Paper

In addition to creating drawings on different kinds of paper, Isamu Noguchi used paper as a sculptural material in two ways. First, beginning with the stage sets that he designed for dancer Martha Graham, he made models out of paper and cardboard to test his ideas on a small scale. Noguchi used such maquettes to create the biomorphic sculptures of interlocking forms that he made from sheets of slate and marble during the 1940s, and to devise sculptures fabricated from folded metal in the late Fifties. But Noguchi most fully employed the sculptural qualities of paper itself in the mulberry bark paper lamps that he called Akari, creating light sculptures that he viewed as different works when illuminated and when seen in reflected light.

Essay on the history of Akari  |  Essay on Noguchi's early drawings  |  Noguchi on Akari  |  Noguchi  on folded aluminum sculptures  | Noguchi on interlocking sculptures