"Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi" 1st/1st HC/DJ 2015

Description: "Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi" was written by Hayden Herrera and published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York in 2015. This is a hardcover, first edition, first printing of this exceptional and definitive 575-page biography. Written by a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author, it features dozens of black-and-white photographs of Noguchi's life and art. The original price, as shown on the dustjacket front flap, was $40.00. From the dustjacket blurb:“Throughout the twentieth century, Isamu Noguchi was a vital figure in modern art. From interlocking wooden sculptures to massive steel monuments to the elegant Akari lamps, Noguchi became a master of what he called the ‘sculpturing of space.’ But his constant struggle—as both an artist and a man—was to embrace his conflicted identity as the son of a single American woman and a famous yet reclusive Japanese father. ‘It’s only in art,’ he insisted, ‘that it was ever possible for me to find any identity at all.’“In this remarkable biography of the elusive artist, Hayden Herrera observes this driving force of Noguchi’s creativity as intimately tied to his deep appreciation of nature. As a boy in Japan, Noguchi would collect wild azaleas and blue mountain flowers for a little garden in front of his home. As Herrera writes, he also included a rock, ‘to give a feeling of weight and permanence.’ It was a sensual appreciation he never abandoned. When looking for stones in remote Japanese quarries for his zen-like Paris garden forty years later, he would spend hours actually listening to the stones, scrambling from one to another until he found one that ‘spoke to him.’ Constantly striving to ‘take the essence of nature and distill it,’ Noguchi moved from sculpture to furniture, and from playgrounds to sets for his friend the choreographer Martha Graham, and back again working in wood, iron, clay, steel, aluminum, and, of course, stone.“Noguchi traveled constantly, from New York to Paris to India to Japan, forever uprooting himself to reinvigorate what he called the ‘keen edge of originality.’ Wherever he went, his needy disposition and boyish charm drew women to him, yet he tended to push them away when things began to feel too settled. Only through his art—now seen as a powerful aesthetic link between the East and the West—did Noguchi ever seem to feel that he belonged. “Combining Noguchi’s personal correspondence and interviews with those closest to him—from artists, patrons, assistants, and lovers—Herrera has created an authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century’s most important sculptors. She locates Noguchi in his friendships with such artists as Buckminster Fuller and Arshile Gorky, and in his affairs with women including Frida Kahlo and Anna Matta Clark. With the attention to detail and scholarship that made her biography of Gorky a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Herrera has written a rich meditation on art in a globalized milieu. ‘Listening to Stone’ is a moving portrait of an artist compulsively driven to reinvent himself as he searched for his own ‘essence of sculpture.’” The book is in fine, collectible condition, with no torn or bent pages, no scratches, stains or inscriptions, no remainder marks, no price-clipping, no bookplate, no ex-library, no book club edition, no flaws of any sort. It is as new.The dustjacket is in equally fine shape and is protected in a clear and removable archival cover.Please see the photos for a fuller description and author profile.BLK BOX 54PLEASE SEE THE OTHER TITLES NOW LISTED IN MY EBAY STORE: DISTANT VOYAGE BOOKSPAYPAL PREFERREDWill combine shipping.All items are well packed and are normally mailed within two days of payment being received.My 100% feedback rating is valuable to me. If you are satisfied with a transaction, please leave feedback and I will do the same.Questions welcome. Additional photographs on request.Note: Scrolling through my listings will locate books in these and many other categories:Animals; Art & Architecture; Biography; Children’s; Collecting & Collectibles; Entertainment, Film & Theater; Fiction; Food & Drink; Gardening; History; Military; Music; Natural History; Nautical; Photography; Science & Technology; Travel; Space; Sports; Transportation. New Listings added almost daily.

Price: 25 USD

Location: Yorba Linda, California

End Time: 2025-01-28T21:12:07.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5 USD