Design : Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi

by White, Garrett

• ISBN13: 9780979472701
• ISBN10: 0979472709
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-02-12
• Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Dist

Summary

"Let the East learn from Western civilization. Let the West learn from the Eastern culture. In the world of freedom, we naturally create a relationship to each other."-Isamu Noguchi, in an address to the staff at the Industrial Arts Research Institute in Tokyo Isamu Kenmochi (1912a??1971) was one of the pioneers of industrial design in Japan. Postwar Japanese artists struggled to create their own original industrial products. Kenmochi sought to establish Japanese modern design while reinventing traditional techniques and materials. Like many Japanese artists of his generation, Kenmochi was inspired by Isamu Noguchi (1904a??1988), a pivotal figure in twentieth-century sculpture and design. Through Noguchi's influence and subsequent introductions to creative masters such as Alexander Girard, Walter Gropius, George Nelson, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Kenmochi traveled abroad and collected furniture, household products, and thousands of color slides documenting American and European design, which he brought back to Japan to share with contemporaries in the field. Noguchi and Kenmochi first met at the architect Kenzo Tange's office at Tokyo University on June 24, 1950. In August of that year, Noguchi spent two weeks teaching with Kenmochi at the Industrial Arts Research Institute in Tokyo. Basing his approach on Japanese design traditions, Noguchi persuaded the artists at the institute to look beyond the mere exotic. The ideology they developed came to be known as Japanese Modern, or Japonica Design.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 5
Preface	p. 9
Searching for the New and Authentic: Shaping the Design Production of Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi	p. 21
Isamu Kenmochi and Isamu Noguchi: The Meeting and Its Meaning	p. 63
Toward (Re)Defining Akari and a Chronology of Akari	p. 83
Isamu Kenmochi and Japanese Modern Design	p. 111
Articles from Industrial Art News, Vol. 18, No. 10, October 1950	p. 127
Japanese Modern and Japonica Style: Two Roads to Put Japanese Industrial Arts on Foreign Export: From Industrial Art News, Vol. 22, No. 9, September 1954	p. 139
World Events and Isamu Noguchi - Isamu Kenmochi Timeline	p. 145
Acknowledgments	p. 176
Index	p. 181
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