booknotes
Isamu Noguchi: Space of Akari and Stone, Isamu Noguchi,
et al, 1986
... beautifully photographed, stunningly illustrated
This book is a beautiful treasure itself with full-sized gorgeous
photos elegantly recording his 1985 exhibit "Space of AKARI
& Stone".
Isamu Noguchi (Modern Masters) by Bruce Altshuler, 1995
accessible, significant, colorful, inexpensive
Easily the most accessible guide to Noguchi's works of a lifetime.
This edition is distinguished by large illustrations, many in color,
presented in an inexpensive paperback. It is perhaps the best primer
for recognizing the significance of the wide ranging yet simple
aesthetic gifts to the rest of us from this complex soul.
Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum by Isamu Noguchi, 1987
one of America's great artists ... in his own words
This is a very special volume. Noguchi is one of the greatest American
artists ever. Here you have his seminal collection selected by him,
illustrated, ... and perhaps most importantly ... presented in his
own words. The full tale of Noguchi's profound American duality
is best revealed and amplified in additional volumes. Here is an
extraordinary view of the essence.
Noguchi East and West by Dore Ashton, 1992
early Indiana schooling, profoundly American duality
This volume is one of the more comprehensive reviews of Noguchi's
life and work. Having met with Noguchi a couple of times at the
premises of the future Museum, I regret not having then the insight
now made accessible by our new digital lifestyle resources. His
cross-cultural, multi-media artistry reflects Midwestern adolescence
with Pacific overtures.
Ashton
writes "Noguchi's biography is rich in hints of the sources
of his formative years, and while no single source can be isolated,
some are more suggestive than others. Dr. Rumely, the progressive
educator who founded the Interlaken School in Indiana where Noguchi
began his American education, had placed Noguchi in the home of
... a Swedenborgian minister. The boy was thrust into a situation
in which the thoughts that had helped shape the modern movement
-- through such figures as Blake, Emerson, Poe, and Baudelaire --
were sacred. ...the notion of a universal rhyming scheme had attracted
nineteenth-century artists who wished to see some kind of elemental
unity in the universe; who relished the endless possibilities of
analogy."
Combining influences of the industrializing modernity of small cities
and towns of the Midwest at this time, and seemingly inspired both
by ancient Japanese "tumuli" and the Native American Mound
Builders, his mnemonic response to the sights of such landscapes
"got me going". With this amplified illumination into
Noguchi's background and more familiarity with his abiding interests
in "earth sculpturing", perhaps new educational paradigms
should be considered in our thinking of art, architecture and American
historic preservation.
misc. notes
--
early Indiana schooling
"Isamu Noguchi (pronounced "Sämoo Nogooch")
was a world-famous sculptor, light designer, landscape architect
and furniture designer. His seminal years of aesthetic development
and exploration were spent from 13 to 18 in a foster home in LaPorte,
Ind., where he called himself Sam Gilmour, had a paper route and
aspired to be a doctor. A new biography, "The Life of Isamu
Noguchi: Journey Without Borders" is the
first to fully cover Noguchi's Hoosier years with pictures and
information from the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904, lived briefly in Japan
and Indiana, rose to prominence in New York in the 1930s and 1940s
and died in New York City in 1988." (Diane Heilenman, Dec
19 2004, The Louisville Courier-Journal)
THE LIFE OF ISAMU NOGUCHI: JOURNEY
WITHOUT BORDERS by Masayo Duus, 2004
"In 1906, Isamu and his mother
went to Japan, where the child received instruction in the Japanese arts.
At ten, he was apprenticed to a carpenter and learned to use traditional carving
tools. When he was thirteen, his mother sent him to Interlaken, a boarding
school in Indiana with a curriculum born of the arts and crafts movement,
using Japanese culture as a model. Here he became known as Sam
(short for Isamu) Gilmour. He went on to premedical school at Columbia
University, studying art at night at the Leonardo da Vinci Art
School."
STONES AND PAPER: THE WORK OF ISAMU NOGUCHI, by Gill,
Michael, HUMANITIES, 00187526, May/Jun97, Vol. 18, Issue 3
"Noguchi's ability to bridge the two disparate cultures of
East and West (and to meld the artistry of both) was unique for
its time. But considering his unusual upbringing and family background,
that ability becomes understandable, even predictable. His father
was a Japanese poet, Yonejiro Noguchi, and his mother, Leonie Gilmour,
an American writer and teacher of English literature. Such marriages
were exceptionally rare at that time. The couple separated soon
after Noguchi's birth; Ms. Gilmour chose to live in Japan, another
unusual choice for the times. There the boy resided with his mother
and his half-sister until he was thirteen. His earliest impressions,
therefore, were clearly Japan-oriented. His first creative work
as a young child was a ceramic piece he described as "in the
form of a sea wave with blue glaze." He never forgot that
piece in all the years thereafter.
Noguchi attended Japanese schools but was apprenticed early on
to a cabinetmaker. There he learned woodworking and the love
of tools for their own sake. One can only imagine the dramatic
change in the young teenager's environment when his family moved
back to the United States in 1917 and took up residence in Indiana.
No doubt, Japanese students must have been quite unusual there.
But he adapted and went on to Columbia University to prepare
for medical studies. However, his mother, apparently anxious
to nurture his creative qualities, enrolled him in a sculpture
class. After only three months, his teacher sponsored Noguchi's
first sculpture exhibition; soon he was elected to the exclusive
National Sculpture Society."
Bridging Two Cultures , By: Stern, Fred, WORLD & I,
Mar 2004, Vol. 19, Issue 3
"When Isamu was 13, Leonie, who had already informally apprenticed
the child to a Japanese carpenter, sent the slight, apprehensive
boy to the experimental Interlaken School in Rolling Prairie, Indiana.
Think of him there, thrust into an entirely new world, coming from
an old one of which he was never really a part, a child of a father
who deserted him and of a mother who sent him away.
It was 1918. America had entered the war, and Interlaken was turned
into an Army training camp. The school's founder, Edward Rumely,
took a fatherly interest in the boy and found a home for him with
Samuel Mack, a Swedenborgian minister in La Porte, Indiana, while
Noguchi attended the local high school, graduating in 1922.
Rumely then arranged for Noguchi to spend the summer in Connecticut
tutoring the son of the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, later to become
renowned for the monumental heads of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln
and Theodore Roosevelt he carved into the rock face of Mount Rushmore
in South Dakota. The artist had agreed to give Noguchi some training
in sculpture in exchange for the tutoring. But before the summer
was over, Borglum, in one of art history's more stunning assessments,
told Noguchi he would never be a sculptor.
Meanwhile, Rumely, ever on the lookout for the boy's future, had
raised funds to send him to Columbia University. Noguchi enrolled
in 1922 to study medicine. But, as he described it, I was rescued
from a premedical course at Columbia University by Onorio Ruotolo,
director of the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, which had been established
in an abandoned church on Tompkins Square in New York City. My first
show, of terra-cottas, was held there three months later."
An Oasis of Art , By: Schiff, Bennett, SMITHSONIAN, 00377333,
Jan2001, Vol. 31, Issue 10
"There at the Interlacken
School, Isamu came to meet his guardian-figure, Dr. Edward Rumely,
who made arrangements for Isamu to stay with the family of Dr. Samuel
Mack at La Porte, Indiana, from where he attended the local high
school. This change of scenery from Japan to the American Midwest
had the effect on Isamu's psyche that the American appreciation
of nature for its vastness, sweep, and panoramic openness got
superimposed on the old Japanese appreciation of nature, which in
its detailed awareness of an insect, a leaf, a flower was something
very close, a foot away."
The Rabbit's Soliloquy by Michiko Yusa, Western Washington
University, 2003, http://www.wwu.edu/japanweek/noguchi.html
On the basis of a SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article, " The Daniel
Boone Idea in Education," she dispatched her thirteen-year-old
son to the Interlaken School in Rolling Prairie, Indiana. ... Interlaken.'s
founder Dr. Edward Rumely ... placed him in a home of a Swedenborgian
minister ... . Known as Sam Gilmour in the LaPorte High School class
of 1922, he had become a Hoosier.
ISAMU NOGUCHI, Bruce Altshuler, 1994
"Noguchi's biography is rich in hints of the sources of his formative
years, and while no single source can be isolated, some are more
suggestive than others. Dr. Rumely, the progressive educator who
founded the Interlaken School in Indiana where Noguchi began his
American education, had placed Noguchi in the home of Dr. Samuel
Mack, a Swedenborgian minister. The boy was thrust into a situation
in which the thoughts that had helped shape the modern movement
-- through such figures as Blake, Emerson, Poe, and Baudelaire
-- were sacred. ...the notion of a universal rhyming scheme had
attracted nineteenth-century artists who wished to see some kind
of elemental unity in the universe; who relished the endless possibilities
of analogy."
NOGUCHI EAST and WEST, Dore Ashton, 1992
further thoughts
Noguchi's
Indiana; Visions from the Heartland
The HUGE realization that famed
sculptor Isamu Noguchi spent his formative school years in Indiana
prompts us to consider the wisdom of preparing a timely series of
monographs on the personal Heartland experiences and perspectives
of Noguchi, Robert Indiana, and Michael Graves that may have framed
important contributions to recent American culture.
Not much attention has focused on the previously unpublicized "back
story" of Noguchi's Indiana when thirteen year old Isamu was
sent from Japan in 1918 to attend the Interlaken School of progressive
educator Dr. Edward Rumely near LaPorte, Indiana, and his subsequent
four years until Dr. Rumely arranges further apprenticeships in
1922 for him in Connecticut and New York.
Noguchi materials at Lilly Library, Indiana University
The archival materials on Isamu Noguchi available at the Lilly Library
can begin to frame a fascinating chapter on Arts in Indiana. The
world-renowned American sculptor Noguchi (aka Sam Gilmour of LaPorte
High School) is seemingly an incarnation of Appalachian Springs
melding with Pacific Overtures
The archive includes a revealing and warm description by Edward
Rumely in a printed article (1925?) on how a 13 year-old child traveled
the ocean and across the land and appeared alone at the Interlaken
School with satchel in hand.
Images include a half dozen informal snapshots with his teenage
companions of LaPorte, including Julian Mack and Isabel Rumely.
There are also images of such typical local Hoosier landscapes as
Rolling Prairie, Interlaken, Duneland Beach, and La Porte. Presenting
these materials is an important step in visualizing the culture
enveloping Noguchi in his teen age years, especially when we remember
the resonating proximity of the indigenous Indiana stone industry,
Ohio River Valley clay industries, geode deposits, abundance of
local timber resources, and the occasionally lustrous terra cotta
artistry of building facades of many Midwestern buildings of the
1910s and'20s. Perhaps these little known but fascinating early
connections prefigure the significant threads of his later artistic
life.
Within months after leaving LaPorte and matriculating in NYC --
and long before experiencing the extensive world travels that broaden
his sensibilities, such as the startling shadow puppetry shows of
Bali -- the very young Noguchi began achieving national artistic
recognition. Based on glimpses of the standard fixtures (and the
year) in the candid photos (including a personal Xmas photo greeting
(1923-26?) to the Rumelys of the classically famous life-size nude
sculpture "Undine", from Noguchi and the sculpturing in
his work-living space at 124 (127?) University Place, this location
is probably a typical old-law NYC tenement flat used by him for
living and working, and not a conventional Studio as generally reported.
These legacies of Hoosier life examples might inspire the next school
children generation of future Hoosier artists after Noguchi and
Robert Indiana and Michael Graves. It is suggested that these Photos
along with corresponding narrative could be put to immediate good
use, and be especially accessible to the Indiana school arts education
community, by exhibiting on IU Web pages using Lilly's archival
material in conjunction with IU's SoFA commentary presented in relevant
context.
view of Sculpture Garden,
Noguchi Studio, 1975, Glenn Ralston.
possible
JEOPARDY question?
the world-famed, American sculptor, then known as Sam Gilmour at
his LaPorte, Indiana high school in 1921? ...
Answer:
Who was Isamu Noguchi ...
* *
RUMELY MSS.
http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/rumely.html#xtocid2395352
"The Rumely mss., 1838-1965, are the papers of Edward Aloysius
Rumely, 1882-1964, physician, educator, and public relations man,
and papers relating to his ancestors.
In 1906 he founded the Interlaken School at Rolling Prairie, Indiana.
It was a college preparatory boarding school for boys between the
ages of nine and eighteen. The purpose of the school was "to
train boys in worthy and self- reliant character; to make them Sound
and vigorous of body and soul, practical and skilful in work, able
to think clearly and express themselves cogently; to develop in
them truth, helpfulness, courage of will--in short to train the
sons of the directing classes of our civilization to become fit
leaders of men in this industrial Republic." The methods employed
were similar to those used in European schools. Chalk, blackboards,
and books were not enough. Children needed the training of their
muscles as well as of their minds and they needed the training of
their minds through their muscles.
Rumely was also connected with the family agricultural implement
business. He developed the Rumely Oil Pull Farm Tractor and assisted
in raising the company sales considerably by 1913. At the age of
thirty-two, he resigned as an officer of the firm and moved to New
York City where he lived until his retirement in 1959.
In 1915, Rumely became editor-in-chief and publisher of the New
York Evening Mail. Since he was a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt,
he permitted him to use the newspaper as his mouthpiece. Two other
outstanding critics wrote articles for Rumely's paper, Samuel Sidney
McClure, 1857-1949, from 1915 to 1918, and Henry Louis Mencken,
1880-1956, from 1917 to 1918. From 1923 to 1928 he was involved
in the introduction of vitamins to the retail market. In 1925, he
organized the Super Diesel Company, and from 1926 to 1930 he assisted
farmers in obtaining loans through the Agricultural Bond and Credit
Company. From 1932 to 1959 Rumely's interest centered around national
political questions. During the New Deal he served as executive
secretary to both the Committee for the Nation and the National
Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government. Early in 1941 he
helped establish the Committee for Constitutional Government. After
returning to LaPorte in 1959, he devoted his time and energy disseminating
information on cancer.
The papers consist of correspondence with prominent people both
in Europe and the United States; an autobiography; documents dealing
with his arrest for perjury in July, 1918, and the pardon by President
Calvin Coolidge on January 19, 1925; material on his many fields
of interest; pictures, and printed matter.
The first box in the collection contains biographical information.
The collection has not been cataloged.
See also "The Autobiography of Dr. Edward A. Rumely" edited
by Philip Morehouse McGarr, Indiana Magazine of History,
LXVI, March, 1970, pp. 1-39; September, 1970, pp. 197-237; and LXVII,
March, 1971, pp. 1-44.
Collection size: 95,355 items
For more information about this collection and any related materials
contact the Manuscripts Department, Lilly Library, Indiana
University, Bloomington, IN 47405 -- Telephone: (812) 855-2452."
Isamu Noguchi
Museum
"Adolescence in Indiana
1918-1922"
http://www.noguchi.org
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