with the goal of improving the lives of the people encarcerated. Instead, the budget for his projects was cut, and his paperwork to be released got lost. Noguchi ultimately spent 7 miserable, unproductive months in the camp. In his words, “Thus I willfully became part of humanity uprooted”. In the exhibition are on presentation two dozen works from the collection of Noguchi Museum, dating from before, during, and after Noguchi’s time at Poston, along with a substantial selection of archival documents. The exhibition opens with a roughly chronological installation of about a dozen sculptures dating from 1941to 1944, the year after he returned to New York City. Together, these trace the development of his work during the crucial period when he made the transition from his early figurative work to the modernist style for which he became known. The earliest work here is a portrait bust of Lily Zietz (1941), made at a time when Noguchi was supporting himself by creating portrait heads of the rich and famous. Later works in this section show the impact that Noguchi’s time at Poston had on his art. While he explored working in wood, one of the few materials that was both readily available and workable with limited equipment. Other works here show how, during the years immediately following his release from the camp, Noguchi vacillated between excoriating satire like “This Tortured Earth” (1942–43) and “Yellow Landscape” and such consolatory subjects as “Mother and Child”, a simple, near-abstract work in onyx from the last years of the war. “Gateways” and “Deserts” are works dating from the mid-50’s to mid-80’s that testify to the enduring impact of Noguchi’s experience as a wartime internee. “Double Red Mountain” (1969), a table sculpture in Persian travertine, demonstrates his talent for essentializing the way the desert isolates and de-scales its major physical features, an approach that became a blueprint for Noguchi’s later microcosmic landscapes. Also on presentation is a variety of documents that span the immediate pre- and postwar period. Drawn from the Museum’s vast archives, these include Noguchi’s position as chairman of Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy and his unofficial role as a national spokesperson for the Japanese-American community, as well as items like a letter to Man Ray in which Noguchi describes the surreal nature of his position in Poston, and a 1943 editorial published in The New Republic on unrest in the camps. Blueprints show some of the improvements that Noguchi hoped to make at Poston, including park and recreation areas, as well as a design for a cemetery.
Info: Curator: Dakin Hart, Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Rd (at Vernon Boulevard), Long Island City, Duration: 18/1/17-7/1/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri 10:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.noguchi.org
