The Most Modern Modernist
There is a really big chance you know this great designer and artist without ever having heard of his name.
Because Isamu Nogushi´s version of lamp shades made of paper became a popular alternative to classic ceiling lighting during the early Seventies of the last century. Later copied by dicount suppliers even though they were never really expensive in the first place. Actually, the possibility to finally do design for the mass market was a strong force behind Nogushi´s sense of creation.
Isamu Nogushi will always be my favorite universal artist - as I love his sculptures as much as I adore his landsacping or his staging of modern dance performances. And then there was also the activist Nogushi, born to an American mother and a Japanese father, quite an explosive coupling during the first half of the last century. When during World War II the US and Japan became bitter enemies and a national hate campaign changed the lives of Asian immigrants all over America.
And even if you do not know that much about Nogushi you might have passed one piece of his art quite often, a relief he did to express the importance of a free press outside Rockefeller Center in New York.
But there is so much more to discover. Like, there is still no coffee table more elegant and functional than the one Nogushi designed. Fitting into almost every interior style. A best seller until today.
There are sculptures that look as modern today as they did almost a century earlier. And more beautiful lamps that enlighten your own living room or office like a private scultpture garden.
Go check out the exhibition at Barbican Center in London, it runs until January. Or go visit "The Isamu Noguchi Foundation
and Garden Museum" in Long Island City, New York. The garden alone is worth an afternoon of contemplation.
