33 MacDougal Alley: The Interlocking Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi

The first exhibition to illustrate the historical significance of the relationship between MacDougal Alley and Isamu Noguchi’s interlocking sculptures will be on view at PaceWildenstein, 32 East 57th Street, New York, New York, from September 12 through October 4, 2003. The exhibition, entitled 33 MacDougal Alley: The Interlocking Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi, will feature twelve of the artist’s interlocking sculptures and will be accompanied by a catalogue with historical photographs and Noguchi’s writings about the time period. During his residence at MacDougal Alley (1942–1949), Noguchi made twenty-six interlocking sculptures out of marble, wood, and slate. Over the next forty years, he selected ten to cast into editions of eight using bronze or aluminum. The exhibition will showcase these works, and will also include Untitled, a recently discovered slate sculpture.

PaceWildenstein has collaborated with The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum to include a room in the exhibition devoted to historical objects related to Noguchi’s life at MacDougal Alley. Photographs of the artist and his work, both in his studio and in his garden behind MacDougal Alley, will be on display. The exhibition will also exhibit press material from the 1940’s featuring Noguchi and a catalogue from the Fourteen Americans exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1946.

Noguchi’s interlocking sculptures explore biomophic imagery of European Surrealism and investigate the fragmentation and perception of space. While making the interlocking sculptures at MacDougal Alley, the artist, who stated that he wanted to continue his “research into space, plus plane, plus void,” explored the punctuation of empty space through creation, the tension between voids and pressures, and the balance between negative and positive space. As expressed in his artist statement for The Museum of Modern Art’s Fourteen Americans exhibition, Noguchi firmly believed “it is the sculptor who orders and animates space, gives it meaning.”

Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904 to American writer Léonie Gilmour and Japanese poet Yonejiro (Yone) Noguchi. In 1929, after working in Brancusi’s studio in Paris, he returned to New York City, where he had been living; in 1942, he moved into a new studio on MacDougal Alley in Greenwich Village.

MacDougal Alley was originally built in the 1830’s as stables for wealthy families in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village and Washington Square. The turn of the century marked the beginning of its history as a dynamic artists’ community. Many of the stables were transformed into studios, and were inhabited from approximately 1907-1950 by artists and high-society bohemians, such as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, Daniel Chester French, Gaston Lachaise, and Alfonso Ossorio.

While Noguchi was living and working at MacDougal Alley, he was involved in several private commissions of public sculpture and was included in many important exhibitions. His light sculptures from the early 1940’s evolved into Lunars, which are self-illuminated sculptures and wall panels. In 1947, Noguchi created Lunar ceilings for American Stove Company Building in Saint Louis and Time-Life Building in New York City. The following year Noguchi designed a Lunar wall relief for a staircase in the S.S. Argentina.

The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum was founded by Noguchi in 1985, helping to pioneer the transformation of Long Island City into an arts destination. With an open-air sculpture garden surrounded by galleries, the Museum presents a retrospective of Noguchi’s diverse artistic achievements. The Museum, which is today maintained by the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, is currently undergoing renovation. Until October 13, 2003, it is located in temporary quarters at 36-01 43rd Avenue, in Long Island City. The renovated Museum reopens in April 2004.

For further information on 33 MacDougal Alley, including images, please refer to www.pacewildenstein.com or contact Sarah Kurz at 212-421-3292, or [email protected].

For information on The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, contact Tiffany Lee at Jeanne Collins & Associates, LLC, New York City, 646-486-7050, or [email protected].