NEW YORK.- The Japan Society presents “Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics,” on view through January 11, 2004. Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics is a landmark traveling exhibition which premiered at and was organized by the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, and is the first major museum presentation of Noguchi’s ceramics in the U.S.

Internationally recognized as an influential force in the history of modern sculpture and design, Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) is best known for his stone and metal sculpture, furniture design, Akari paper lamps, public gardens and outdoor installations. However, during three short visits to Japan in 1931, 1950, and 1952, the artist produced a radical and original body of ceramic sculpture that established an important new direction for Japanese ceramics and dramatically transformed the landscape of international modernism. Noguchi’s visits to Japan proved to be especially intense and creative periods, when he exchanged new and innovative ideas with some of Japan’s most prominent postwar ceramic artists, exploring issues of personal and national identity and ways in which the ceramic traditions of the past could inform and inspire contemporary work.

This exhibition brings together 37 examples of Noguchi’s ceramic art and 36 pieces by nine of his Japanese peers, who worked in both traditional and avant-garde styles. Among the works by Noguchi—few of which have been exhibited in the United States since 1954—are two early portrait busts, as well as representational and abstract sculpture and functional vessels. An examination of Noguchi’s work in clay in the context of postwar developments in Japanese ceramics establishes this exhibition as one of the most important surveys of postwar Japanese ceramic art.

Curated by Louise A. Cort, Curator of Ceramics, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Exhibition catalogue Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth by Bert Winther-Tamaki and Louise Cort with contributions by Ryu Niimi and Bruce Altschuler.