Awards are exciting and inspiring occasions: at times you may not agree with the decisions of a jury of a prestigious prize, at others instead you find yourself supporting their choice, as it recently happened with the Noguchi Prize that last week was awarded to Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garçons and co-founder of Dover Street Market.
Launched by the Noguchi Museum in 2014, the Isamu Noguchi Award was established to honor the achievements of this unique artist and to acknowledge other like-minded, highly accomplished individuals who reflect similar ideals in their own times.
The Award thus celebrates innovation, global awareness, and Eastern and Western exchange.
Born in 1904 in Los Angeles, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed in 1942 the directive authorizing the internment of Japanese citizens and American citizens of Japanese heritage living on the west coast, Noguchi voluntarily entered the Poston War Relocation Center, in the Arizona Desert, despite being exempt from internment as a resident of New York.
He hoped, indeed, that it would have been possible for him to turn the camp into a more human environment, adding a park and recreational area, baseball fields, swimming pools, and a design for a cemetery.
His plans were never put into practice, but, while at the camp, Noguchi's works transformed, going from figurative to modernist: at Poston, the artist started working with new materials, including wood, while his works, inspired by organic and geometric forms, became more abstract.
Kawakubo often explored such shapes in her designs, creating iconic pieces like the ones in her S/S 1997 "Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body" collection (also known as the "Lumps and Bumps" collection) or the costumes for Merce Cunningham's "Scenario" (1997). Her bulbous shells and absurd forms pointing at the theme of body transformations connect her with Noguchi's sculptures.
In a press release the museum stated about the award, "Hailed as one of the most brilliant and innovative designers of our time, Rei Kawakubo has consistently defied notions not only of beauty, but also of what fashion can be, at once confounding our expectations for clothing and – like Noguchi – challenging the idea that design and art are inherently different endeavors. Also like Noguchi, Kawakubo celebrates not only forms, but also the spaces between them."
Previous recipients of the Isamu Noguchi Award include Lord Norman Foster and Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jasper Morrison and Yoshio Taniguchi, Tadao Ando and Elyn Zimmerman, John Pawson and Hiroshi Senju, Naoto Fukasawa and Edwina von Gal. This is the first time the award is assigned to a fashion designer and for Kawakubo the award is another cause for celebration, after marking this year the 50th anniversary of Comme des Garçons.
Upon receiving the award Kawakubo highlighted how she does not consider herself an artist, but she is always trying to create something new in her work.
Noguchi has a link with fashion: a blue, white and orange star-shaped pinwheel-like sculpture he made for an airport appeared in a photograph by Gene Fenn entitled "Noguchi sculpture and model" and portraying a young girl wearing the sculpture as if it were a headdress. The photograph was used as the cover of Junior Bazaar magazine. So while the prize entitled to him didn't have any fashion connections until now, Noguchi actually was already fashionable in his own peculiar way.
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