- 809
Isamu Noguchi
Description
- Isamu Noguchi
- Peking Drawing (Mother and Child)
- ink on paper
Provenance
Condition
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Catalogue Note
Studies with Qi Baishi
Although most renowned for his abstract modernist sculptures, Isamu Noguchi produced a significant body of ink paintings in 1930 during his study with Qi Baishi in Beijing. Brief and fortuitous, the young Noguchi’s encounter with Qi Baishi, by that time already a mature and respected artist, profoundly changed the course of his artistic development.
In 1929, having studied under Constantin Brancusi for two years, Noguchi was already an established figure working on portraits and commissions for the likes of R. Buckminster Fuller and Martha Graham. However, he was also struggling to find his own voice outside of Brancusi’s influence. His subsequent visit to Asia in July 1930 was perhaps a quest to establish his own artistic identity, and also to reconnect with his father, whom he had not seen since leaving Japan as a teenager.
Noguchi planned to visit Beijing and travel on to Japan but while waiting for a visa in Paris, his father informed him that he would not acknowledge Noguchi as his son. Devastated, Noguchi extended his stay in Beijing. There, he met the Japanese businessman Sotokichi Katsuizumi, an avid collector of contemporary Chinese paintings who introduced him to Qi Baishi. Despite the language barrier, the two artists bonded instantly, and Noguchi studied with Qi for around six months until his departure in January 1931.
This brief but fertile period in Noguchi’s career resulted in a series of over 100 ink paintings, known as the Peking Scroll Drawings or Peking Brush Drawings. The present work is an exceptional example from this series, depicting a mother nursing her infant child in sweeping, gestural brushstrokes that reduce the figures to a few essential marks. Thin fluid lines detail their facial features and clothing, while broad washes add weight and dimension to the figures. They suggest curve and movement, while simultaneously existing as independent abstract forms on the surface of the paper, reflecting Noguchi’s innate sense of space and abstraction. The influence of Qi Baishi’s brushwork is unmistakable. Many of the Peking Brush Drawings including the present piece have wide sweeps of ink wash applied over fine contour lines, a signature technique of Qi’s (fig. 1). While the two did not have a formal disciple-teacher relationship, Noguchi would study Qi’s masterful brushstrokes as he painted in the studio and attempt to copy them. By observing Qi’s unusual compositions, ink effects and most significantly, his condensed, dynamic yet nuanced strokes, Noguchi learned to forge his own fluid and expressive line.
While Noguchi learnt from Qi’s mastery of the brush, the two artists were drawn to very different subject matter. Qi was fond of depicting the natural world and “lowly” subjects not often shown in conventional literati art, such as shrimp and rice paddies. On the other hand, no doubt owing to his work as a sculptor and portraitist, Noguchi had a preference for the human body. In his brush drawings, he portrays a wide spectrum of humanity: youth engaged in sports, monks in flowing robes, the male nude and mother and child. The image of mother and child is a recurring theme in Noguchi’s work, and he often said that his mother Léonie Gilmour (1874 – 1933) was his biggest inspiration. See an example created in the same period in the collection of Alexandra and Samuel May (fig. 2). This theme seems to take on a deeper meaning when read within the context of his personal life, having been raised primarily by his mother and recently rejected by his father. Perhaps even his relationship with Sotokichi Katsuizumi and Qi Baishi came at an opportune time when he was seeking a father figure and mentor.
Noguchi’s study with Qi Baishi left a deep impression on him. In 1938, he inscribed one of his Peking Brush Drawings (also of a mother and child), “I am a follower of great China and I have learned from its great art.” In his seventies, Noguchi reminisced that he hoped to return to Beijing “to learn the art of the brush, learn how to be with nature, how to live.” The young artist’s experiments with the brush in 1930 allowed him to think about space, abstraction, and figuration in wholly different ways. Though clearly important for understanding his later work, the Peking Brush Drawings are also worthy of attention in their own right—not only as a record of the interaction between with one of China’s pre-eminent painters in the 20th century and a young man who would eventually become a pioneering modernist sculptor, but also for their significance within the genre of ink and its many possibilities.