Word: noguchi
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Kissing: U.S.-Style. Japanese art lovers might wonder about Centipede and Mister One Man, but they knew the balding artist of Myself. His name: Isamu Noguchi, famed California-born Japanese-American sculptor, who had been to Japan three times since the war preaching modern art. Noguchi's beautiful wife, Shirley Yamaguchi, is just as much a celebrity as the sculptor himself. One of Japan's top movie stars, Shirley met Noguchi on a 1950 trip to the U.S. (to pick up Hollywood pointers, among other things, on how to kiss for the camera, U.S.-style). On their third...
Shirley-san and Isamu-san made a good team. Living in a 200-year-old, thatched-roof farmhouse near Tokyo, Noguchi started spreading his modern ideas with lots of help from his wife. Earlier, he had turned out abstract designs for the railings on two new bridges for Hiroshima: one was a sweeping single line with a half sphere rising at each end; the other, shaped like a long, low boat. In both, Noguchi wanted to symbolize the city leaving the past for a new and better life. But the symbolism was lost on most Japanese. "The A-bomb," said...
Kimonos with Zippers. Noguchi thinks he is getting closer to what Japan can appreciate in modern art. "Through Shirley," he says, "I can understand emotionally what Japanese dislike." Aside from pure sculpture, he takes familiar objects and gives them an up-to-date twist. Instead of bulky old-style kimonos, Shirley wears formfitting, Noguchi-designed robes with Zipper fasteners. He asked himself why Japanese lanterns should always be made in the same century-old shapes; Noguchi's paper lanterns are modeled into crescents, cubes and other shapes. Says Noguchi: "Tradition is all well and fine, but it must...
...Japanese tradition Noguchi has been reworking is that of the 1,500-year-old clay statuette (haniwa). He hopes that the sight of these and other old favorites in new styles will help bring the Japanese around to modern...
...Says Designer Bel Geddes: "I thought that overscaled gimmick at the entrance to the Pump Room was a statue of Ernie Byfield by Noguchi...