« Noguchi Visit | Main | Noguchi Museum »
September 13, 2006
A visit to Roosevelt Island and the Noguchi Museum
I was planning on biking over to the Noguchi Museum, but... I am not a morning person. I woke up in the afternoon and decided to take the subway. I got off at 59th & 5th Ave and walked to 2nd Ave and took the tramway to Roosevelt Island. I'd never taken the tramway before despite having grown up in this city and it was really a treat.
I've been to Roosevelt Island once before but hadn't really explored it thoroughly. Strange place, sort of like a miniature Manhattan sandwiched between Manhattan and Queens, which raises the metaphysical question; which of the five boroughs are you in exactly? I walked up the eastern side of the island. The architecture seemed pretty ugly- those brown corrugated stone facades. Lots of apartment blocks. The waterfront was strange because it just faced out onto this enormous factory. The factory was really interesting to me- I love the way factories are designed without aesthetics in mind. They're just enormous machines.
I walked north until I got to the bridge. Here the apartment buildings were in the same sort of unappealing style you see in Battery Park City and the new buildings along Houston St.- red brick with green trim. Although nothing I saw in Roosevelt Island was very appealing I definitely want to return to fully explore the island.
I walked across the bridge to Queens. According to the Noguchi museum website, this is how Noguchi would travel to his studio.
I liked the crumbling buildings along the waterfront on Vernon Blvd past Rainsy Park until I got to the Noguchi Museum. I've actually never been to this museum before, although I had meant to visit. Some of Noguchi's work is in Chase Manhattan Plaza, down near where I live. Noguchi designed a sunken stone garden for the plaza and also a giant orange cube with a cylinder drilled out of one side. The cube balances on one corner.
When I entered the museum I must admit I found the works at the entrance rather unappealing. I felt like I didn't just didn't get what Noguchi was trying to do. But after seeing the rest of the museum, on the way out I found that I could suddenly appreciate these works. I think perhaps these might be his least obviously appealing works in the museum, because they aren't colorful or particularly complex. After seeing them in context to the rest of Noguchi's work, I could appreciate their simplicity.
I liked the layout of the museum, the way it was non-linear and lets you jump easily from area to area. I sat and watched the documentary on Noguchi for a while but the sound quality was not very good. Noguchi's sculptures looked to me like artifacts from the ruins of some culture from another planet. It was as though the forms were part of some sort of alien stone age technology or monoliths to values we humans cannot easily understand.
I liked the way many of the sculptures had a half-finished quality. The stones retained a large part of their original shape and surface. The sculptures were finished even though they weren't fully transformed. This is something I hadn't really considered before in sculpture; we're used to the idea of Michaelango's David or a Duchamp readymade, but partially modifying a natural form is not something I have seen much of. It reminded me a bit of the rocks you see in gardens in China and Japan.
My favorite piece was "Well," the way almost the entire rock surface was coated in a moving layer of water. The unphotographable pieces on the second floor were more complex, featuring interlocking stone pieces and even some representations of faces, as well as architectural plans. I enjoyed the section on Noguchi's friendship with Buckminster Fuller, as I find his ideas very exciting. The influence of Fuller seemed most apparent in Noguchi's memorial for the Challenger disaster, which was a tetrahelix.
After exiting the museum I went to the nearby Socrates Sculpture Park. Really amazing, I had no idea that this existed! It seemed that many sculptures were being created on the site, and also some sort of event celebrating the park's 20th year was taking place. Some well-dressed people arrived in limousines, which was a strange contrast to the taxi repair garages right alongside. There were also several people fishing in the East River.
I walked back up Broadway towards the subway stop and wandered around Astoria a bit before heading back to Manhattan.
Posted by Andrew Doro at September 13, 2006 01:56 AM