Baby: Scroll (Kakemono)

Description

Isamu Noguchi and Qi Baishi: Beijing 1930
May 18, 2013 – September 1, 2013
Isamu Noguchi
United States, 1904–1988
Baby: Scroll (Kakemono)
1930
Hanging scroll, ink on paper
Gift of Sotokichi Katsuizumi, University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1949/1.190
inscribed:
This for Sotokichi Katsuizumi my best friend in Pekin[g] for whom I have great affection. Isamu
These two works by Qi Baishi and Isamu Noguchi demonstrate their very different approaches to abstraction. In Qi’s painting mere smudges of ink and a jumble of masterfully placed fine lines concisely convey the anatomy and movement of shrimps as they wiggle and bump against one another in the water. While his abstraction is used for representational ends, the sweeping line in Noguchi’s drawing of a baby curled up and contentedly sucking its finger seems to take on a life of its own. Indeed the shape of the line resembles ensô (the circular form in Zen painting that denotes enlightenment and fulfillment), which would reappear in Noguchi’s sculptural work after World War II. While it is not known if Noguchi intended to evoke this form in his drawing, it aptly suits the baby’s state of mind.
[caption] Isamu Noguchi working on Mu (1950–51, sandstone, Keio University, Tokyo), 1950 (photo courtesy of The Noguchi Museum).