Title: Isamu Noguchi's modernism : negotiating race, labor, and nation, 1930-1950 /
Authors: Lyford, Amy, 1963-
Year: 2013
Subjects: Noguchi, Isamu, Criticism and interpretation.; ART / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945); Modernism (Art) United States.; Art and society United States History
Abstract: "In a study that combines archival research, a firm grounding in the historical context, biographical analysis, and sustained attention to specific works of art, Amy Lyford provides an account of Isamu Noguchi's work between 1930 and 1950 and situates him among other artists who found it necessary to negotiate the issues of race and national identity. In particular, Lyford explores Noguchi's sense of his art as a form of social activism and a means of struggling against stereotypes of race, ethnicity, and national identity. Ultimately, the aesthetics and rhetoric of American modernism in this period both energized Noguchi's artistic production and constrained his public reputation"--
Contents: Labor. Earthworks, the Depression Economy, and Monument to the Plow -- Modernism, Public Art, and Sculpture as Social Practice in the 1930s -- Reinventing Labor in New York -- Race. Negotiating Japanese American Confinement -- Reimagining Humanity in the 1940s -- Noguchi, Asian America, and Artistic Identity in Postwar New York -- Postscript: Beginnings and Ends at the Venice Biennale -- Appendix A. Noguchi's "A Plan for Government Sponsored Farm and Craft Settlement for People of Japanese Parentage" -- Appendix B. Noguchi's "I Become a Nisei."