What Noguchi Bought
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Everything essential about a work of art can be gleaned from the work itself. Rarely, if ever, will a glimpse into the private life of an artist get us to his work more directly than if we had spent our energies focused solely on the works themselves. Peripheral or biographical information is as likely to cloud or narrow our vision as to open it. Even dates and titles can be a distraction – an imposition.
“A work of art must carry within itself its complete significance,” Matisse wrote, “and impose that upon the beholder even before he recognizes the subject matter. When I see the Giotto frescoes at Padua,” Matisse continued, “I do not trouble myself to recognize which scene of the life of Christ I have before me, but I immediately understand the feeling that emerges from it, for it is in the lines, the composition, the color. The title will only serve to confirm my impression.”
I could not agree more. Occasionally, however, it is helpful to be offered a little hand-holding; to be nudged in the right direction, especially when the nudging is visual rather than verbal. “Noguchi’s Collectibles,” a new, small gathering of 29 objects at the Noguchi Museum (many of them never before exhibited) does just that. Tucked away in a corner at the center of the second floor galleries, the exhibit is a kind of touchstone that links Noguchi’s own art to the objects, artwork, and design that he collected, enjoyed, and used for inspiration.
The galleries at the Noguchi Museum recently have been reinstalled almost entirely to the artist’s original specifications, so there is no better time than now to see the permanent collection the way it was intended. And “Noguchi’s Collectibles” actually recreates (in abbreviated fashion) the office where the artist worked from 1975 until his death in 1988.
The installation, curated by Bonnie Rychlak, Noguchi Museum curator and director of collections, brings together almost all of the objects with which Noguchi habitually surrounded himself. According to Ms. Rychlak, the only significant items missing from the exhibition are a low wooden bookcase, a desk, and a typewriter resting on a block of wood (seemingly treated like sculpture) that his secretary had to straddle to type anything.
The show fills a single small gallery and includes lamps, furniture, and sculpture by the artist. It is intimate and eclectic and is set up more like a living room or a bedroom than a gallery or an office. Everything in it, though modest and unassuming, is first-rate. A black and white striped Indian rug, roughly 6 feet wide by 12 feet long, is at the center of the gallery. The rug is surrounded by three dressers (two of which are Japanese and probably from the 19th century, one of which was designed by Noguchi), a reclining woodchair (probably from Mali), a carved wooden chair and tubs from Africa, a Balinese wooden mask with teeth and leaf-like eyes, and Japanese ceramic vessels and cast-iron pots.
Because the show is tightly packed (11 pieces are staggered close together on a low wooden table), it is easy to overlook them or to see them as merely decorative. In fact, each object, beyond its individual worth, offers a unique entrance into Noguchi’s art. Indeed, some of the objects are so close to Noguchi’s own art in color, texture, and temperament that they look as if they had been made by Noguchi himself.
All the vessels (one is pre-dynastic Egyptian basalt) feel familial with regard to the other works in the museum. Everything speaks to everything else. The two wooden African chairs look as if they had been carved by the artist, or reconfigured from parts of his interlocking pieces. The small, Japanese earthenware “Haniwa Figurine” (sixth century) – a frontal tubular figure made of simple shapes, and with a long curving arm that penetrates its own stomach – feels strangely as if it were the offspring of two of Noguchi’s own sculptures.
Indeed, some of the pieces actually were altered by Noguchi. Included in the show are a polished black marble ball, resting in a doughnut-shaped woven straw nest, and two African carved wooden tubs that sit on the floor. One of the tubs has a gray Tantra fertility egg resting in its center. The other contains a spare, oval, unglazed ceramic face, and was actually transformed into Noguchi’s “Face Dish (Me)” (1952).The face’s features – simple indentations, slits, or bulges – were obviously inspired by the bowl’s large cracks and the subsequent repairs made with a leather strap and nails.
The objects in “Noguchi’s Collectibles,” most of them undated, have the effect of washing away time and cultural boundaries. The artworks, like Noguchi’s sculptures, have more in common with one another than they lack. They point to the primeval, universal connections between nature and art, and between the art of pre-dynastic Egypt, 20th-century America, and 19th-century Japan.
The show connects things and artistic impulses at their roots. It makes us aware that we see ourselves in wood, dunes, clouds, rock, and foliage. It reminds us that glazes and wood are like skin; that vases, trees, sculpture, and furniture are all figural; that ceramic handles and metal drawer pulls at their best feel as natural as facial features. Like Noguchi’s art, the exhibition gets at essentials – at the primitive and elemental. It reminds us that we are probably as surprised and enchanted today by a face in a bowl as we were the first time we saw our own startling reflections in a pool of water.
Until September 10 (32-37 Vernon Boulevard, at 33rd Road, Long Island City, Queens, 718-204-7088).