For Kan Yasuda
Isamu Noguchi Sculptor
There was this enormous sculpture towering into
arctic clear cold air. The sculpture itself was of this
same nature, as though hewn out of ice. I could tell
from even a photograph. Who was this sculptor who
could conceive a piece of such belonging? It was not
the horizon that defined it but a belonging to people,
a mutuality suggested by the form.
My coming to know Yasuda Kan had always this
question in the background. Was he really the man I
thought he must be? Then along came another
monument in the north;
a group of smokestacks
ending on top with birdlike cones that seemed to
guard the bleak land against intruders. Can there be
any doubt about those cones thumbing their noses
every which way a decoy for missiles? What better
protection could an artist offer than laughter?
Art is what counts of course. That which gives the
quality to this humor. I like to think that the motivation
doesn’t matter, so long as it gets the artist going. But
art is a response after all and this must be counted
among its worth.
For art itself to be the motive is
another matter.
To produce a masterpiece must be the biggest mistake.
I myself once thought I had done so with a sculpture I
called Kouros after the archaic Greek. I made mine of
pink marble 3 meters high. It was shown at the
Museum of Modern Art in 1946. At that time I had
lunch with a wise man who said,”You must know you
cannot make anything more than you are”. He said,
“Never make art that pleases you”. I knew he meant
my Kouros. “Only make what you dislike, but cannot
help but do”. I was at a loss to know where my
aspiration as an artist might turn. Who was I to not
aspire, nor ever become?
Yasuda was fortunate in being able to bypass art and
produce so fine a work, although he will no doubt
insist this was his sole intention. Again I would say he
is fortunate in knowing when to insist on the process
of art to protect his integrity.
When I was last in Italy at Giorgio Angeli’s workshop
in Querceta where both Kan and I work, I saw a
recent sculpture of his which I thought came from a
similar area of search which transcends art. I felt that
perhaps he did not know what to make of it. Is there
such a thing as better? I never asked but I wonder
whether he really liked it to fulfill Ducham’s dictum.
Yasuda’s work like that of many artists runs on two
tracks. One may be named art’s art and the other,
the other. My remarks are directed to the other.
Art’s art is the artist’s difficult conscience. It is his
past development to which he owes all that he has
become. It reveals his inner self, or so he thinks. But
that of course is his most serious problem. How to
develop in depth betrayals true message. It is the
artist’s obligation to change into his ever widening
perception. Kan has expressed it with his forked
squares where he denies himself and all his skills.
I know intimately of what I write.
Isamu Noguchi
Sculptor

TENSEI, TENMOKU Garachico, Tenerife, Spain