and the aspirations, problems, sufferings and work of the people.” Recognizing that art in the modern era had drifted too far from its social function, he wished to “reintegrate the arts toward some purposeful social end.” Noguchi’s playground designs, then, must be understood both as an extension of his sculptural practice overall and also as a utopian vision of public art that developed within the context of the New Deal public infrastructure projects of the 1930s. Throughout its eight-year existence, the PWAP sustained approximately ten thousand artists working on murals, paintings, sculptures, prints, and craft objects, and although Noguchi was never personally commissioned by the WPA, many of his friends were.3 “Let us make sculpture that deals with today’s problems,” Noguchi wrote in 1936, “. Beginning in 1933, the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was instituted as a relief Field Trip 43 measure employing artists and artisans to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theater scenic design, and arts and crafts. In addition to these infrastructural projects for which it was best known, however, the WPA employed artists to create works of public art. During an approximately eight- year existence, the WPA spent more than $10 billion and put millions of unemployed Americans to work building public infrastructure projects, such as roads, dams, sewers, airports, and highways. This idea of the artist as worker was shaped at least in part by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, and his Works Progress Administration (WPA) in particular. Along with his interest in gardens and theater stages, playgrounds represented for Noguchi an enclosed space that is sculpted or made meaningful through the arrangement of infrastructural forms that guide bodies through space in unconventional ways.2 Second, Noguchi came of age as an artist during the long decades of the Great Depression, which profoundly shaped his idea of the artist as worker and public servant, one who created objects to serve a higher social good. First, although Noguchi worked primarily with metal and stone as sculptural materials in the early part of his career, he became increasingly interested in space- specifically public space- as itself a potential medium for sculpture. Isamu Noguchi’s Wartime Playscapes Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda Although twentieth-century Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi is primarily remembered for his work in sculpture, over the past few years, therehasbeenaresurgenceofcriticalinterestinhislifelongobsessionwith experimental playgrounds and public recreational spaces, for which he left behind numerous sketches and blueprints.1 Although the majority of these playgrounds were never built, they should nevertheless be understood as an important development in Noguchi’s sculptural practice overall. “Rule-by-Records and Rule-by-Reports: Complementary Aspects of the British Imperial Rule of Law.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 19, no. “The Clash of Ignorance.” Nation, October 21, 11. ![]() Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime. “State and Criminal Tribes in Colonial Punjab: Surveillance, Control and Reclamation of the ‘Dangerous Classes.’” Modern Asian Studies 33, no. ![]() In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ĥ2 Field Trip Major, Andrew J.
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