Two pieces from the Isamu Noguchi and contemporary Japanese ceramics show at the Sackler:

Even the Centipede (1952), in unglazed Kasama stoneware, consists of eleven reddish biomorphic forms, attached to a wooden pole with rope, rising twelve feet above the gallery floor. The forms are squared ovals and half globes, pierced and protruding; they look something like the dingbats that Edward Fella designed for Emigre. The whimsical piece suggests that if the ropes were cut, the eleven component critters would scatter off into the eleven dimensions.

Buson (1952), in unglazed Karatsu stoneware, is a perfect three-line poem, only eight inches high by six inches by four. Brutish in form, a Cycladic figure with open eyes and open arms stands in an H-shaped hut with an arched roof. There is a huge opening in the inverted U of the roof, and two cracks from its firing. The ware is the color of biscuity brick; there is a dab of glaze on the front edge of the roof, which is like polished cordovan. The sculpture is a small, precious thing.

posted: 4:00:04 PM  

John Schlesinger, director of two of my favorite movies—Midnight Cowboy and The Day of the Locust—has died. I also read that he made Sunday Bloody Sunday. The picture figures in a bit of dialogue from Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy. I'm making it a point to see the movie now.

posted: 3:40:39 PM