Using a cohesive formal vocabulary of organic shapes derived from nature, Isamu Noguchi produced traditional sculpture, set and costume designs, public playgrounds, parks, monuments, and functional objects such as lamps and tables. He often drew on the aesthetic traditions of Japan, where he spent much of his childhood. His work is also marked by a deep sensitivity to materials, a consistent interest in the human figure, and a desire to merge the functional with the sculptural.

These three concerns converge in the works on view here. The balsa-wood elements of Cronos (1947) suggest human limbs, genitals, and bones; the whole has the look of a standing figure. Similar shapes appear in his 1950 set design for the Martha Graham Dance Company's production Judith, whose principal set piece was a tentlike framework of balsa wood that resembled a snarling beast formed of phallic, spearlike poles.

Interested in weight and the appearance of weightlessness, Noguchi often cast his wooden sculptures in bronze. Among those transformed by this change in materials was Judith; a 1978 bronze cast of the balsa original is installed in the Garden. His Akari lamps, inspired by traditional Japanese paper lanterns, were intended to embody pure light and weightlessness; many of them look like spindly, floating figures filled with light.
 
 

Theater set piece from Judith 1978
bronze; cast from 1950 wood version

(purchased with the aid of funds from the Art Center Acquisition Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts 78.6)