Art/Work: J.B. Blunk, Isamu Noguchi and the Intersection of Sculpture and Skilled Labor

Abstract

This paper investigates how modernist artists in the postwar United States navigated the intersection of sculpture and skilled labor. The sculpture of Northern California artist J. B. Blunk evinces a formal debt to Isamu Noguchi, his friend and mentor. Both artists made biomorphic sculptures in wood, many of which were interactive. From the late 1930s through the 1960s, Noguchi was a prolific set designer, creating a wide variety of stage sets for Martha Graham and other New York City choreographers. Blunk’s signature format is the public seating sculpture. Sited primarily in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, these communal benches sculpted from reclaimed wood are among his most visible and acclaimed works. Though related in visual terms, the functional woodworks of Blunk and Noguchi have been read in very different ways and occupy disparate niches in American visual culture. The article examines these artworks within the framework of labor, and demonstrates that this gulf is due, in part, to their differing stances toward the skill sets of the building, manufacturing, and design professions on which their practices relied.