Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi

by Hayden Herrera

Overview

Throughout the twentieth century, Isamu Noguchi was a vital figure in modern art. From interlocking wooden sculptures to massive steel monuments to the elegant Akari lamps, Noguchi became a master of what he called the "sculpturing of space." But his constant struggle-as both an artist and a man-was to embrace his conflicted identity as the son of a single American woman and a famous yet reclusive Japanese father. "It's only in art," he insisted, "that it was ever possible for me to find any identity at all."

In this remarkable biography of the elusive artist, Hayden Herrera observes this driving force of Noguchi's creativity as intimately tied to his deep appreciation of nature. As a boy in Japan, Noguchi would collect wild azaleas and blue mountain flowers for a little garden in front of his home. As Herrera writes, he also included a rock, "to give a feeling of weight and permanence." It was a sensual appreciation he never abandoned. When looking for stones in remote Japanese quarries for his zen-like Paris garden forty years later, he would spend hours actually listening to the stones, scrambling from one to another until he found one that "spoke to him." Constantly striving to "take the essence of nature and distill it," Noguchi moved from sculpture to furniture, and from playgrounds to sets for his friend the choreographer Martha Graham, and back again working in wood, iron, clay, steel, aluminum, and, of course, stone.

Noguchi traveled constantly, from New York to Paris to India to Japan, forever uprooting himself to reinvigorate what he called the "keen edge of originality." Wherever he went, his needy disposition and boyish charm drew women to him, yet he tended to push them away when things began to feel too settled. Only through his art-now seen as a powerful aesthetic link between the East and the West-did Noguchi ever seem to feel that he belonged.

Combining Noguchi's personal correspondence and interviews with those closest to him-from artists, patrons, assistants, and lovers-Herrera has created an authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century's most important sculptors. She locates Noguchi in his friendships with such artists as Buckminster Fuller and Arshile Gorky, and in his affairs with women including Frida Kahlo and Anna Matta Clark. With the attention to detail and scholarship that made her biography of Gorky a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Herrera has written a rich meditation on art in a globalized milieu. Listening to Stone is a moving portrait of an artist compulsively driven to reinvent himself as he searched for his own "essence of sculpture."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374281168
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	04/21/2015
Pages:	592
Sales rank:	1,170,904
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Hayden Herrera is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work, as well as Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, and Matisse: A Portrait.

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

1 Parents 7

2 Dear Baby 20

3 Tokyo 27

4 Cbigasaki 36

5 St. Joseph College 43

6 Interlaken 55

7 La Porte 59

8 I Became a Sculptor 66

9 I Will Rival the Immortals 80

10 Out from the Shadow of a Big Tree 89

11 Head Buster 99

12 To Find Nature's Reasons 110

13 A Close Embrace of the Earth 117

14 Lonely Traveler, Social Lion 125

15 Toward a Sculpture of Space 134

16 Art with a Social Purpose 140

17 Mexico 148

18 New York, 1936-39 156

19 California 169

20 Poston 177

21 MacDougal Alley 186

22 Letters to Ann 199

23 Noguchi and Martha Graham, Passionate Collaborators 211

24 The Rock and the Space Between 220

25 Tara 230

26 1946-48 235

27 Impasse 242

28 Bollingen Travels 248

29 Harbinger Pigeon 255

30 Shinbanraisha 263

31 Mitsukoshi Exhibition 269

32 Yoshiko Yamaguchi 277

33 Kita Kamakura 292

34 My Solace Has Always Been Sculpture 310

35 UNESCO: A Somewhat Japanese Garden 322

36 Changed Visions 334

37 Priscilla 345

38 Working with Noguchi 356

39 Levitating Rocks, Wings of Prayer 363

40 Toward an Autobiography 372

41 A Primer of Shapes and Functions 378

42 The Wheat Itself 386

43 Red Cube, Black Sun 396

44 The Stone Circle 408

45 To Intrude on Nature's Way 417

46 A Place for People to Go 436

47 Imaginary Landscapes 447

48 California Scenario 459

49 Bayfront Park 467

50 All Things Worthwhile Must End as Gifts 474

51 Kyoko 488

52 No Beginnings, No Endings 499

Notes 511

Acknowledgments 553

Index 557

Editorial Reviews

The genius of Listening to Stone is how its author, Hayden Herrera, inhabits the sculpturing hand of its subject. Rather than focus on the surface, Herrera gets "beneath the skin," as Noguchi would say, to the "brilliance of matter." In Herrera's elegant account, the "stone" of Noguchi's "art and life" is left quiet enough for us to hear. Distracting voices, whether they be the author's or those of Noguchi's many friends, lovers and critics, are kept to a minimum. The story that emerges is therefore not unlike one of Noguchi's gardens, or his playground designs, or his dance sets. Space and spareness balance matter and articulation…With minimal intervention, Herrera helps all of us walk beside this "nomad" who "sought and found, by making sculpture, a way to embed himself in the earth, in nature, in the world."

The New York Times Book Review - James Panero

12/15/2014
Herrera (Arshile Gorky) delves into the details of the life of influential and enigmatic American sculptor Isamu Noguchi in this thorough and solid biography. Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904, to an American mother and a Japanese father, the poet Yone Noguchi, who abandoned them before Noguchi was born. Herrera reveals how Noguchi’s identity as half-Japanese and half-American shaped his identity as an artist. Describing Noguchi’s career from his itinerant youth in LA and Japan to his embattled redesign of Miami’s Bayfront Park, Herrera leaves no stone unturned. This critical biography relies extensively on Noguchi’s writings and letters, but Herrera’s expertise and insight illuminate Noguchi’s evolving creative process, as well as the full scope of his personal relationships. In short chapters, Herrera walks readers through every phase of Noguchi’s life, including his affair with Frida Kahlo, the design of his iconic table, his collaborations with choreographer Martha Graham, his time at a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during WWII, and his creation of the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York. Herrera adroitly shows that Noguchi was more than just a sculptor—he was a skilled craftsman, a heartbreaker, and a philosopher of design. This biography carves a smooth portrait of one of the most prolific and original artists of the 20th century. 132 illus. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

The genius of Listening to Stone is how its author, Hayden Herrera, inhabits the sculpturing hand of its subject. Rather than focus on the surface, Herrera gest 'beneath the skin,' as Noguchi would say, to the 'brilliance of matter' . . . [An] elegant account.” —James Panero, The New York Times Book Review

“Masterful . . . Herrera had to synthesize a vast amount of material to produce this authoritative account.” —Ann Levin, The Associated Press

“Hayden Herrera's welcome and comprehensive biography of [Noguchi] provides a definitive portrait of a figure who, by the time he died in 1988, was seen by many critics as the greatest American sculptor of the 20th century . . . Listening to Stone is a complex account of a flawed and restless visionary.” —Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

“Herrera wisely used the biographical framework for Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi . . . And what a tale it is! One that Ms. Herrera tells with clarity and Measured restraint. Noguchi knew all sorts of people—important artists and architects, patrons and politicians—and met them in a world-wide variety of places. At times Listening to Stone unfolds almost like a novel.” —E. A. Carmean Jr., The Wall Street Journal

“A passionate stone carver and a constant traveler with a notoriously complicated love life, Noguchi constructed, with tremendous vision, skill, and turmoil, dynamic outdoor installations all around the world. But as Herrera . . . so sensitively illuminates and assiduously documents, his mixed heritage and illegitimate birth caused him endless anguish . . . Herrera tells Noguchi's astounding, many-chaptered story of 'unstoppable creative energy,' fame, and perpetual alienation with thrilling narrative drive and deep perception and reinvigorates appreciation for Noguchi's searching and evocative art.” —Booklist, (starred review), Donna Seaman

“Herrera delves into the details of the life of influential and enigmatic American sculptor Isamu Noguchi in this thorough and solid biography . . . Herrera's expertise and insight illuminate Noguchi's evolving creative process, as well as the full scope of his personal relationships . . . Herrera adroitly shows that Noguchi was more than just a sculptor-he was a skilled craftsman, a heartbreaker, and a philosopher of design. This biography carves a smooth portrait of one of the most prolific and original artists of the twentieth century.” —Publishers Weekly (Top Ten Art, Architecture & Photography Pick for Spring 2015)

“A comprehensive biography of a sculptor of stone and space . . . Herrera gives readers an ample, thorough analysis of his estimable art.” —Kirkus Reviews

“From beginning to end, Listening to Stone is a beautifully written biography and an engrossing tale of one of the most inventive artists of the twentieth century. As she elucidates Noguchi's poetic genius and his wonderfully unclassifiable approach to art, Hayden Herrera brings to life the milieus in which Noguchi lived like no one else. From the mountainous coast of rural Japan to bohemian New York in the 1920s to Paris and Tokyo in the following decade, she vividly presents Noguchi's relationship with his settings. This is an enticing book achieved with an élan consistent with the magical work of a remarkable artist.” —Nicholas Fox Weber, author of The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism

“Listening to Stone provides a sweeping portrait of a rebel genius who was able to make a difference doing the work he most loved. Hayden Herrera helps us understand a man who, like many of his friends and associates, was branded an outlaw because he was so far ahead of his time. Listening to Stone is a monument to the man who created monuments around the world.” —L. Steven Sieden, author of Buckminster Fuller’s Universe: His Life and Work

From the Publisher

2015-01-04
A comprehensive biography of a sculptor of stone and space.Art critic Robert Hughes called Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) "the pre-eminent American sculptor…the chief living heir, not only to his teacher [Constantin] Brancusi, but also to the classical Japanese feeling for material and nature." In this meticulously researched biography, Herrera (Joan Snyder, 2005, etc.) chronicles the long, productive career of the acclaimed 20th-century modernist. Born to an unconventional American mother and a Japanese father, a famous poet who neglected him, Noguchi spent his early childhood in Japan; at 13, his mother sent him to school in America, alone. "Banished" to another culture, he claimed throughout his life that dual identity made him feel like an outsider. As an artist, he drew on both cultures, and his precocious talent attracted teachers and mentors: Brancusi, for whom he worked in Paris; and Buckminster Fuller, who taught Noguchi about "the new technology of space and structures." Although Noguchi began his career making busts of celebrities (Thornton Wilder, George Gershwin, Lincoln Kirstein), he soon moved to sculpture, stage sets (he designed for Martha Graham for decades), and public plazas and gardens (for UNESCO, Yale's Beinecke Library and others), earning a reputation "as a sculptor of space." Herrera allows colleagues and lovers to characterize Noguchi's personality. "He was elegant and flirtatious," a close woman friend disclosed. "He was a seducer and a charmer." He pursued women who were usually decades younger and dazzled by his attentions and his fame; he married one, an actress, but that relationship ended in divorce after a few years. Short-tempered and egotistical, he could be difficult. One colleague said he was "stubborn as a mule" and an astute politician. "Noguchi was a genius in knowing how to use people," said another. Although reticent about putting forth her own insights about her subject's mind and heart, Herrera gives readers an ample, thorough analysis of his estimable art.

Kirkus Reviews