Isamu Noguchi

Sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) made works that “speak of both the modern and the ancient in the same breath.” An essay by Dakin Hart traces themes in Noguchi’s sixty-year career—an expansive vision that ranged from landscape art to garden and playground designs, from sculptures featuring planets and outer space to those grappling with the atomic age, and from patented lamps and furniture to modern dance sets and costumes. More than sixty full-color plates highlight the timeless appeal of this thoroughly modern artist.

In eighty-eight striking paintings and sculptures, Crosscurrents captures modernism as it moved from early abstractions by O’Keeffe, to Picasso and Pollock in midcentury, to pop riffs on contemporary culture by Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, and Tom Wesselmann—all illustrating the complexity and energy of a distinctly American modernism.