41. A PRIMER OF SHAPES AND FUNCTIONS

  1. “Gardens at Corporate Headquarters Symbolize Man’s Past and Future,” IBM News 1, no. 18, September 25, 1964, NA.

  2. Sc W, 172.

  3. Jerry Tallmer, “Playgrounds Are No Game,” New York Post, February 9, 1980, NA.

  4. Sc W, 161.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Correspondence and documents about the Riverside Park playground are in NA.

  8. IN, “The Sculpture of Spaces,” 18.

  9. “More distressing to me,” Noguchi wrote, “was my belated realization that the architect must above all, be primarily responsible to the architecture. Its scale is often as not in contradistinction to its surroundings. A playground, however, is necessarily scaled to the use of children. There is a limit to its adaptability to changes in architectural scale. While I marshaled my plans to cope with an ever more formidable fenestration, in the end I could not help feeling that while I might agree with the resolution as architecture, the playground itself, because of its limited space, had become visually inadequate … Our playground took too long.” IN, quoted in ibid., 43.

10. Noguchi’s letters to Gene Owens are in Owens’s personal archive.

11. Joseph Lelyveld, “Model Play Area For Park Shown,” The New York Times, February 5, 1964.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Sc W, 178.

15. Jay Jacobs, “Prophet without Honor,” Art in America 55, no. 6 (November–December 1967): 44–45.

16. Arata Isozaki, “Sparks of Creation,” in Play Mountain, 43 and 58.

17. Sc W, 178.

18. David Hickey, “Work of Noguchi,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 5, 1983.

42. THE WHEAT ITSELF

  1. Sc W, 39.

  2. Gene Owens, “The Garden of Older Gods,” in Retrospective: Gene Owens, exhibition catalogue (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 1991).

  3. Sc W, 36.

  4. Mus. Cat., 254.

  5. Vivien Raynor, exhibition review, Arts 39, no. 9 (May–June 1965).

  6. Sc W, 39.

  7. Hilton Kramer, exhibition review, The New York Times, April 8, 1967.

  8. IN, note in exhibition press release for Shapes of Light, December 1968–January 1969, NA.

  9. The New York Times, December 7, 1968, clipping, NA.

10. Priscilla Morgan, letter to IN, January 17, 1971.

11. Bruce Altshuler, “The Akari Light Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi,” 4, Noguchi Museum Web site, Research and Resources.

12. Carolyn Hall, “Noguchi Discusses Sculpture, Design,” unidentified Detroit newspaper, n.d., clipping, NA.

13. Mus. Cat., 98.

14. Ibid., 116.

15. Ibid., 58.

16. Ibid., 60.

17. David L. Shirey, “Art,” Newsweek, April 29, 1968, clipping, NA.

18. Tatsuo Kondo, “A Conversation with Isamu Noguchi,” Geijitsu Shincho, July 19, 1968, 15–20, translated for the Noguchi Foundation, NA.

19. Kobata interview, 23.

20. Osaka naimichi, November 20, 1984, quoted in Duus, 359.

21. Kondo interview, 2.

22. Hilton Kramer, “Isamu Noguchi: A Selective Anthology,” The New York Times, April 21, 1968.

23. Shirey, “Art.”

43. RED CUBE, BLACK SUN

  1. Katharine Kuh, “April Belonged to Noguchi,” The Saturday Review, June 1, 1968, clipping, NA.

  2. IN, “The Cube,” typed text, NA.

  3. Ada Louise Huxtable, “Sometimes We Do it Right,” The New York Times, March 31, 1968.

  4. John Russell, The Sunday Times (London), April 28, 1968.

  5. “The Public Reacts to Noguchi’s ‘Cube,’” Marine Midland Grace Bulletin, April 1968, 16, clipping, NA.

  6. Senie, “Urban Sculpture,” 108.

  7. Ibid., 111.

  8. Ibid., 3.

  9. Ibid., 111.

10. Katharine Chafee, “Noguchi the Artist as Poet,” The Straight Creek Journal, October 26, 1978, 15.

11. IN, draft of presentation to USIA, 1967, NA.

12. IN, letter to Jack Masey, September 23, 1967, NA.

13. Mus. Cat., 174.

14. Kenzo Tange, telegram to IN, July, 1968, NA.

15. Mus. Cat., 174.

16. IN, “The Sculpture of Spaces,” 25.

17. The Times (London), July 9, 1968, clipping, NA.

18. Mus. Cat., 55

19. Sc W, 40.

20. Ibid., 39.

21. Masatoshi Izumi, interviewed by the author, Mure, Japan, October 31, 2009. All quotes from Izumi, unless otherwise noted, come from this interview.

22. Duus, 314.

23. Mus. Cat., 19.

24. IN, letter to Richard E. Fuller, June 26, 1967, NA.

25. Richard E. Fuller, letter to IN, July 21, 1967, NA.

26. IN, letter to Tadashi Yamamoto, July 25, 1967, NA.

27. IN, letter to Richard E. Fuller, November 2, 1967, NA.

28. Tadashi Yamamoto, letter to IN, January 15, 1968, NA.

29. IN, letter to Gene Owens, May 30, 1968, Gene Owens’s personal archive.

30. Taiko Okada, interviewed by the author, Takamatsu, Shikoku, Japan, October 30, 2009.

31. Masatoshi Izumi, interviewed by the author.

32. IN, letter to Ibsen Nelson, February 7, 1969, NA.

33. Unidentified clipping, n.d., probably September 1969, NA.

34. Noguchi’s comment is part of a collage on the subject of his Skyviewing Sculpture in NA.

44. THE STONE CIRCLE

  1. Masatoshi Izumi, interviewed by the author.

  2. Takashi Ukita, interviewed by the author, Okayama, Japan, October 2009. All quotes from Takashi Ukita come from this interview.

  3. KK, 111.

  4. Katharine Kuh, My Love Affair with Modern Art, 204 and 208–9.

  5. Ibid., 206.

  6. Tadashi Yamamoto, interviewed by Ohtaka, typed transcript, NA.

  7. Masatoshi Izumi, interviewed by the author.

  8. Mus. Cat., 80.

  9. Yamamoto, interviewed by Ohtaka.

10. Benjamin Forgey, “Noguchi at Shikoku,” Landscape Architecture 80, no. 4 (April 1990): 58.

11. Ashton, 16.

12. Ibid., 17.

13. Duus, 324.

14. Taiko Okada, interviewed by the author.

15. Ibid.

45. TO INTRUDE ON NATURE’S WAY

  1. Amei Wallach, “The Poet of Space,” Newsday (Long Island, NY), January 2, 1989.

  2. Mus. Cat., 20.

  3. Katharine Kuh, “Noguchi in Japan,” World, March 3, 1973, 61.

  4. Arata Isozaki, “Listening to the Intent of Nature,” in Isamu Noguchi, Human Aspect, 30–31.

  5. Takashi Oka, tape-recorded interviews with IN, November 14 and 15, 1986. I am grateful to Jenny Dixon for providing me with the recording.

  6. Margaret Sheffield, “Perfecting the Imperfect,” 70.

  7. Ibid., 12.

  8. Elizabeth Pond, “Isamu Noguchi,” interview with IN, part II, The Christian Science Monitor, August 24, 1973, NA.

  9. Osaka naimichi, November 20, 1984, quoted in Duus, 359.

10. Oka, interviews with IN.

11. Mus. Cat., 40.

12. Quoted in Isamu Noguchi: Beginnings and Ends, exhibition catalogue (New York: Pace Wildenstein Gallery, 1994). This passage was adapted from a June 1986 interview with Noguchi at the Venice Biennale, unpublished transcript in NA.

13. Mus. Cat., 28.

14. Alhalel, “Conversation with Isamu Noguchi.”

15. Sheffield, “Perfecting the Imperfect,” 69.

16. Mus. Cat., 100.

17. Ibid., 64.

18. Ibid., 97.

19. Ibid., 140.

20. Anne d’Harnoncourt, interviewed by the author, Philadelphia, February 13, 2008.

21. Mus. Cat., 64.

22. Ashton, 258.

23. Arnold Glimcher, interviewed by the author, New York City, March 20, 2013.

24. IN, letter to Priscilla Morgan, October 21, 1972.

25. Shoji Sadao, interviewed by the author.

26. Glimcher, interviewed by the author.

27. Arts (December/January 1970–71), clipping, NA.

28. John Canaday, “Art: Recent Sculptures by Noguchi,” The New York Times, November 14, 1970, clipping, NA.

29. John Canaday, exhibition review, The New York Times, May 20, 1972.

30. Varujan Boghosian, interviewed by the author, June 12, 2012.

31. IN, letter to Anne Rotzler, December 16, 1971, NA.

32. Typed manuscript for Noguchi’s Minami Gallery exhibition catalogue, dated February 20, 1973, NA.

33. Linda LaMarre, “He Sculpts the Landscape,” The Detroit News Magazine, April 15, 1979, 32.

34. Mus. Cat., 52.

35. Noguchi’s correspondence with the Pace Gallery is in NA.

36. Bryan Robertson, Noguchi’s Stainless Steel Sculpture, exhibition catalogue (New York: Pace Gallery, 1985).

37. John Russell, review of Noguchi’s exhibition at Pace, The New York Times, June 15, 1975, clipping, NA.

38. Hilton Kramer, review of Noguchi’s exhibition at Pace, The New York Times, May 17, 1975, clipping, NA.

39. Mus. Cat., 126.

40. Ibid., 68.

41. Ibid., 82.

42. Ibid., 124.

43. Ibid., 42.