Toward the Timeless

Sculptors, by the nature of their bulky craft, are the most tied down of all artists. The exception seems to be Los Angeles-born Isamu Noguchi, 54, who travels at the drop of a toothbrush, is equally at home in New York, Paris and Tokyo, believes in using tools to finish the job and then, if necessary, abandoning them. Last week Noguchi came to rest long enough to put together, at Manhattan's Stable Gallery, his first major exhibition in eleven years--36 pieces ranging from iron forms forged in Japan to towering monoliths in the famous Pentelic marble of Greece. Almost too many influences are detectable in Noguchi's works, ranging from the rock gardens he knew in his boyhood in Japan (his father was a Japanese professor of English literature at Keio University, his mother an American) to his apprenticeship under Rumanian-born Constantin Brancusi. But Noguchi has managed to create a whole range of forms recognizably his own.

Ironically, the reason Noguchi has not shown more often is that he is too busy. Long an architects' favorite, he has been swamped with commissions in recent years, including statues and gardens for Connecticut General's new offices near Hartford, Conn. (TIME color, Sept. 16, 1957) and the highly praised modern Japanese garden for Paris' new UNESCO headquarters. Not all commissions work out as planned. In his present exhibition, Noguchi displays a towering column in

Swedish granite originally designed for Manhattan's Lever House (the budget ran out) and a torchlike form in Greek marble, planned as a 30-ft, focal point for the International Arrivals building at Idlewild Airport (the New York Port Authority turned it down). Often, Noguchi complains, "architects want something that is timely. I want to get back to the real problem of sculpture and do something timeless."

But new projects beckon. The city of Detroit has asked him how to give sculptural shape to 60 million cubic yards of earth excavated in the construction of new underpasses and highway cut-throughs. "Imagine it, a pile of earth two miles long, a hundred yards wide, and five stories tall!" he says, eyes glittering. At the other end of the weight scale, he is also starting new works in aluminum and balsa wood. "Why not?" he asks. "Anything can be sculpture, even air in balloons. The form is the main thing."

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