The NYT reports.
Noguchi is a highly respected sculptor — one of the greats, recognized for many decades. It's weird to see him talked about as if he's mostly a representative of a mass — "Asian-American artists" (with their "contributions... to the landscape").
Anyway, I've been critical of so many public sculptures lately, so it's satisfying to see something completely aesthetically pleasing. And I like how utterly low-to-the-ground and solidly stable it is. It would be hard to topple... not that I think the statue topplers will ever get into the Rose Garden.
The NYT focuses not on the aesthetics of sculpture, "Floor Frame," but Noguchi's time in an internment camp in World War II. We are reminded of what Trump said (in 2015) when he was asked about the U.S. government's internment policy: “I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer.”
Interestingly, Noguchi himself was not subject to the order that put Japanese-Americans into camps. He didn't live on the west coast, but in New York. He chose to spend time in one camp because he wanted to work on the design: "Instead of a place defined by its barbed wire enclosures, he envisioned a school, community center, botanical garden and even a miniature golf course in one blueprint." That never happened, but imagine detention camps where you'd want to live.
Here's a picture of "Floor Frame" at the Noguchi website. The artist is quoted:
Thinking of the floor, I made Floor Frame. I made many other pieces in relation to floor space at that time, but this seemed to best define the essentiality of floor, not as sculpture alone but as part of the concept of floor.
So... it's all about the floor, but they are putting it in the garden. Ms. Trump's statement informs us that the sculpture represents a tree and its roots! And the NYT attributes that meaning to Noguchi. Such lazy and easily refuted propaganda. I could just as well say that the relocation of the floor sculpture to the garden symbolizes the relocation of Japanese-Americans in WWII.
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We are reminded of what Trump said (in 2015) when he was asked about the U.S. governments [sic] internment policy: “I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer.”
Great answer. It's called historical imagination.
Modern morality is whatever gives you an edge with your audience.
How can the corrupt left tear it down?
If Biden's controllers manages to steal the 2020 presidential election, the statue toppled a will be in the Rose Garden on January 21, 2021.
Reality waits for nobody, Althouse.
Also could say: The Floor is the Base, soon to be firmly planted at the White House.
It's weird to see him talked about as if he's mostly a representative of a mass — "Asian-American artists"
Noguchi was half Caucasian, and the word itself is almost half Asian. Small world!
... not that I think the statue topplers will ever get into the Rose Garden.
Isn't the "Vice-President-elect" a statue toppler. At least, she was actively raising bail for statue topplers.
It looks like ass up, face down. Rename it Kamala.
I hope they install it right in the middle of the walking path. Interact with the art by tripping over it.
It's weird to see him talked about as if he's mostly a representative of a mass — "Asian-American artists"
Isn't that what we're doing now?
I wikipedia'd to see if he was related to the famed LA coroner, which he is not.
Noguchi born in LA in 1904 was the son of a Japanese poet father and his American editor. Very modern artist multi national multi partnered parents produced a very successful mid century modern multi medium artist. They still manufacture his furniture. Bravo, Melania.
Noguchi wasn't just "Japanese-American," but also "American-Japanese." His Japanese father and the Japanese in general gave his American mother quite a hard time, as seen in the Emily Mortimer film, Leonie.
Sorry, typical modernist crap, pointless and banal. 100 years from now our progeny will marvel at what passed for art in our poor benighted times.
This piece is yet another in a large class of deconstructed things, here a frame, that I describe as I-beam art. Take a length of I-beam, or pipe, or ducting, and cut, bend, rejoin it into a shape with a good name. The first of these I ever saw was in the 1980s at UNCC, when a con artist sold the school some nicely welded I-beams painted yellow for $300k. Nice work if you can get it.
This one is indeed more pleasing to the eye than most.
Lumping together all 'Asians' is as stupid as doing the same thing for 'Blacks,' 'Hispanics,' 'Whites,' etc.
White people from California are far different from those of Norway.
This is akin to the Nazi idea that race imbued immutable characteristics...intelligence, physical strength, criminality, etc.
Democrats and progressives are the new Nazi Party. Forever categorizing people and expecting and demanding that they act in a certain way based on their skin color.
Michael Savage has gone off the rails a bit these days, but he is correct when he talks about Borders, Language, and Culture.
Culture is the key.
It would be hard to topple... not that I think the statue topplers will ever get into the Rose Garden.
Not much imagination, Althouse.
To my highly trained eyes that sculpture looks like dog turds squared. It even has the primary turd and the little chaser turd.
My compliments to those that have passed this off as art.
Turd art. A gift for Biden. Perfect.
I am thrilled to wake up and see this choice by our incomparable mrs. trump.
Mr. Noguchi is some kind of project in my heart: over the years, i'd trek to absorb whatever works of his were available, and was always rewarded.
Luckily, we lived in SoCal, and he landed 3 chunks of stone on a knoll in the little tokyo part of LA. To approach and interact there is Fantastic, monumental, affirming, true church, no matter the level of wandering shoppers.
Another "cathedral" of his that is also free to experience is in Orange County, a high-rise office center had the clarity to get Mr. Noguchi to design an entire Public Square to anchor itself. Spare and primal, a meditation on Raw material and Perfect precision. My daughter and her friends were patient with me stopping in on treks to the beach.
And of course, he did those delicious home items like his classic glass table and his simplest paper lamps. Always More by being so Less.
I took it hard when I heard he had passed. I had to paint the image that presented itself to me at that point and would not let me go.
So glad his "darshan" will now anchor and grace this national garden.
Artists sometimes modify their explanations over time of what their works mean. Who knows which is correct?
Non-offensive. About the best thing I can think of to say about this part.
3 questions
Who paid for it?
How much did it cost?
If it is non-offensive, is it "art"?
John Henry
the beautiful contributions of Asian-American artists...
A line that would be celebrated by the Times if it were not uttered by a Trump.
Slave ships had floors and door frames.
This sculpture is clearly racist and must be cancelled.
Still harping on the Japanese interment. Incredible! How many people know, that J/A not in the 3 west coast states were NOT interred? Or that Italians and German Americans were also interred. Or that the J/A in Hawaii were not interred?
Or that foreign nationals are almost always interred during WW II and WW I by everyone? Or that this internment came about because FDR's liberal AG refused to go along with declaring Martial law on the west coast? Or that 6,ooo of the 100,000 J/A left the USA after WWII to live in Japan. again, this weird upper class America obsession to show how "Bad whites" were racist in the past. Unlike, marvelous, special, them. Pathetic!
"It's weird to see him talked about as if he's mostly a representative of a mass — "Asian-American artists""
Why is that weird? In prog propaganda, we are all representatives of a mass, and nothing more, subject to mass control of mass society. It's the very logic of progressivism to snuff out individual rights, individual talent, and individual preferences.
Makes me think of those puzzles made of cubes glued into different configurations. There was a unique way to reassemble them into a larger cube. Here are these possible clues to context and arty claims of intention, twisted fragments half-buried in the ground, that we are trying to assemble into an Agreed Meaning.
Pass the popcorn.
I don't care for a floor I can't lie down on.
One of the few powerful men in DC to question the Japanese internments was, wait for it . . . the Hoov. Praise the Hoov!
Narr
I don't say that very often
It even has the primary turd and the little chaser turd.
The poetry of a keen observer.
Re: Japanese internment. FDR was OK with it.
Re: Noguchi--we have a mid-century modern house in western Michigan built by my parents in 1959. One of our proudest acquisitions is a Noguchi light sculpture (Akari 5N), mirroring a light sculpture that my wife's family had in the 50s and 60s. You can buy them from the Noguchi Foundation. If it works with your house, get one today.
Exit through the gift shop. https://shop.noguchi.org/products/akari-5n
Better if MT had the Chamberlin rock moved from UW campus to the Rose Garden.
Even better, have it blasted into gravel, then reassembled at the White House.
Recycling/repurposing is one of the Prog sacraments.
As an aside re internment, not only was FDR OK with it, as Amadeus noted, The Gov of CA at the time was Earl Warren, of Brown v. Board fame. He was fine with it also. It was good to lock away Americans, many 2nd or 3rd generation, and steal their stuff.
Just don't get accused of getting handsy with a girl at a junior high school party several decades ago.
This sculpture isn't a text, and isn't representational. So it's odd to talk about what it "represents," is "intended" to represent, or "means". Purely formal sculpture, which describes this one, is about form, on the off chance that's of interest to anyone. It may evoke different reactions depending on where and how it's placed in a specific setting, and what it triggers in any viewer, but the piece isn't the sum of those responses. No matter how interesting or inventive those individual reactions may be, they are about the viewer more than the piece. It just is.
Even though the work is not a text, taking the piece as it is (a form of textualist criticism in context) is the better guide here than biography or anything else.
"Artists sometimes modify their explanations over time of what their works mean."
Especially when they are inherently meaningless.
CF- I have one of those simple Noguchi paper lamps. Still makes me smile after 20+ years, many moves, and different placements. It is a simple classic. It will always look good...to me. (not sure my wife holds it in the same regard).
The small piece would make a great throwing weapon for antifa. The big piece would make a great window smasher. Art it's not.
The Japanese internment was the act of liberal heroes FDR and Earl Warren. Reactionary monsters like J. Edgar Hoover and Douglas MacArthur actually opposed it.
Tediously trivial. Painfully trivial! He must be the Melanie of sculptors.
Packed your bags Melody and leave the garden alone,you already destroyed all the color in it,,another bone white Christmas debacle...do we really care?
belatedly, to Temujin,
Yes. the lamps. I love his mind & work with monumental stone, but look how exquisitely pragmatic and practical he was, making wondrous purposeful art like tables and lamps.
They were $35 in our hippy bedding store where we bought our master bed futon in the 80s. I dropped back in that store to buy one and learned he had died the week before or so.
I had gone back because I NEEDED exactly those lamps in at least three places up in our first tract house plowed up against 10,000 acres of blonde, bouldered mountain park.(indigenous Cahuilla had 2 words for "hill", Hill with rocks/ Hill without rocks - my hills were With gorgeous Rocks)
Mr. Noguchi would have smiled at the enormous stones and rooms of stones on my SoCal mountain, and would have cried with me at the ones scraped into oblivion on the edges against the tracts. I would have loved to follow his wandering around my hill.
anyway, I didn't know he had passed, and I go into that futon store on Mission Blvd. strip between downtown Riverside and Tyler Mall, and the price on the one lamp left of his is suddenly $135! whoa! It has a tear in the bottom of the shade and had been handled a lot.
this is too long a story...
i haven't even gotten to the point.
I need to finish shopping for thanksgiving! And darn if Isamu isn't wooing me all over again, making me write about this, growing more love in me . . . .
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