Latest news with #Noguchi
Boston Globe
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Sculpture to Be Seen from Mars' sets the tone in a deeply stirring exhibit about time and our place in it
That image covers a whole wall of 'Isamu Noguchi: Landscapes of Time,' the brand-new, deeply stirring exhibition of the artist's work, just opened at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. I would say it sets the tone here, but given the thrumming sense of low-level dread cloaking the space, sunshine be damned, no tone needs setting. Along with nearly three-dozen works, each somber, spare, and disarmingly gorgeous, 'Landscapes of Time' affirms the resonant depth of Noguchi's thinking, and profoundly resituates him in the culture. "Isamu Noguchi: Landscapes of Time," at the Clark Art Institute, as seen from across the museum's reflecting pool. Courtesy Clark Art Institute You're most likely to know him from his still readily-available consumer product design: his delicately gorgeous Akari light sculptures, fragile rice paper stretched around twiggy armatures in an array of shapes and sizes (though most famously, spheres); a dozen or more hang here in a cluster, casting the room in their warm glow. They both reassure the casual viewer with familiarity, and confirm that, for Noguchi himself, it was all of a piece. 1947, the same year he conceived 'Sculpture to Be Seen from Mars,' he signed on with the Advertisement It's not here, but the table's aesthetic — contoured, spare, elemental — is pervasive. Noguchi's work, varied across media like stone, steel, wood, bronze, and in one delightful surprise here, Bakelite has a particular cast, like DNA, and the show confirms it, with a notable exception: 'Measured Time,' 1932, the aforementioned Bakelite, a clock/timer made for Fisher Scientific. Squat and shiny-smooth, it helps clarify the parallel lines of his art/product practice from the very beginning. ('Everything is sculpture,' Noguchi, who died in 1988, once said. 'Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space.') Isamu Noguchi, "Measured Time," 1934. Courtesy Clark Art Institute Here, its job is symbolic. This is a show about time, and the static objects in Noguchi's world that mark its passage — through the workaday, through trauma, and everything in between. Coolly, obliquely, 'Landscapes of Time' is about mortality, imagined remnants of an expired civilization left behind on an indifferent planet. 'This Earth, This Passage,' 1962, a rough, broad disc of bronze, hollow at the center, lies splayed on the floor. To make it, Noguchi paced barefoot on a mound of clay, slowly marching it flat before casting it in bronze. It's a record of hours and days spent. 'Time Thinking,' 1968, a bulky fragment of basalt, perches on a rustic wooden plinth; Noguchi gave it the barest of form, chipping into rocky hide, but largely let it be. Its rust-colored skin, a natural oxidation process, is intact. It's an expression of the light imprint any of us makes in our brief moments on earth. Advertisement Within Noguchi's notions of mortality is an inevitable fatalism, I think, and it's hard to blame him. Born in Los Angeles in 1904, his early childhood was marked by strident anti-Japanese sentiment that bled over into public policy. His father left for Japan while his mother, Leonie Gilmour, an Irish-American teacher, was pregnant with him. In 1906, San Francisco, where they lived, mandated segregated schools for Japanese children, and Gilmour took her son to live with his father in Japan. Foreground: Isamu Noguchi, "Time Thinking," 1968. On view in "Isamu Noguchi: Landscapes of Time," at the Clark Art Institute. Courtesy Clark Art Institute Celebrity portraits were a means to an end, a funding stream for more challenging work before his commercial design work took off. Advertisement Isamu Noguchi's signature scored into "This Earth, This Passage," 1962 (detail). Murray Whyte/Boston Globe Then living in New York, he was exempt from the federal government's Japanese internment program, enacted in 1942; even so, amid rising anti-Japanese animus, he made the extraordinary decision vast fenced-in tent city in the Arizona desert where 18,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned for years. It was an act of inexhaustible optimism amid the trauma of mass displacement that would see 100,000 people interned in 10 locations nationwide. A well-known artist by that time, with a network of connections in Hollywood and New York, Noguchi meant to use his status to establish arts and recreation programs in the camp to buoy the internees' spirits. By fostering creativity in the Japanese-American community from within the camps, he argued in an unpublished essay for Reader's Digest, he was serving 'the cause of democracy in the best way that seemed open to me.' In an echo with clear resonance to our own moment of upheaval, he was both an artist of uncommon courage then, and of uncommon relevance right now . Advertisement From left, Isamu Noguchi, "Remembrance (Mortality)," 1944; "The Seed," 1946. On view at "Isamu Noguchi: Landscapes of Time," at the Clark Art Institute. Murray Whyte/Boston Globe But the misery of the camps left a mark. He was largely unsuccessful in his pursuit, and even though he was there voluntarily, he was not allowed to leave; extracting himself took months. Many of the works in 'Landscapes of Time' are shot through with specific wartime anxieties. 'Remembrance (Mortality),' 1944, disheveled and forlorn, groups together an interlocking amalgam of sculpted fragments in dark American mahogany; it feels like mourning in physical form. The atomic bombs would drop a year later, and 'Sculpture to Be Seen from Mars' shortly after. Its aftershocks would resound in his work for years. 'Bell Tower for Hiroshima,' 1950, a spindly tower of pale wood with dangling clay bells, feels as much like skeletal remains as a memorial. 'Skin and Bones,' from he same year and hung nearby, seems to confirm it: an oblong ceramic loop in bone-gray, it's pierced at odd intervals by spears of dark wood. Another, in gray stoneware, has the softened contours of a human heart; he called it 'Ghost,' 1952. Clockwise, from left: "Bell Tower for Hiroshima," 1950; "Skin and Bones," 1950; "Ghost," 1952; "My Mu," 1950. All on view in "Isamu Noguchi: Landscapes of Time," at the Clark Art Institute. Murray Whyte/Boston Globe While his work grew increasingly abstract, it remained tethered to the real world. In the 1960s, as space-age optimism ran parallel to growing Cold War dread, Noguchi embraced the long view: In heavy granite, he seemed to celebrate the advancements: 'Lunar Table,' 1961-65, with its undulating regularity, seemed to imagine a landscape of wonder in the years before American astronauts would see the moon's surface for the first time. But the resonant piece here, for me, is 'Origin,' 1968. a dome of black basalt flecked and chipped along its flanks as it rises to the smooth curve of its apex. It is, to me, in a permanent state of becoming — an emergence never over, or complete. Noguchi may have liked to imagine himself in the same way. Advertisement 'Sometimes I think I'm part of this world of today,' he told an interviewer in 1972. 'Sometimes I feel that maybe I belong in history or in prehistory, or that there's no such thing as time.' But as he reached back and gazed forth, he knew the truth. 'Origin' sits at the foot of that photograph, a primal face scored into the earth's skin after all human life has departed. We are temporary, it says, in Noguchi's own voice; time is forever, and always wins. ISAMU NOGUCHI: LANDSCAPES OF TIME Through Oct. 13. Clark Art Institute, 225 South St., Williamstown. 413-458-2303, Murray Whyte can be reached at
San Francisco Chronicle
11-08-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
A huge new café wants to change the game for S.F. Korean food
The creators of a soaring new Korean café and gathering space in San Francisco hope to spur more momentum around Korean food culture in the Bay Area. Sohn will open Aug. 16 at 2535 3rd St. in Dogpatch, the former home of bagel shop Daily Driver. Deuki Hong, a prominent Korean-American chef who's run several restaurants and bakeries in the Bay Area, is a co-founder and operator, along with managing partner Janet Lee, a San Francisco native and founding partner of Hong's Sunday Family Hospitality Group. Sohn will be a café during the day and offer workshops and events in the evenings. A retail section is stocked with Korean-American goods, from instant coffee to soap, curated by Maum, a specialty store in New York City and Los Angeles. In the U.S., those two cities, and not San Francisco, have long been known for their strong Korean food scenes. That's shifted in recent years, however, with notable local arrivals including chef Corey Lee's Michelin-starred San Ho Won in San Francisco; tofu specialist Joodooboo in Oakland; multiple locations of kalbijjim specialist Daeho; and mega-popular Korean food complex Jagalchi in Daly City. 'It's always L.A. It's always New York,' Hong said. 'It's time the Bay Area starts playing a bigger conversation in where Korean food is going in America.' Sohn will serve casual Korean-inspired fare, like a rice bowl with soy-marinated soft boiled egg with Korean herbs and chili; jook (rice porridge); and a patty melt with Korean barbecue beef and kimchi slaw ($16). Thick slices of sourdough toast ($13), courtesy of the nearby Neighbor Bakehouse, which Hong also operates, will be topped with charred avocado, pickled jalapeños and onions and drizzled with gochugaru oil. A sweet toast incorporates ricotta and housemade strawberry cheong, a Korean fruit syrup. Preserved condiments like cheong and pickles will be made in a fermentation room on site. Korean café culture, which is slowly seeping into the Bay Area through trendy drinks like the einspänner, will be a focus. Sohn will brew specialty coffee roasted in partnership with Frank La of Be Bright Coffee in Los Angeles. Expect drinks like an espresso tonic with yuja (Korean citrus) and perilla. Korean staples inspired other creations, including housemade banana oat milk lattes, an homage to the boxes of banana milk Hong and Lee drank growing up, made with espresso, matcha or hojicha. Two drinks, a soda and matcha latte, channel the flavor of the beloved Melona brand ice cream bar. The former Daily Driver space is massive and industrial, with an upstairs mezzanine that looks down onto the open kitchen. Cathie Hong, a Korean-American interior designer in the Bay Area, revamped it to feel more like a cozy, chic home, with lime-washed walls, large Noguchi hanging paper lanterns, plants and lounge areas with couches. They added 12 seats to a front counter. The owners hope Sohn (derived from the Korean word for 'hand') will be a social third space, with rotating art installations and plans to host collaboration dinners and cooking classes. They're excited to be part of a wave of openings in Dogpatch, spurred in part by the major redevelopment of Pier 70. Hong, who was born in Korea and came to the U.S. at a young age, trained in Michelin-starred kitchens before opening a slew of Bay Area food businesses, including Sunday Bird, ice cream shop Sunday Social and a café at the Asian American Museum in San Francisco and Oakland's Sunday Bakeshop, all of which have since closed. Last year, he published his second cookbook, 'Koreaworld.' Sohn. Opening Aug. 16. 2535 3rd St., San Francisco.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
BOJ policymaker rules out intervention to stem bond yield spike
By Leika Kihara TOKYO (Reuters) -Bank of Japan board member Asahi Noguchi said on Thursday he saw no need for the central bank to intervene in the bond market to stem recent sharp rises in super-long yields, describing the moves as "rapid but not abnormal." Noguchi, a former academic regarded as one of the central bank board's dovish members, also said the central bank must pause its interest rate hikes for the time being until there is more clarity on the impact of U.S. tariffs on the economy. While the outcome of Tokyo's trade negotiations with Washington may become clearer, U.S. tariffs will likely exert "quite strong downward pressure" on the economy, he said. "When the outlook is so uncertain, there's no point acting on interest rates," he told a news conference, stressing the need to put off raising rates for the time being. "It's important to avoid moving and scrutinise developments." While diminishing prospects of a near-term rate hike have kept shorter-term yields stable, those on super-long Japanese government bonds (JGBs) soared to all-time highs this week amid calls from politicians for big fiscal spending. The spike in yields has led some analysts to speculate that the BOJ could ramp up bond buying in an emergency operation or issue a verbal warning against rapid market moves. "Bond yields, at times, make volatile moves reflecting various views on the economic outlook," Noguchi said. "At times, central banks must take action to stabilise markets. I don't think we're seeing a situation where we need to do so," he said, emphasising the need to allow market forces to determine bond yield moves. The BOJ last year exited a massive stimulus programme that included a policy capping bond yields around zero. It raised its short-term policy rate to 0.5% in January, on the view Japan was making progress in durably meeting its 2% inflation target. At its policy meeting next month, the BOJ will conduct an interim review of its bond tapering plan running through March and come up with a programme for April 2026 onward. Noguchi said he saw no need to make any major changes to the current plan. In compiling the reduction plan for April 2026 onward, the central bank might need to take into account how much it eventually wants to trim its huge balance sheet, he said. "It's true the BOJ needs to reduce its huge bond holdings," he said. "But the priority should be to avoid disrupting markets," to scale back its balance sheet. Fears of a U.S. tariff-induced global slowdown forced the central bank to sharply cut its growth forecasts at its April 30-May 1 policy meeting. That has cast doubt on the view that sustained wage hikes will underpin consumption and the broader economy. A Reuters poll showed most economists now expect the BOJ will hold rates steady through September to assess the effects of U.S. tariffs, although a slight majority still see at least a 25-basis-point hike by year-end. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Mainichi
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Mainichi
BOJ should take cautious stance on rate hikes: board member
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Bank of Japan should adopt a cautious approach on raising short-term interest rates as it needs to take time to examine the economic impact of its actions, a board member said Thursday. "I believe it is crucial that the bank take a measured, step-by-step approach," Asahi Noguchi, seen as a monetary dove, said in a speech, describing such a stance as taking "sufficient time" to assess the effects each time the BOJ raises its policy rate. The BOJ has raised the key rate three times since March last year, when it carried out its first hike in 17 years, as it moves to normalize monetary policy following a decade-long framework of unconventional easing. On the BOJ's reduced purchases of Japanese government bonds, which began in August last year, Noguchi said he sees no need "at this point to make any major changes," with the central bank expected to decide on whether to review its current plan at the next policy meeting in June. As part of measures to normalize monetary policy, the BOJ decided last July to reduce asset holdings on its bloated balance sheet, with the plan covering the period through March 2026. "The bank will need to examine the reduction plan for April 2026 onward from a longer-term perspective," Noguchi said, adding the BOJ has sufficient time to reduce the size of its balance sheet, which would be desirable to maintain market stability.
Business Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Bank of Japan policymaker rules out intervention to stem bond yield spike
[TOKYO] Bank of Japan board member Asahi Noguchi said on Thursday (May 22) he saw no need for the central bank to intervene in the bond market to stem recent sharp rises in super-long yields, describing the moves as 'rapid but not abnormal.' Noguchi, a former academic regarded as one of the central bank board's dovish members, also said the central bank must pause its interest rate hikes for the time being until there is more clarity on the impact of US tariffs on the economy. While the outcome of Tokyo's trade negotiations with Washington may become clearer, US tariffs will likely exert 'quite strong downward pressure' on the economy, he said. 'When the outlook is so uncertain, there's no point acting on interest rates,' he told a news conference, stressing the need to put off raising rates for the time being. 'It's important to avoid moving and scrutinise developments.' While diminishing prospects of a near-term rate hike have kept shorter-term yields stable, those on super-long Japanese government bonds (JGBs) soared to all-time highs this week amid calls from politicians for big fiscal spending. The spike in yields has led some analysts to speculate that the BOJ could ramp up bond buying in an emergency operation or issue a verbal warning against rapid market moves. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up 'Bond yields, at times, make volatile moves reflecting various views on the economic outlook,' Noguchi said. 'At times, central banks must take action to stabilise markets. I don't think we're seeing a situation where we need to do so,' he said, emphasising the need to allow market forces to determine bond yield moves. The BOJ last year exited a massive stimulus programme that included a policy capping bond yields around zero. It raised its short-term policy rate to 0.5 per cent in January, on the view Japan was making progress in durably meeting its 2 per cent inflation target. At its policy meeting next month, the BOJ will conduct an interim review of its bond tapering plan running through March and come up with a programme for April 2026 onward. Noguchi said he saw no need to make any major changes to the current plan. In compiling the reduction plan for April 2026 onward, the central bank might need to take into account how much it eventually wants to trim its huge balance sheet, he said. 'It's true the BOJ needs to reduce its huge bond holdings,' he said. 'But the priority should be to avoid disrupting markets,' to scale back its balance sheet. Fears of a US tariff-induced global slowdown forced the central bank to sharply cut its growth forecasts at its Apr 30-to-May 1 policy meeting. That has cast doubt on the view that sustained wage hikes will underpin consumption and the broader economy. A Reuters poll showed most economists now expect the BOJ will hold rates steady through September to assess the effects of US tariffs, although a slight majority still see at least a 25-basis-point hike by year-end. REUTERS
