From Booklist
That Isamu Noguchi's stature in the art world remains unresolved says as much about that unforgiving place as it does about this singular sculptor, designer, and garden creator. He could be stubborn, tempestuous, manipulative. His signature expressions--sleek elegance, a melding of Japanese traditions and Euro-American modernism, evocations of sensuous human forms bound with deep echoes of the earth's gifts--were rarely considered revolutionary. This studious and sympathetic biography, though, defines the essence of Noguchi (1904-88) as a lifelong struggle against unbelonging. Born to an American woman, who pointed him toward art, and a Japanese poet, who abandoned the family, Noguchi was an outsider in both countries and thus always in search of an identity and a home. He worked with Brancusi and Martha Graham; his friends included Buckminster Fuller and Robert Oppenheimer; his life intersected with America's Japanese relocation camps during World War II and McCarthyist hysteria. A ladies' man, Noguchi had his heart broken often, but Duus treats his flings with Frida Kahlo, Anais Nin, and a string of others with restraint, preferring to focus on the artist at work and the loneliness and longings that helped drive Noguchi to unlock the seductive secrets of space and stone. Steve Paul
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Steve Paul, Booklist
"This studious and sympathetic biography, though, defines the essence of Noguchi (1904-88) as a lifelong struggle against unbelonging."


Publishers Weekly
Duus animates this packed biography with her detailed research and poignant anecdotes.


Donald Richie, The Japan Times
"The amount of material given is prodigious and her labors must have been enormous".


Book Description
Isamu Noguchi, born in Los Angeles as the illegitimate son of an American mother and a Japanese poet father, was one of the most prolific yet enigmatic figures in the history of twentieth-century American art. Throughout his life, Noguchi (1904-1988) grappled with the ambiguity of his identity as an artist caught up in two cultures. His personal struggles--as well as his many personal triumphs--are vividly chronicled in The Life of Isamu Noguchi, the first full-length biography of Noguchi. Published in connection with the centennial of the artist's birth, the book draws on Noguchi's letters, his reminiscences, and interviews with his friends and colleagues to cast new light on his youth, his creativity, and his relationships. During his sixty-year career, there was hardly a genre that Noguchi failed to explore. He produced more than 2,500 works of sculpture, designed furniture, lamps, and stage sets, created dramatic public gardens all over the world, and pioneered the development of environmental art. After studying in Paris, where he befriended Alexander Calder and worked as an assistant to Constantin Brancusi, he became an ardent advocate for abstract sculpture. Noguchi's private life was no less passionate than his artistic career. The book describes his romances with many women, among them the dancer Ruth Page, the painter Frida Kahlo, and the writer Anaïs Nin. Despite his fame, Noguchi always felt himself an outsider. "With my double nationality and my double upbringing, where was my home?" he once wrote. "Where were my affections? Where my identity?" Never entirely comfortable in the New York art world, he inevitably returned to his father's homeland, where he had spent a troubled childhood. This prize-winning biography, first published in Japanese, traces Isamu Noguchi's lifelong journey across these artistic and cultural borders in search of his personal identity.


From the Inside Flap
"This biography is a significant contribution to the literature on the life of Isamu Noguchi. With its presentation of many previously unknown biographical details, it will be a useful source for scholars working on Noguchi as well as for the general reader."--Bruce Altshuler, director of the Program in Museum Studies at New York University and former director of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum


About the Author
Masayo Duus has written several books on the history of Japanese Americans and U.S.-Japan relations and has published collections of her essays on life in America. Translations of her work include "The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920" and "Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and the 442nd". Peter Duus is William H. Bonsall Professor of History at Stanford University. His most recent book is "Japanese Discovery of America".

FROM THE PUBLISHER