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Lot Essay
A magnificent formation of smooth, interlocking forms, Strange Bird belongs to one of Isamu Noguchi’s most original and powerful sculptural series. Rising on a tripod of bonelike elements, the attenuated planes of the sculpture are slotted together to create an ensemble, each fitting with ease into the rounded contours of the next. One of only two versions of the sculpture to be cast in bronze with a dazzling gold patina, Strange Bird is evocative of a bird poised for flight, the elegant stalks that emerge from the biomorphic body of the work are crested by soft-edged planes, the uppermost suggesting a beak or feathered plume. Throughout his career Noguchi had sought new ways to bring sculpture into a dialogue with the human condition, and in the inauguration of a biomorphic abstract vocabulary influenced by the iconography of Surrealist artists such as Joan Miró and Yves Tanguy he discovered a language that could depict the profound psychological complexity of the wartime experience. The works created between 1944 and 1947, of which Strange Bird is one of the earliest examples, engage in a lyrical sculptural lexicon, which invokes the organic forms of the natural world, establishing Noguchi as one of the foremost figures in American twentieth-century sculpture. Neither bird nor flower, Noguchi’s work is fascinated by the concept of metamorphosis, representing an index of the human potential for mental and spiritual transcendence. Other works from Noguchi’s series of interlocking sculptures are held in major international museum collections, including Humpty Dumpty, 1946 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York); Kouros, 1944-1945 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); and Avatar, 1948 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia).
Faced with a fractured world, Noguchi’s Strange Bird expresses the fragility of the human psyche through its carefully balanced composition of interconnected elements. A response to humanity’s existential anguish in the wake of the Second World War, the sculpture evokes an acute sense of vulnerability but also of deep connection, each two-dimensional plane hooked precisely into the next to create a three-dimensional form, creating a balance of opposing forces. Entitled Strange Bird, the ancillary title of To the Sunflower refers to William Blake’s ode to a sunflower written in 1794: ‘Ah, Sunflower! weary of time / Who countest the steps of the sun / Seeking after that golden sweet clime / Where the traveller’s journey is done’. The title, Noguchi once said, ‘does not refer descriptively to its form but to the spirit of longing, which I hope it expresses, of Blake’s famous poem’ (I. Noguchi, quoted in D. Ashton, Noguchi: East and West, California 1992, p. 89). Reaching upwards, the flat plane that crowns the extended form evokes the sunflower’s path, twisting around to catch the last glimmering rays of the sun. With its two juxtaposed titles, Noguchi’s sculpture is caught between the promise of bird-like flight, and the rootedness of the flower. Anchored by its tripartite stand the sculpture stretches hopefully towards the light, poised on the brink of escape. In this way, Strange Bird is a response to the frustration of the human experience. Noguchi explained, ‘A purely cold abstraction doesn’t interest me too much. Art has to have some kind of human touching … quality. It has to recall something which moves a person – a recollection, a recognition of his loneliness or tragedy or whatever … things that happen at night, somber things’ (I. Noguchi, quoted in V.J. Fletcher, Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2004, p. 86).
In 1927, at the age of twenty-two, Noguchi travelled to Paris where, within days, he became Constantin Brancusi’s studio assistant. Enraptured by Brancusi’s purification of form, Noguchi learned from his mentor a great respect for his materials and a devotion to the distillation of the essence of nature into art. But after two years under Brancusi’s tutelage Noguchi began to deviate from his methods. He recalled, ‘Pure abstractions, or at least those geometrically derived, left me cold, and I was always being torn between Brancusi’s admonition and my desire to make something more meaningful to myself. This is not to say that I thought of deriving anything from the figure. But I craved a certain morphologic quality. I developed a deep interest at the time in cellular structure and collected books on paleontology, botany, and zoology’ (I. Noguchi, quoted in S. Hunter, Isamu Noguchi, London 1979, p. 38). Strange Bird, cast in polished bronze with a gleaming gold patina, is a reflection of Brancusi’s enduring influence over Noguchi. Conceived first in green slate, Noguchi reawakened his sculpture in robust bronze as a tribute to the abiding resilience of human existence. In this resistant material Noguchi’s fragile sculpture is endowed with a new weight, both literal and symbolic, thus rendering the work powerfully timeless. ‘The essence of sculpture’, he said, ‘is for me the perception of space, the continuum of our existence. All dimensions are but measures of it, as in relative perspective of our vision lie volume, line, point, giving shape, distance, proportion. Movement, light, and time itself are also qualities of space. Space is otherwise inconceivable. These are the essence of sculpture and as our concepts of them change, so must our sculpture change’ (I. Noguchi, quoted in S. Hunter, Isamu Noguchi, London 1979, p. 85).
Faced with a fractured world, Noguchi’s Strange Bird expresses the fragility of the human psyche through its carefully balanced composition of interconnected elements. A response to humanity’s existential anguish in the wake of the Second World War, the sculpture evokes an acute sense of vulnerability but also of deep connection, each two-dimensional plane hooked precisely into the next to create a three-dimensional form, creating a balance of opposing forces. Entitled Strange Bird, the ancillary title of To the Sunflower refers to William Blake’s ode to a sunflower written in 1794: ‘Ah, Sunflower! weary of time / Who countest the steps of the sun / Seeking after that golden sweet clime / Where the traveller’s journey is done’. The title, Noguchi once said, ‘does not refer descriptively to its form but to the spirit of longing, which I hope it expresses, of Blake’s famous poem’ (I. Noguchi, quoted in D. Ashton, Noguchi: East and West, California 1992, p. 89). Reaching upwards, the flat plane that crowns the extended form evokes the sunflower’s path, twisting around to catch the last glimmering rays of the sun. With its two juxtaposed titles, Noguchi’s sculpture is caught between the promise of bird-like flight, and the rootedness of the flower. Anchored by its tripartite stand the sculpture stretches hopefully towards the light, poised on the brink of escape. In this way, Strange Bird is a response to the frustration of the human experience. Noguchi explained, ‘A purely cold abstraction doesn’t interest me too much. Art has to have some kind of human touching … quality. It has to recall something which moves a person – a recollection, a recognition of his loneliness or tragedy or whatever … things that happen at night, somber things’ (I. Noguchi, quoted in V.J. Fletcher, Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2004, p. 86).
In 1927, at the age of twenty-two, Noguchi travelled to Paris where, within days, he became Constantin Brancusi’s studio assistant. Enraptured by Brancusi’s purification of form, Noguchi learned from his mentor a great respect for his materials and a devotion to the distillation of the essence of nature into art. But after two years under Brancusi’s tutelage Noguchi began to deviate from his methods. He recalled, ‘Pure abstractions, or at least those geometrically derived, left me cold, and I was always being torn between Brancusi’s admonition and my desire to make something more meaningful to myself. This is not to say that I thought of deriving anything from the figure. But I craved a certain morphologic quality. I developed a deep interest at the time in cellular structure and collected books on paleontology, botany, and zoology’ (I. Noguchi, quoted in S. Hunter, Isamu Noguchi, London 1979, p. 38). Strange Bird, cast in polished bronze with a gleaming gold patina, is a reflection of Brancusi’s enduring influence over Noguchi. Conceived first in green slate, Noguchi reawakened his sculpture in robust bronze as a tribute to the abiding resilience of human existence. In this resistant material Noguchi’s fragile sculpture is endowed with a new weight, both literal and symbolic, thus rendering the work powerfully timeless. ‘The essence of sculpture’, he said, ‘is for me the perception of space, the continuum of our existence. All dimensions are but measures of it, as in relative perspective of our vision lie volume, line, point, giving shape, distance, proportion. Movement, light, and time itself are also qualities of space. Space is otherwise inconceivable. These are the essence of sculpture and as our concepts of them change, so must our sculpture change’ (I. Noguchi, quoted in S. Hunter, Isamu Noguchi, London 1979, p. 85).