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Midwestern, American Idealism | |
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"Sam" Gilmour, one of world's greatest sculptors, a Hoosier story ... The sadly neglected tale of a shy 13 year-old boy traveling alone to LaPorte, Indiana for early schooling "as a true American" and known there as "Sam" Gilmour, was later to become widely known as one of the world's greatest sculptors -- Isamu Noguchi (a future Jeopardy question?). A new biography "The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey Without Borders" includes revealing details and childhood snapshots for the first time from the archives of Lilly Library at Indiana University. This biography, only recently published in English, unfolds like a panoramic tapestry of life ... colorful, insightful, personal. It includes his stressful adaptations to cultural duality, personal relationships with notable companions, and his bonding with the idea of "mound builders" of native Americans. After traveling alone across the ocean and the country, he began his new experience by hiking down the remote dirt road for the first time past the farms, fields, and woods to the Interlaken boarding school, feeling overwhelmed by the "vastness, the sweep, the panorama of that open Indiana countryside." Soon, when fateful WW I events abruptly closed the boarding school, he lived alone on the abandoned premises for a month "like Daniel Boone". Finally good fortune had him transferring to LaPorte High School and living with a locally prominent family in town, he graduated four years later in 1922. Typically, he had a newspaper route. Aspiring to be an "all-American boy", the yearbook included his illustrations and classmates elected him "Biggest Bull-Head." And so goes the first 100 pages. Here indeed, his real life biography would seem to be far more appropriate as an inspiring Horatio Alger tale of a fictional young lad's struggle to achieve the American dream. The next 340 pages of this epic follow his footprints through the Sands of Time, continuing what would be even more likely as a Tom Swift allegory called 'Sam's Splendid Adventure' climbing to the peaks of artistic expression in dance theatre, architecture, and sculpture. Along the way, in truth, this "Hoosier" sojourns with many of the greatest artistic spirits this world has ever seen. On a very personal note, I met with Noguchi a couple of times ('70s) in my New York work, and had once played a basketball game ('50s), at his Indiana high school (big deal there, then). Regrettably, I didn't realize at the time that our paths had previously crossed, albeit if only in space-time. Somewhere, sometime, "somewhat" dedicated individuals must necessarily put out a wake-up call to the Arts in Indiana patrons at colleges, museums, and libraries on this wholly unusual and neglected chapter of American cultural history at the turn of the 20th Century, with its demographic changes of nation building immigration, new industrialization, and new urbanism. Fittingly, the Noguchi Foundation has an extensive curriculum guide available. His centennial birthdate is Nov. 17, 2004. *** "The Life of Isamu Noguchi : Journey without Borders" by Masayo Duus, Peter Duus Publisher: Princeton University Press; (August 15, 2004) ISBN: 069112096X *** *** The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Hirshhorn-Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC are commemorating his centennial year with large retrospective exhibits. Noguchi's art is presented in famed museums around the world; several pieces are in Indiana. *** Noguchi CENTENARY: Since it will be "Noguchi's centenary (born Nov. 17, 1904), perhaps the Lilly Library could pull together an exhibition case or two from their Rumely material, or the Indianapolis Museum of Art do something to mark the date (the museum did have a work on long term loan from the Isamu Noguchi Foundation a while ago)". [B.A.] *** ***In LaPorte: "Isamu Noguchi and the airplane," Buckminister Fuller writes "were ... both born in the United States of America in the first decade of the twentieth century." ... the place where the future sculptor spent his early years, curiously enough, was a small town in northern Indiana, ... Indiana by 1918 was a notable center of literary production ... including Lew Wallace, James Whitcomb Riley, George Ade, Booth Tarkington, Edward Eggleston, and Theodore Dreiser. Noguchi told contributor Yoshinobu Hakutani "So I really grew up in the Midwest, though I am a mixture of the extreme differences in heritage. Please don't forget I am a real product of Midwestern America." Through Dr Rumely and Buckminister Fuller "...I saw something totally unknown in the art world--an American phenomenon ..." "the idealism that flourished in the twenties and thirties ... this energy of the American frontier." ... he attended high school and had a paper route, living a typical small-town American life. During these years, he still went by the name of Gilmour, living with a minister's family. "Journal of Modern Literature", Summer 1990, Indiana University Press |
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