Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi

From the author of “Arshile Gorky,” a major biography of the great American sculptor that redefines his legacy  A master of what he called "the sculpturing of space," Isamu Noguchi was a vital figure for modern public art. Born to an American mother and a Japanese father, Noguchi never felt like he belonged anywhere and spent his life assembling identities in his statues, monuments and gardens. He traveled incessantly from New York to remote Japanese islands, from Paris to Bangladesh, synthesizing aesthetic values. The result — massive sculptures of interlocking wood, Zen-like gardens of granite and stone slides—is now seen as a powerful artistic link between East and West. Using Noguchi's personal correspondence and interviews with artists, patrons, assistants and lovers, Hayden Herrera creates another compulsively readable biography of one of the 20th century's most important artists. Noguchi was elusive, forever uprooting himself to reinvigorate what he called the "keen edge of orig