Organic Utilitarianism
The Sculptures of Isamu Noguchi
by Kim Carpenter
The Zenith Radio Nurse was perhaps the first baby monitor ever to make its way into American nurseries. Produced in 1937, just five years after the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s twenty-month-old son in 1932, the Bakelite wireless intercom mimicked the minimal outline of a female head wearing a traditional nurse’s cap. A perfect blend of form and function, the “Radio Nurse” immediately communicated its purpose to consumers, its distinctive sculptural shape as integral to the device’s function as its mechanical parts. Although Isamu Noguchi (1904 - 1988) had been creating sculptures for close to ten years by the time the Radio Nurse entered production, this mass-produced item aptly encapsulated the artist’s unique ability to create works that were simultaneously utilitarian and aesthetically engaging. And he did so by using traditional techniques to shape modern spaces: chiseling, casting, and carving a new visual vocabulary for contemporary society.
|
