The Barbican Art Gallery Blends Art and Design in Noguchi Retrospective

Author: Rachel Martin

Installation view. Image: Rachel Martin

In London, the air is getting colder, the days are getting shorter, and the galleries are filling up as the excitement of Frieze takes the attention of the art world. In the midst of this, exhibitions are eagerly being put on and taken in by audiences eager to step back into pre-pandemic routines.

The Barbican Art Gallery is the first stop of the European touring retrospective of Japanese-American sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi. Stepping into this exhibition is akin to stepping into a high-end furniture store, with calming yellow lights in paper lanterns and marble and granite sculptures dotting the floor. Once we look beyond this, and take Noguchi’s works out of our contemporary understanding of such design, we can begin to truly appreciate and understand this incredible collection.

Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) had a varied and expansive career. For six decades, he explored sculpture, design, architecture, and even performance art and dance. Through video installations at the end of the exhibition, we learn that Noguchi’s life spent between America and Japan, born of a Japanese father and American mother, deeply impacted his work. He speaks of feeling a deeper connection to aspects of Japanese culture than most Japanese people, who may overlook design elements they are used to.

These elements of design led Noguchi to sculpt with natural materials around him – in stone, wood, ceramic, and various other materials. Later in his career, he was fascinated by Japanese gardens. The first floor of the gallery is dedicated to his various sculpture works, leading you through thematic rooms from the beginning of his career studying with famous sculptor Constantin Brancusi to his post-Second World War explorations of fragility and disaster.

Installation view. Image: Rachel Martin

Some sculptures seem so fragile that should you breathe wrong, they would topple over. This is a feeling Noguchi sought to harness, trying to transmit the fear and anxiety of the war. Due to his Japanese heritage, Isamu Noguchi was placed in an internment camp in America; this is explored in one room of the gallery. Also included in the exhibition are some of Noguchi’s more political pieces, including Death (Lynched Figure) from 1934 which addressed the murders of Black people in America. Noguchi had a difficult time harnessing these negative emotions he felt, and many of his works still come off playful and light before one reads about their meanings.

In 1951, Isamu Noguchi visited Hiroshima. The works he created after seeing this devastation also receive their own space in the gallery. He created a proposed monument for the victims of the bomb, a granite arch, but this was rejected as he was an American. The mock up for this work is included in a room which features his Atomic Head sculpture.

All the while, as we circle the upstairs gallery, the downstairs captures our attention with the soft yellow lights of Noguchi’s perhaps most famous works, his Akari light sculptures. Eventually, back on the ground floor, the exhibition guides us through a serpentine path between granite and marble, tables, and space-inspired sculptures. This is where the exhibition has received harsh comments from critics, as it does indeed remind one of walking through furniture shops in Kensington, for example.

At the same time, the wonderful designs of Isamu Noguchi blend art and design so easily. The Akari lights, tall floor lamps or bulbous hanging lamps made of rice paper and bamboo, instantly call to mind the lamps of university apartments and first homes, purchased at Ikea. This now-ubiquitous design instead made me reflect on the importance of art in design and how little I knew about the design process of items I have purchased in the past. This combination of tradition and modernity has brought public art into so many homes.

One aspect of the exhibition which was intriguing and an undercurrent in each space was Noguchi’s interest in play. Sculpture was, for Noguchi, an opportunity to create harmony between humans. He explored this by designing playgrounds in his later career throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and he saw many of these large-scale projects through. The final rooms of the exhibition offer videos on loop of children and adults alike interacting with these pieces.

Critics slammed the exhibition, calling it “gentle” and without “punch” or “emotional or psychic energy”. From one view, in 2021, it feels good to step into an exhibition which does not knock the wind out of you. To step into a space that feels safe and calming, to be guided through the rooms as though following a stream and learning all the while about an artist who has undoubtedly left a large impact on design and culture through today.

You can find more information about the exhibition, including dates for related events, at the following link: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/noguchi

Where: Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS

When: 30 September - 9 January, 2021
Sun-Wed 10am-6pm (last entry 5pm)
Thu-Sat 10am-8pm (last entry 7pm)

See above link for further information about specific dates where the gallery will be closed.

Tickets are available for purchase online and advanced booking is necessary.

Standard tickets are £18
Unwaged, Students, NHS Staff, Over 65s (weekdays): £13
Over 65s (weekend) £18

Art Fund Members: £9
Young Barbican Members: £5 Under 14s: Free