Henry McBride - NY SUN

Of the 1934-35 exhibit , the art critic Henry Mcbride wrote:
[bold face is ours - ed.]

"You cannot deny that Isamu Noguchi, the Japanese-American sculptor now exhibiting in the Marie Harriman Galleries has grand ideas. I hate to apply the word 'wily' to anyone I so thoroughly respect as I do Mr. Noguchi, yet what other word can you apply to a semi-oriental sculptor who proposes to build in the United States the following monuments:"

"Monument to the Plow..proposed location in the Middle West, preferably at the geographical center of the United States. Triangular pyramid, 12,000 feet wide at base, made of earth on one side tilled in furrows, one side planted to wheat, and topped with a huge block of concrete and a large stainless steel plow."

...[3 other proposed monuments are described].

"How can we resist such alluring suggestions? We cannot, and the inference is, therefore, that Mr. Noguchi, all the time he has been over here, has been studying our weakness with a view of becoming irresistible to us. Cowards that we are, Mr. Noguchi is a sculptor as well as architect, and his terracotta portrate of Conger Goodyear is an excellent work of art, as are, too, the several very clever drawings on display. The gruesome study of a lynching with a contoured figure dangling from an actual rope, may be like a photograph from which it was made, but as a work of art it is just a little Japanese mistake."

Noguchi Lobby

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