Isamu Noguchi: a feeling

EVENT DESCRIPTION

White Cube is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Hong Kong of works by Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

The exhibition explores the profound impact that Chinese master painter Qi Baishi had on Noguchi’s artistic development, notably the creation of his fluid ‘Peking Brush Drawings’ under Qi’s guidance in the 1930s. Tracing the influence of these calligraphic forms on Noguchi’s sculptural practice throughout his career, highlights of the presentation include innovative constructed bronze works from the late 1980s.

Born to a Japanese father, who was a poet, and an American mother, who was an educator and editor, Noguchi moved between different cities, traditions and, ultimately, intellectual worlds. A restless search for his own artistic identity would bring him to Paris in 1927, as Constantin Brâncuși’s first and only assistant, before his return to New York in 1929. He would shortly thereafter spend six months in Beijing, en route to Japan, between 1930–31. It was in Beijing that Noguchi was introduced to master ink painter Qi Baishi (1864–1957), who instructed him in the essential tools of traditional East Asian arts: brush, ink, and paper.

Qi was already a prominent figure in modern ink painting, and their time together led Noguchi to produce a series of works known as the Peking Brush Drawings (all 1930). Three of these are exhibited alongside Qi’s own work. Eight of Noguchi’s formally related bronze sculptures that he created some 50 years after their meeting are also on view. By presenting works by Noguchi and Qi within the same space, the exhibition forges a temporal and spatial bridge in its continuation of an artistic dialogue between late master and student. Like Qi’s work, Noguchi’s Peking Brush Drawings are devised as scrolls, a format that allows them to be rolled up, stowed and, traditionally, only taken out for special occasions. Scrolls were therefore occasions in and of themselves, in that their unfurling demanded slowed looking and anticipation as its contents were revealed. However, while Qi’s scrolls present East Asian motifs – foliage, flowers, birds and fruit – with hanging tendrils of Chinese script and luminous colour, Noguchi’s work departs from these subject matters and cultural convention.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

One of the most significant artists of the 20th century, Isamu Noguchi (1904–88) was an idealist whose timeless work blended ancient and modern ideas. An itinerant cultural synthesizer, he consistently rejected categorization and the false dichotomies of his time, espoused globalism and anticipated the social practice of art by several decades. Primarily a sculptor, Noguchi’s expansive, interdisciplinary practice included public projects, gardens, playgrounds, furniture, lighting and set design, all informed by an abiding view that nature was of fundamental importance to the human condition and a determination to make work which encouraged this belief.