Noguchi at Play

Isamu Noguchi, photographed by Louise Dahl-Wolfe in 1955.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Atlanta playground created by the Japanese-American artist, the High Museum of Art showcases his first retrospective in 25 years

By Peter Saenger

“I am not a designer,” said Isamu Noguchi in 1949, even though he was in the middle of a career designing furniture, lamps, ashtrays, a cemetery, bridge railings, parks, public spaces for skyscrapers, and groundbreaking sets for the dances of Martha Graham. He explained that design tended to imply an accommodation to “quixotic fashion,” while he saw himself, a sculptor, as dealing with “fundamental problems of form.” READ ON