The Thirties (1931-1941)

Isamu Noguchi came to artistic maturity in the 1930s, his work guided by the social consciousness of that decade. Although Noguchi made his living during this period by sculpting portraits of the wealthy, his developing conception of sculpture focused on art for a broader public. In 1933 he treated the earth itself as a sculptural object with his first playground proposal, Play Mountain, which was rejected by New York Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, and later in the decade he unsuccessfully presented to the City designs for play equipment and an undulating Contoured Playground. In 1933 Noguchi also conceived the first of his many monument proposals, a mile-wide pyramid at the geographical center of the United States as a Monument to the Plough, and the tall Monument to Ben Franklin for Philadelphia. Noguchi's first dance set for Martha Graham, Frontier, was designed in 1935, and this would lead him to much work on the stage in future years. All of these projects were attempts to make sculpture useful in daily life, an impulse also expressed in the furniture designs that Noguchi began to create in the Thirties. But his most explicitly political public project was the 72-foot long carved relief, History Mexico created during a seven-month stay in Mexico City in 1936. The 1939 New York World's Fair provided artists with an opportunity to submit proposals for public sculpture, but the only one of Noguchi's three designs to be accepted was his Chassis Fountain for the Ford Motor Company pavilion. Noguchi also entered the competition for a sculptural relief above the entry of the Associated Press Building at Rockefeller Center, and his winning proposal, News, would be the largest stainless steel casting to date when it was completed in 1939. In 1941 Noguchi left New York and drove across the country with some friends, including painter Arshile Gorky, and he was in California on December 7 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Noguchi on Play Mountain  |  Noguchi on History Mexico  |  Chronology