Barbican, London
Beautifully spaced and tasteful, Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s work would look great in a high-end kitchen. But as art, it’s a total bore
If you like hanging out in high-end lighting shops, the Barbican art gallery is the place for you right now. Paper lampshades are everywhere, from tall wavy ones on the floor to deluxe versions of the spherical lantern shades you can buy anywhere. Beautifully spaced, warm with glowing light, artfully ornamented with objects in stone, ceramics and bronze, this survey of the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi is a must for design buffs – and a total bore for anyone in search of true art.
There is no punch to it, no emotional or psychic energy, just a gentle progress of clever but harmless creations. There couldn’t be a sharper contrast with the Barbican’s eye-opening recent show of the great iconoclast Jean Dubuffet, in which every ugly quirk of art brut gripped you. Noguchi’s smooth creations in the same spaces didn’t even fill my mind for the time I looked at them. It was as if they had no reality at all.
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