Welcome to Art Room 161

This blog was created as an extension of the dialogue that began in our classroom and the purpose is to share creative ideas, images, and critiscm. All posts should be appropriate for the high school classroom and critiscm should be helpful and positive.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Isamu Noguchi Museum

This weekend I visited the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens, a museum I've been wanting to see for quite a while. If your are unfamiliar with Noguchi, he's a Japanese-American sculptor and artist who is also know for his set design, furniture design, and paper la terns which have become immensely popular.

He apprenticed with Constantin Brancusi and was a contemporary of artists we've discussed in class such as: Willem de Kooning, Alfred Stieglitz, and Alexander Calder but his style and body of work is very different and defies category. He collaborated with other creative and innovative people like engineer Buckminster Fuller and dancer Martha Graham and has a varied body of work so take a look at the museum's website timeline to get a better sense of how he developed.

Having studied Japanese art and culture as well as American art his work has interesting aspects of both but his later work which is the majority of the collection at the museum has a intensely Japanese feel due to it imperfections and connection to nature, especially thanks to how it is displayed in open air rooms and gardens.

No comments:

Blog Archive