December 25, 2018

Changing and Unchanging Things: Noguchi andHasegawa in Postwar Japan
Rediscovering Japanese Aesthetics in the 1950s
Venue:
Dates:

Yokohama Museum of Art
January 12 (Sat.) - March 24 (Sun.), 2019

Sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), of Japanese and Americanancestry, sought to reintegrate art into people’s daily lives, as it was in theprehistoric or ancient remains he saw in his travels through Europe and Asia since1949, while Saburo Hasegawa (1906-1957) was a leading figure in Japanese
prewar abstraction as a painter, and as a theorist he studied Western modern artmovements and the traditional arts of Japan, finding aspects common to both inabstract art. In May 1950 Noguchi set foot on Japanese soil, as the finaldestination of his travels, for the first time in 19 years, and had a fatefulencounter with Hasegawa, who had known Noguchi’s work since 1948 and wasso eager for dialogue that he planned to establish correspondence with thesculptor. They found astounding similarities and a powerful resonance between
their shared interests and respective visions.
After this they became close friends, and Hasegawa served as anincomparable guide to the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Japan,

Isamu Noguchi,
Calligraphics, 1957,iron, wood, rope, metal,
178.8×43.5×40.6cm,The Isamu Noguchi Foundation andGarden Museum, New York©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation andGarden Museum, New York/ARS-JASPAR
Photo: Kevin Noble

including architecture, gardening, calligraphy, painting, archaeological artifacts, the tea ceremony, Zen,and haiku, playing a crucial role in forming Noguchi’s understanding of the essence of Japanese
aesthetics, while dialogues with Noguchi encouraged Hasegawa to extend the frontiers of his abstract art
by working in traditional Asian media such as sumi ink, rubbings, and woodblocks.
This exhibition focuses on the friendship between these two artists, exploring what theysaw, thought about, and aspired to do, through approximately 50 works by Noguchi and 70 by Hasegawa,particularly from the years of their association in the 1950s.
*Some works will be replaced with others while the exhibition is on view, for conservation purposes.

What Noguchi and Hasegawa Sought: Synthesis of “the Old East and the New West”
In 1950, the year Noguchi and Hasegawa met, Japan entered its fifth year of occupation by
Allied forces and was still in the midst of a massive and daunting postwar reconstruction. It was also atime when, under the new Japanese Constitution enacted in 1947, the nation was on the threshold of
long-awaited independence and a return to the international community as a peaceful state, culturallyrich if still economically impoverished. In the art world, there were growing expectations for new
international exchange, and Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi was welcomed enthusiasticallywhen he arrived. Noguchi met important artists and architects such as painter Genichiro Inokuma,architect Kenzo Tange, and designer Isamu Kenmochi, but Saburo Hasegawa was a figure of uniquesignificance to him.
The goal Noguchi and Hasegawa shared can be described as the synthesis of “the old Eastand the new West,” reflecting Hasegawa’s own words. How could the art of the coming era balance
tradition and modernity, indigenous culture and foreign influence? An ongoing interest in this challenging
question characterizes the two artists’ work. Hasegawa went to the United States in 1954 and waswarmly welcomed in New York, where Japanese culture was in vogue, practicing the tea ceremony andlecturing on Taoism and Zen while producing and exhibiting abstract paintings in sumi ink, andassociating with Franz Kline and other American abstractionists. After temporarily returning to Japan andthen immigrating to San Francisco in 1955, Hasegawa made an impact on young writers and artists ofthe Beat Generation with his lectures at California College of Arts and Crafts and the American Academyof Asian Studies. In addition to Hasegawa’s best-known 1950s works in Japanese collections, thisexhibition presents many works produced in the US, quite a few of which havenever been shown in Japan. Meanwhile, Noguchi’s works from the 1950s when
he was traveling back and forth between the US and Japan, including sculpturesin ceramic, stone, aluminum, cast iron, bell bronze, and balsa wood, and his
extensive series of Akari Light Sculptures, show essential aspects of thetraditional cultural heritage of Japan that Noguchi viewed with Hasegawa, andof Zen Buddhism and other East Asian philosophy, his understanding of which
deepened during their dialogues. His works embody these qualities in thelanguage of abstract art, but do not fall into a specific style or a superficial
imitation of any Japanese object. Noguchi’s works in this show, which range
widely in materials and sizes, from the small ceramic Face Dish to the larger
than life size aluminum-plate Sesshu, the philosophically titled balsa wood
Mortality and the carved stone Garden Elements with a height of 2.6 meters,
reflect his ambitions to make a world art that addresses all people beyond
Saburo HASEGAWA,
Untitled, 1954,
ink on paper, 138.8×70.0cm,KONAN GAKUEN Saburo
Hasegawa Memorial Gallery

temporal and cultural boundaries. At the same time we can say that the essenceof Noguchi’s art as we perceive it today was forged during this period ofengagement with Japan.

Highlights
1．Many of Noguchi’s and Hasegawa’s most admired works, as well as many never shown inJapan before
In addition to many of Hasegawa’s best-known sumi ink works, prints, and rubbings fromthe collections of Japanese national and public museums, this exhibition features Garden Elements(1958), one of Noguchi’s most important stone sculptures, made in Japan, exhibited in the US, and thennever seen in public for many years, as well as many pieces exhibited in Japan for the first time, including
sumi ink paintings, photograms and other previously unknown works produced by Hasegawa after hemoved to the US.
Through about 120 works – paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, calligraphy andmore – this exhibition traces both the creative trajectories and the deeply fruitful friendship of Noguchiand Hasegawa.
*Before this exhibition, Isamu Noguchi’s Garden Elements (1958) is shown in the Grand Gallery of theYokohama Museum of Art starting in late November 2018.

2. Exhibition held jointly in the US and Japan. 33 works will be shown only in YokohamaThis exhibition was jointly organized by the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden
Museum, New York and the Yokohama Museum of Art.
Most of the featured works will travel to the Noguchi Museum (New York) and the Asian Art
Museum of San Francisco after being shown in Yokohama. In addition to these, the Yokohama Museumof Art will exclusively exhibit 33 works, including prewar abstractions and photos such as the painting
Locus of a Butterfly (1937), that illustrate Saburo Hasegawa’s role as a pioneer of Japanese abstract art.
Also on view will be Noguchi’s plaster model for his proposed Memorial to the Dead ofHiroshima (1951-52), only shown to the public in recent years, alongside Noguchi works from theYokohama Museum of Art collection.

Isamu NOGUCHI,
Face Dish, 1952,
ceramic, 30.8×27.3×2.9cm,
The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum,
New York/ARS-JASPAR
Photo: Kevin Noble

Saburo HASEGAWA,
Nature, 1953,
two-panel folding screen, ink on paper, each 135.0×66.5cm,
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

Biography
Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988)
Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles as the son ofJapanese poet Noguchi Yonejiro and American writer and teacher Leonie
Gilmour. His earliest years were spent in Japan but he was sent back to
the United States at the age of thirteen. When he set his mind on
becoming a sculptor, he had the opportunity to apprentice with Brancusi.
In 1929, he moved to New York and based his activities there. He madehis living with portrait busts, but at the same time produced abstract
sculpture and did public park planning, stage set design, and otherprojects. He returned to Japan in 1931, after a gap of 13 years, andvisited Kyoto and Nara. During World War II, he voluntarily entered arelocation camp for Japanese Americans. There he planned landscapedesigns for park and other areas inside the campgrounds. He traveled

Isamu NOGUCHI, 1950
Photo: Jun Miki
Photo courtesy of The Isamu Noguchi Foundation
and Garden Museum, New Yorkto Europe and Asia in 1949, in search of connections between art and society in earlier ages, and arrived
in Japan, his final destination, in 1950. Noguchi met Hasegawa Saburo and explored cultural heritage
sites together with him. He began designs for the Hiroshima Peace Bridge railings (completed in 1952)
and for a memorial (unrealized) for atomic bomb victims. Noguchi’s understanding of traditional
Japanese aesthetics was deepened through his dialogue with Hasegawa on subjects such as Zen,Japanese tea ceremony, calligraphy, etc., that greatly influenced his thought and the subsequentdevelopment of his art.

Hasegawa Saburo (1906 – 1957)
Hasegawa Saburo studied oil painting under KoideNarashige when he was a student at Konan High School. He went on tomajor in art history at Tokyo Imperial University and quickly becameversed in both art technique and theory. Studying art in Europe for threeyears, starting from 1929, he made up his mind to devote himself topainting. He started creating abstract oil paintings in 1936 and wasamong the founders of the Association of Free Artists (Jiyu Bijutsuka
Kyokai). He also produced photographic works from the time of thebeginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937) until the end ofSaburo HASEGAWA, ca. 1956
Photo courtesy of KONAN GAKUEN SaburoHasegawa Memorial Gallery

World War II (1945). With increasingly severe suppression of speechand expression, he turned to studies of haiku, Zen, and tea ceremony.
After the war, he resumed his activities as a painter with the Modern

Artists Association of Nippon, founded in 1947. Meeting Isamu Noguchi in 1950 and traveling together
with Noguchi in Kansai region, Hasegawa gained confidence in his long-held premise of a relationshipbetween Abstract Art and traditional Japanese aesthetics. He shifted from oil painting to rubbings and inkpainting. In 1954 he was warmly welcomed in New York, in the midst of a ‘Japan boom’ at the time. After
briefly returning to Japan, he moved to San Francisco where he had an appointment as a professor andsignificantly influenced young artists until he passed away in 1957.

EventChanging and Unchanging Things—Noguchi and Hasegawa in the 1950s: Lectures by Curators
Date:

Sunday, January 13, 2019Time:

13:30-16:00（Doors Open at 13:00）

Speakers:

Matthew Kirsch (Curator, The Noguchi Museum)Mark Dean Johnson (Professor of Art, San Francisco State University)
Naoaki Nakamura (Senior Curator, Yokohama Museum of Art)
*Japanese-English consecutive interpretation available

Venue:Lecture Hall, Yokohama Museum of Art

Capacity:

220 seats (Pre-registration necessary / First-come, first-served basis)

Admission: Free
Booking:Pre-registration
URL: https://f.msgs.jp/webapp/form/17066_kgz_216/index.do*Deadline for pre-registration: January 12, Saturday, 2019, 17:00(The form will be closed
after reaching full capacity.)

Admission
Adults¥1,500 ( 1,300/ 1,400)

University and high school students¥ 900 (700/800)

Junior high school students¥ 600 (400/500)

Children under 12Free

Seniors (65 and older)¥1,400 *ID required. Only available at ticket counter in the museum.

*(/)＝Advance / Group of 20 or more.
*For a group of 20 or more, reservation is required in advance.
*Advance tickets are available until January 11 (Fri.), 2019 at the Museum Shop, through Seven-Eleven ticket or eplus ticket.
*Free admission for high school students and younger with valid IDs on Saturdays.
*Visitors with disability and one person accompanying them are admitted free of charge.
(Please present certificate at the entrance.)*The ticket also gives admission to the Exhibition of the Museum Collection for the same day.

General Information
Title:Changing and Unchanging Things: Noguchi and Hasegawa in Postwar Japan

Dates:

January 12 (Sat.) - March 24 (Sun.), 2019

Open hours:

10:00-18:00*Open until 20:30 on March 2 (Sat.), 2019
*Admission until 30 minutes before closing.

Closed:Thursdays（Except March 21), March 22, 2019

Venue:

Yokohama Museum of Art
3-4-1, Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama 220-0012
TEL: +81(0)45 221 0300

FAX: +81(0)45 221 0317

URL: https://yokohama.art.museum/eng

Organized by:

Yokohama Museum of Art (Yokohama Arts Foundation),
The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York,
Kanagawa Shimbun,Television Kanagawa Inc.

Supported by:

Embassy of the United States of America in Japan

Grant from:

Terra Foundation for American Art

In Special Cooperation with: ALL NIPPON AIRWAYS CO., LTD.
In Cooperation with:

Yokohama FM Broadcasting Co., Ltd., Metropolitan Expressway Co.,
Ltd., NIKON CORPORATION, NIKON IMAGING JAPAN INC.,
Minatomirai Line, Yokohama Cable Vision Inc.

Contact
Mizutani(Mr.), Fujii(Ms.), Isshiki(Ms.), Umezawa(Ms.)
Public Relations, Yokohama Museum of Art
3-4-1, Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama. 220-0012 JAPAN
TEL:+81(0)45 221 0319

FAX:+81(0)45 221 0317

E-mail: pr-yma@yaf.or.jp