"Mars Beacon" was the first work I did for the Noguchi collection. At the time, I had no idea people regarded it as starkly pessismistic - a monument to the world long after our species had ruined it. The first thing I saw in 'Sculpture To Be Seen from Mars' was Noguchi's sense of play and irony. The plaintive lonliness that seems to surround the 'face' is there, of course. But, first to strike my thought was the playful look of utter bewilderment on the face of our species. I laughed out loud. I couldn't help it. Indeed, elements of such opposable binaries (post-modern thumbs?) are never really far apart in Noguchi's work. I laughed at the loneliness of this long distance transmitter, and cried at the cartoon that results when all the fine features of our planetary history have been reduced to one enduring essential signal.
I think I'd have put a cigar in its mouth. 'Hello, this is Groucho calling. Say the magic word and you win a duck.'
Later, of course, I would get to know better the meaning of these strange equivalencies that are signature to Noguchi's life and work. You know, Noguchi renamed it as "Sculpture to be Seen from Mars". Originally it was called "Monument to Man". Titles, for Noguchi, often served as 'stage marks' to cue the viewer where to stand to enter the work. They not only serve as a 'point of entry', but can usually be relied upon to give one a good vantage for negotiating the remainder of the space that a work might contour (as the opening positions of a stage play might be said to contain the initial state of all the drama that was to follow).

. . . back to 'mars beacon'

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