AN EXAMINATION OF BARNETT NEWMAN AND ISAMU NOGUCHI S ARTISTIC WORKS IN RELATION TO WORLD WAR II PHOTOJOURNALISM IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, LIFE, AND TIME

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1 AN EXAMINATION OF BARNETT NEWMAN AND ISAMU NOGUCHI S ARTISTIC WORKS IN RELATION TO WORLD WAR II PHOTOJOURNALISM IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, LIFE, AND TIME by REBECCA D. ROBINSON DIANNE M. BRAGG, COMMITTEE CO-CHAIR MATTHEW D. BUNKER, COMMITTEE CO-CHAIR RACHEL E. STEPHENS A THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Journalism in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2015

2 Copyright Rebecca D. Robinson 2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

3 ABSTRACT The events of World War II fundamentally changed Barnett Newman and Isamu Noguchi, both Abstract Expressionist artists. Although neither artist served in the military, their distinctive heritages influenced how they reacted to three major occurrences during the War: the Holocaust, the Japanese internment, and the detonation of the atomic bombs. Upon seeing the images of liberated concentration camps publicized in popular media, Newman, a Polish-Jew, actually destroyed most of his pre-war art, arguing that after such violations of human rights, what subject was worthy of painting? Noguchi, a Japanese-American, spent much of his childhood on the West Coast, and was interred in a Japanese camp following Pearl Harbor, an experience that forever altered the rationale behind his sculpture. Lastly, the image of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and Nagasaki transformed the entire post-war generation, not just Newman and Noguchi. Using the images promulgated in three popular publications the New York Times, Life magazine, and Time magazine this study seeks to examine the stories and the photojournalism that had a direct influence on the two artists War and post-war works. Additionally, artist statements accompanying the selected pieces will further illustrate just how influential these popular media outlets were to their subsequent creations throughout the next decades. ii

4 DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to everyone who helped me and offered me guidance throughout my writing and research process, particularly my wonderful parents and amazing friends. iii

5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is my honor to have the opportunity to thank the numerous individuals who helped me with this thesis project. Foremost, I am ever grateful to Dianne Bragg, my committee co-chair, mentor, and friend. It was in her Journalism History class that this paper was first begun, and I am so thankful for her encouragement and guidance as I expanded my work into a thesis. I would also like to thank Rachel Stephens for her extensive knowledge of art history, her detailed input, and her editing suggestions. Lastly, I am thankful to Matthew Bunker for his support during this whole process. Additionally, I am forever appreciative to Wilson Lowrey for all he has done throughout my graduate career, from answering my initial questions, guiding me through registration, and aiding me with any and all inquiries. I could have not done this thesis without the unwavering support of my parents, Mark and Joan Robinson. Both have sacrificed and contributed so much for the benefit of my higher education and I am so thankful to have them in my life. Finally, thank you to all of my amazing friends in graduate school who shared in my pain of writing and researching a thesis. You are all the greatest. iv

6 CONTENTS Abstract... ii Dedication... iii Acknowledgements... iv List of Figures... vi viii Introduction... 1 Chapter One: The Roots of Abstract Expressionism... 4 Chapter Two: Barnett Newman and the Holocaust Chapter Three: Isamu Noguchi and the Japanese Internment Chapter Four: Newman, Noguchi, and the Atomic Bombs Conclusion References Appendix v

7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Edward Hopper, Nighthawks... 5 Figure 2. Jackson Pollock, Mural Iowa State University Figure 3. Adolph Gottlieb, Augury Figure 4. Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimus Figure 5. Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show, Life Figure 6. Isamu Noguchi, Metamorphosis Figure 7. Barnett Newman, Onement I Figure 8. Barnett Newman, Two Edges Figure 9. Barnett Newman, Cathedra Figure 10. Mass Burial (Nordhausen), Time Figure 11. Human Cordwood (Buchenwald), Time Figure 12. Starved Prisoner (Belsen), Time Figure 13. Atrocity Report Issued by Army, New York Times Figure 14. Atrocities, Life Figure 15. Frank Stella, Arbeit Macht Frei Figure 16. Barnett Newman, First Station Figure 17. Barnett Newman, Fourth Station vi

8 Figure 18. Robert E. Mates, Barnett Newman s Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani Figure 19. Barnett Newman, Be II Figure 20. U.S. Declares War, New York Times Figure 21. WAR, Life Figure 22. Attack on Hawaii, Life Figure 23. The Morning of Dec. 7 at Pearl Harbor, New York Times Figure 24. How to Tell Japs From the Chinese, Life Figure 25. Isamu Noguchi, The World is a Foxhole (I am a Foxhole) Figure 26. Isamu Noguchi, My Arizona Figure 27. Isamu Noguchi, Monument to Heroes Figure 28. Isamu Noguchi, Kouros Figure 29. Statue of a kouros (youth) Figure 30. Speaking of Pictures, Life Figure 31. First Atomic Bomb Already Obsolete, New York Times Figure 32. First Atomic Bomb Already Obsolete, New York Times Figure 33. War s End, Life Figure 34. What Ended the War, Life Figure 35. W.H. Lawrence, Visit to Tokyo, New York Times Figure 36. Jay Waltz, Atom Bombs Made in 3 Hidden Cities, New York Times Figure 37. Atomic Bomb: Manhattan Project, Life vii

9 Figure 38. Atomic Bomb: Many Years of Atom Smashing Proceed Bomb, Life Figure 39. The Atomic Bomb, Life Figure 40. The Peace City, Life Figure 41. Barnett Newman, Pagan Void Figure 42. Hiroshima After the Bomb, Time Figure 43. Isamu Noguchi, Two Bridges for Peace Park Figure 44. Isamu Noguchi, Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima Figure 45. Two Years After The Atomic Bomb Fell In Hiroshima, New York Times Figure 46. Japan Wars On U.S. and Britain, New York Times Figure 47. Lawrence E. Davies, Japanese Seizes in Raid on Coast, New York Times Figure 48. The New War in the Pacific, New York Times Figure 49. The New War in the Pacific, New York Times Figure 50. The New War in the Pacific, New York Times Figure Are Arrested Here, New York Times viii

10 Introduction Abstract Expressionism, or the New York School as it is sometimes called, gained traction in New York City in the years during and immediately following World War II. Grounded in an emphasis on the Sublime, or the absolute emotions of the individual, and the human subconscious, Abstract Expressionists were influenced by European Existentialist thinkers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as by American Naturalists, such as Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Art historians such as Andy Morris and John Coplans argue that the converging of these philosophical schools of thought made the Abstract Expressionist movement the first that was distinctly American. 1 Traditionally, art historians have focused their scholarly work on these philosophical underpinnings, examining artist statements, analyzing the socio-political environments with which the Abstract Expressionists associated themselves, and deconstructing the artists works. While these artists were shaped significantly by particular viewpoints popular during the late 1930s and into the 1950s Marxism, Trotskyism, or Jungian psychoanalysis, for instance the events of World War II had just as much effect on the Abstract Expressionists work and means of art-making as contemporaneous literature and thought. 1 Morris states, The conduciveness of New York to act as a [center] for this burgeoning [postwar] period of artistic production and consumption was not only aided by its status as an already-established major American city following the skyscraper boom of the 1910s and 1920s and the creation of a major contemporary art gallery in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1929, but also by its demographic claims to be able to seize the space of advanced European painting. Andy Morris, The cultural geographies of Abstract Expressionism: Painters, critics, dealers and the production of an Atlantic art, Social and Cultural Geography, 6, no. 3 (June 2005): ; Coplans likewise writes, A special condition of the American scene (significant to the generation of the New American Painters) was an attitude which rejected any distinct stylistic affiliation to a particular painter or movement [like previous American movements such as Regionalism or scene painting]. John Coplans, Serial Imagery, in Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, edited by Frances Colpitt (Cambridge, England, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 31. 1

11 Using art historical research and artist statements as a foundation, this study focuses mainly on the content of popular mass media that inspired Abstract Expressionists specifically painter Barnett Newman and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Because both artists lived and worked in New York City during and after the Second World War, they would have had direct contact with the New York Times, Life magazine, and Time magazine, the three publications on which this study centers. Furthermore, reviews of Newman and Noguchi s work, as well as features on the two artists both appeared on numerous occasions in the New York Times. Also, such as Jackson Pollock, were featured prominently in Life magazine during Meanwhile, Noguchi was profiled in a 1946 Life spread, and in 1951, Newman appeared in Life in a photograph with the Irascibles. 2 Thus, the reporting on war events was as readily available to both of these men as it was to many Americans; art historian Irving Sandler stated, news of the war was unremitting, disseminated by newspapers, magazines, radio, photographs, and posters. 3 Instead of focusing on art critiques and artist letters that appeared in the New York Times and Life magazine, which historians Michael Leja and Sandler covered in their respective books, Reframing Abstract Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism and the American Experience: A Reevaluation, this study examines the news stories and photographs of the Holocaust, the Japanese internment, and the dropping of the atomic bombs as they appeared in print. 4 By investigating how these primary source materials from the War years influenced Newman and Noguchi, this study not only 2 The Irascibles were a group of 18 New York School artists (including Newman, Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Adolph Gottlieb) who, in 1950, penned an open letter to Roland L. Redmond, the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for his lack of inclusion of modern art in an upcoming exhibit. ( Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show, Life, January 15, 1951, 34.) 3 Irving Sandler, Abstract Expressionism and the American Experience: A Reevaluation (New York: Hard Press Editions, 2009), Perhaps the most prolific citation of the New York Times comes from Leja in his book, Reframing Abstract Expressionism (Yale University Press, 1993) when he uses it to supplement his argument with quotations from Times art critics Edward Alden Jewell and later John Canaday. Additionally, Leja frequently mentions the letters and opinion pieces sent to the Times by artists Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, particularly those written during mid-1943, when critics and the public began to question the movement s validity. 2

12 expands on existing art historical studies, but also provides a journalistic perspective on the New York School, which has not been approached in any prior research. 3

13 CHAPTER ONE: The History of Abstract Expressionism The word abstract has a technical meaning. It means to take from. As a method, it signifies selecting one element from a myriad of elements, for the purpose of emphasis. Robert Motherwell, In the early 1930s, dictatorial regimes began spreading through Europe as a result of the dramatic realignment of political power stemming from World War I. With Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and even Emperor Hirohito as far away as Japan, European abstractionists Salvador Dalí, André Masson, and Pablo Picasso among them began fleeing to the United States in order to escape the fascist and totalitarian regimes rising to power throughout Europe. Their first stop was New York City, which triggered an influx of European abstraction, an artistic ideology and practice popular since the early 1900s. 6 Many American galleries, especially the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, eagerly welcomed these artists. Alfred H. Barr, MoMA s director, organized two Euro-centric exhibitions in the late 1930s, Cubism and Abstract Art and Dada, Surrealism, and Fantastic Art. These shows provided the future New York School artists direct exposure to European abstraction and allowed them to begin forming their own responses to the concept of abstract art, still a relatively unexplored idea in America. 7 5 Robert Goodnaugh, ed. Artist Sessions at Studio 35 (1950), in Issues in Abstract Expressionism: The Artist-Run Periodicals (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1990), The first use of the term abstract expressionism was in 1919 by German critic Oswald Herzog in the art magazine Der Sturm to describe the work of European abstractionists. Helen A. Harrison, The Birth of Abstract Expressionism, in Abstract Expressionism: The International Context (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), Robert C. Hobbs, Early Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism, Art Journal, 45, no. 4 (Winter 1985):

14 During the 1930s in the United States, Regionalism and Social Realism dominated the art market, Regionalism focusing on pastoral scenes and rural agrarian life, and Social Realism concentrating on the isolation of urban life. Although Social Realism reflected the darker side of American existence, seen in Edward Hopper s famous Nighthawks (1942), both movements were objectively and figuratively oriented, bearing limited, if any, interest in abstraction (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Edward Hopper, Nighthawks 8 With the recent conclusion of the First World War and the dawning of the Second, Abstract Expressionists claimed that these movements were inadequate for depicting the human suffering happening abroad. Interestingly, historian Helen A. Harrison contends that an analogy between aesthetic attitudes in post-world War I Germany and post-world War II may be drawn. 9 Following the impersonal, realist images propagated by the German government during the First World War, many German artists began investigating abstraction, even establishing the Bauhaus, which would be shut down by the Nazis in The same weariness of Realism that occurred in post-war Germany spread through America, primarily following the attack on Pearl Harbor. 8 Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942, oil on canvas, accessed 1 Mar < 9 Harrison, 15. 5

15 Until 1941, many would-be Abstract Expressionists actually worked for the Federal Arts Project before becoming disheartened with the Wartime atmosphere and politics this is where many art historians argue the artists appreciation of overwhelming, mural-sized canvases was born. 10 By June 1940, the Nazis had successfully invaded and occupied Paris, effectively cutting off the cultural center from the rest of the world. Although many European artists had escaped Hitler s army and were producing work in America, Paris s absence left a noticeable void on gallery walls in the United States. 11 To fill the now-vacant exhibition spaces, curators and gallery owners turned inward and started to feature American abstract artists, who were beginning to develop their styles at the end of the late 1930s. Although many of the galleries heavily featured the Surrealists, the Abstract Expressionists became vehemently opposed to the Surrealist manner of art-making due to its finished and culturally prescribed look. 12 Peggy Guggenheim, a wealthy New York heiress, opened her Art of This Century Gallery in 1942, signaling that the artistic impetus had shifted during the War from Paris to New York. Although the gallery primarily featured the celebrated European Surrealists, it was there that some of the early Abstract Expressionists, such as Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, had their first solo shows and first real exposure to the American art scene. 13 Betty Parsons, another gallery owner who had fled from the Nazis herself, worked closely with Barnett Newman to produce Abstract Expressionist shows in New York in the early 1940s. Newman who did not begin his own paintings until 1945 was fascinated by the idea of primitivism, believing that all terror and suffering of ancient peoples reflected the crisis of 10 Hess, Michael Leja, Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), Hobbs, Leja, 79. 6

16 modern man during World War II. 14 Thus, many of his curated exhibitions and early works were influenced by primitive art Pre-Columbian artifacts specifically and tragic mythologies, such as the Myth of Sisyphus or Oedipus Rex. 15 Arguably, the most defining exhibition of the Abstract Expressionist period came in 1946 when the movement was rising in popularity and drawing the attention of critics. Though the New York artists refused to form a cohesive group, fearful it would impede their individualistic and introspective means of producing work, they were frequently organized together in exhibitions because curators had no other ideas of how to arrange the paintings. Howard Putzel, a New York gallery owner, organized a show in 1945 titled, A Problem for Critics, which featured the Abstract Expressionists artwork as a cohesive school, the first exhibition to make such a claim on the artists identities. 16 Putzel s display was met with critical confusion, and it was not until nearly one year later that the movement gained its official name. Writing for the New Yorker in 1946, art critic Robert Coates used the term Abstract Expressionism to describe the gestural, animated canvases of expressionist Hans Hofmann. 17 From this moment, the phrase not only applied to the German-American painter, but to the rest of the New York abstractionists as well. As a result, this gave the artists a group identity whether they wanted one or not. Prior to 1946, the first attempt at creating an Abstract Expressionist group was in 1935 with the founding of The Ten. Including Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, The Ten rejected all forms of geometric abstraction, arguing that it was incapable of capturing the turbulent and trying spirit of the War years because of its over-emphasis on rationale and logic. The Ten and other Abstract Expressionists sought to reinvent painting by creating new images that were in accord with the 14 Hess, David Anfam, Transatlantic Anxieties, Especially Bill s Folly, in Abstract Expressionism: The International Context, edited by Joan Marter (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), Leja, Ibid, 32. 7

17 anxious and despairing feelings that they and other people throughout the world were feeling. One year later, in 1936, the American Abstract Artists (AAA) group formed, but most of the notable Expressionists did not join. 18 While the artists were concerned that a group identity would stifle their individualism, some used the formation of cohesive networks as a practical tool for easier participation in gallery exhibits and as a way of drawing critical attention to their pieces. If critics could more easily identify the artists, the more likely they were to write about their work. Additionally, by the late 1930s and early 1940s, some of the artists particularly Rothko and Gottlieb and Newman and Clyfford Still had formed friendships and frequently shared ideologies and influences. 19 These exceptions aside, the artists preferred to isolate themselves. At a Studio 35 roundtable discussion in 1950, sculptor David Hare stated, I see no need for a community. An artist is always lonely. We shouldn t be accepted by the public. As soon as we are accepted, we are no longer artists but decorators. 20 At the same discussion, de Kooning added, It would be disastrous to name ourselves. 21 Regardless of how the artists wanted to identify themselves, by 1952, New York critics almost exclusively began referring to the New York School artists as the Abstract Expressionists. It was that same year that critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg the two most prolific writers on the new School coined their terms to refer to the varying branches of Abstract Expressionism that were starting to emerge. Rosenberg took to calling the paintsplattered, energetic compositions of Pollock and de Kooning Action Painting, while 18 Sandler, Leja, 23; See also: David Anfam, Abstract Expressionism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), Goodnaugh, Ibid,

18 Greenberg denoted the vast, color-blocked paintings of Newman and Still as Color Field Painting. 22 The Branches of Abstract Expressionism Around 1947 and into 1948, the Abstract Expressionists began to move toward distinct divisions of art making. Many gestural artists focused heavily on the primitive past and had come to a general agreement that following Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Nazi eugenics experiments, science had become bankrupt, and logic was now wholly unable to be represented on canvas. 23 The sensible method of geometric abstraction, seen in Piet Mondrian s primary-colored grids or Wassily Kandinsky s Suprematist blocks, was no longer relevant. Thus, many artists turned inward to examine themselves and their subconscious minds in hopes of attaining the Sublime in their work. The Mythmakers Man s first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void. Barnett Newman, October 1947 in the Partisan Review 24 In 1947, Newman helped organize the Ideographic Picture exhibit at the Betty Parsons gallery. According to historian Nancy Jachec, Newman s intent was to look past the Surrealists 22 Hess, Hobbs, 300; (See also: Leja, and Hess, 11). 24 Nancy Jachec, The Philosophy and Politics of Abstract Expressionism, (New York: Cambridge University, 2000), 90. 9

19 inability to portray the atrocity of wartime events and find a timeless form of expression. 25 Newman, and artists such as Pollock, Gottlieb, and Rothko, turned toward various ancient cultures to find their answers. Pollock was particularly drawn to Mexican art, intently studying the murals of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, because for him they represented human turmoil on a heroic scale. 26 His Mural (1943) was a perfect example of the Expressionists mythmaking, its gestural, unconscious swirling marks suggestive of writhing, tragic figures (see Figure 2). Gottlieb s primitive explorations, such as Augury (1945) (see Figure 3), were more literal and totemic than Pollock or Newman s, however he retained the same belief that all mans tragedy was essentially the same. Figure 2. Jackson Pollock, Mural Iowa State University Ibid, 90. See also Amy Lyford, Isamu Noguchi s Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, (Los Angeles: The Getty Foundation and the University of California Press, 2013), David Anfam, Abstract Expressionism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), Jackson Pollock, Mural Iowa State University, 1946, oil on canvas, accessed 24 Aug < 10

20 Figure 3. Adolph Gottlieb, Augury When Newman started producing his own works full-time in 1947, he also wrote extensively about his motives for exploring the primitive and mythic legends to express his feelings of a post-war world. Interestingly, Newman s inspirations also gave him a very Americanist, anti-european stance. He held that primitive American cultures were more concerned with introspective, emotional representation, whereas ancient European cultures created art that embodied mock heroic...superficial realism. 29 This was the same stance the Abstract Expressionists cast upon the Surrealists and Cubists, one that was concerned with the European ideal of beauty over the self. The crudeness of the Mythmakers painting also distinguished it from the refined facture of the Surrealists. 30 Because audiences easily understood primitive, mythic references and images, the Abstract Expressionists drew upon the most terrible and monstrous imagery to evoke the atomic bombs and Holocaust Adolph Gottlieb, Augury, 1945, oil on canvas, accessed 24. Aug < 29 Leja, Sandler, Ibid,

21 The Sublime vs. The Beautiful Just as in their art, the Abstract Expressionists believed there was a distinct difference between the American notion of the Sublime and the European form. In writing for the Abstractionist journal Tiger s Eye, Newman argued that, European art was hampered by its allegiance to beauty, and maintained the Europeans could not capture the essence of modern tragedy because [their works were] bound to the objects of a premodern culture. For Newman and many other Abstract Expressionists, the Sublime stemmed from the absolute emotions of the individual. 32 Eighteenth-century European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant or Hegel were unable to reach a pure Sublime because, as art historian Ann Eden Gibson posits, the two built a theory of beauty, in which the sublime is at the bottom of a structure of kinds of beauty, thus making it a decoration instead of a raw emotional reaction to unconscious cues. 33 Because of the War atmosphere in which Newman was writing, he held that the Sublime was also the antithesis of beauty, a response that was misshapen and ugly, vast, obscure, immeasurable, and unfathomable. 34 The idea of the Sublime was soon translated onto the enormous, color-swathed canvases of the Color Field painters and the intricate painted webs of the Gesture Painters. Whereas the Color-Field artists used their gigantic, overwhelmingly saturated canvases to immerse the viewer in their reality such as Newman s Vir Heroicus Sublimus ( ) (see Figure 4) the Gesture painters often turned toward psychology to find their answers to the question of the Sublime. The most popular psychoanalyst to influence the Abstract Expressionists was Carl Jung, who argued visual imagery took precedence over verbal texts in disclosing how the mind 32 Jachec, Ann Eden Gibson, Issues in Abstract Expressionism: The Artist-Run Periodicals (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1990), Sandler,

22 functioned. 35 Additionally, Jung s belief that all humans unconscious minds were the same regardless of their society s advancement or primitivism was in accord with the artists views. Figure 4. Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimus 36 In dealing with the unconscious mind, the New York School artists began dabbling in automatism, a major tenet of the Surrealist movement. Biomorphic, anatomical shapes began to appear in their works, not by design, but rather through insentient mark making. In connecting wholly to oneself, the artists claimed to be painting their innermost thoughts, feelings, and reactions onto canvas. The canvas became part of the artist, and as Rosenberg stated in 1952, at a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze, or express an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. 37 During the mid- and late-1940s, the Abstract Expressionists concerned themselves with producing renderings of the Terrible Sublime, which suitably conveyed the War s terror to 35 Sandler, Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimus, , oil on canvas, accessed 24. Aug < 37 Harold Rosenberg, The American Action Painters, in Abstract Expressionism: A Critical Record (New York: Yale University Press, 1990),

23 audiences. However, by the early 1950s, America s post-war economy flourished and the artists began brightening up their colors, increasing the sizes of their canvases, and opening up their picture planes to invite audiences even deeper into their works. This second wave of branchoriented artworks became known as the Exalted or American Sublime. 38 In engaging the Exalted Sublime, the Abstract Expressionists divided further into either Gesture Painters or Color-Field Painters. The Outliers: Race, Gender, and Sculpture in Abstract Expressionism When discussing the New York School, painting is often the first medium that comes to mind, as it was the most prevalent way of creating art within this school. Additionally, white, heterosexual, middle class men mostly executed the paintings considered to be canonically Abstract Expressionist. However, this excludes a wide array of artists including sculptors who worked and personally associated with the artists. Lee Krasner s work was often overlooked or referred to secondarily because she was a woman in a male-dominated field. She was also married to Jackson Pollock, who had been dubbed the greatest living painter in the United States by Life magazine in Hedda Sterne, an almost-forgotten Abstract Expressionist painter, was featured prominently in Life s 1951 Irascibles photograph (see Figure 5), but has been largely ignored by art historical texts. The same holds true for other female artists of the period such as Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning (Willem de Kooning s wife), and Joan Mitchell. 38 Sandler, Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?, Life, August 8, 1949, 42 43,

24 Figure 5. Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show, Life Artists working in other media besides painting are also habitually omitted from Abstract Expressionist study. Sculptors such as Isamu Noguchi, Herbert Ferber, and David Hare aligned themselves with the traditional Abstract Expressionist artists and held many of the same philosophies as their counterparts. Ferber and Hare attended the Studio 35 roundtable discussions in April 1950, and Noguchi wrote about his influences and ideologies in Tiger s Eye stating, I take the role of the sculptor to be of an entirely different sort than painting. It exists in space a new being, giving space its new meaning. It is matter made human, the world made livable. If the first weapon had no meaning until fashioned by sculpture, neither has the atom. 41 In referencing the atomic bomb, Noguchi, as well as other Abstract Expressionist sculptors, addressed the same social issues of the era as the painters. Like the painters, sculptors such as David Smith, Theodore Rosak, Seymour Lipton, [and] Herbert Ferber responded to World Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show, Life, January 15, 1951, Gibson,

25 War II and cold war mentality by using monstrous subjects. 42 However, while their ideologies may have mirrored the painters, sculptors were frequently excluded from exhibits. Art historian David Anfam points out that because sculptors, and even studio photographers, were viewed secondarily to painters their work fared poorly in the art market. With no buyers, it was hard to produce work or receive recognition. 43 Noguchi was one of the few exceptions to this rule, though. His work was shown in several exhibits and was frequently reviewed and featured in the New York Times. 44 Several of these Abstract Expressionist sculptors and other artists such as Arshile Gorky and Motherwell had met in the mid-1930s when Surrealist André Breton introduced them to each other. 45 Breton had formed a loose-knit Surrealist group upon his arrival to New York City, and the European style translated into many of the early Abstractionists works. Furthermore, many were close friends; Noguchi and Gorky made a cross-country trip to California in 1941, and Noguchi even met with the troubled artist the day of his suicide to try and calm his friend down. 46 Furthermore, some of Surrealism s underpinnings can be seen in Noguchi s work, such as Metamorphosis (1946) (see Figure 6). 42 Sandler, Anfam, Abstract Expressionism, A small selection of Noguchi s New York Times features include: Howard Devree, In Local Art Galleries: A Score of Exhibitions, New York Times, February 24, 1935; New York: Art for China s Sake, New York Times, December 12, 1937; Betty Pepiskitakamura, Artist At Home, New York Times, August 31, 1952; Thomas M. Foldschicago, Americans Again: Chicago s Cross-Section of Painting And Sculpture Is Avant-Garde, New York Times, December 6, 1959; George O Brien, Factory Into Home, New York Times, April 8, 1962; Barbara Plumb, New Designs Shown in Japanese Paper Lanterns, New York Times, March 31, Sandler, Sam Hunter, Isamu Noguchi (New York: Abbeville Press, Inc. Publishers, 1978),

26 Figure 6. Isamu Noguchi, Metamorphosis Noguchi, being of mixed heritage Japanese and Scotch-American was further alienated from Abstract Expressionist circles. Many early critics, such as Thomas Hess, as well as art historians view Noguchi as peripheral to artists such as Pollock and Newman. 48 Historian Amy Lyford argues that because Noguchi was of Asian descent, his primitive and mythological influences could not been seen as such, but rather just an extension of his ethnicity. She states: Had Noguchi s work, as [art historian Ann Eden] Gibson suggests, been read as calligraphic performance and an example of spontaneous Asian writing he might have been accepted as a member of New York s avant-garde. But the Asian references were not Asian enough to pass muster as calligraphic art with the scholars and critics who wrote about the first histories of the New York School Isamu Noguchi, Metamorphosis, 1946, marble, accessed 24 Aug < 48 Amy Lyford, Isamu Noguchi s Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, (Los Angeles: The Getty Foundation and the University of California Press, 2013), Ibid,

27 Nonetheless, Noguchi s ideological beliefs and manners of art-making affiliated him with other Abstract Expressionist sculptors, thus cementing his role in the movement. The same can be said of Alma Thomas, an African-American female painter, and Louise Bourgeois, a French female sculptor: regardless of their race, gender, and artistic medium, they are undoubtedly Abstract Expressionists. 50 Critiques of Abstract Expressionism Any artistic movement has its critics, and Abstract Expressionism was no different. Life magazine ran a roundtable discussion on the subject of modern, abstract art in 1948 in an attempt to better explain the burgeoning movement to the public. The magazine wrote that the layman viewer is unable to grasp two characteristics of modern art that separates it from traditional paintings: First of all, he finds it difficult to understand; secondly, he often finds that it does not concern itself with the beautiful but with the ugly or the strange. Author Aldous Huxley, one of the Life panelists, stated in his essay, Art and the Obvious, that he found modern, abstract art to be a failure, and that its artists were lacking in talent. Huxley believed the Abstract Expressionists had misread the great obvious truths of human life in their pronunciations of the unconscious and the Sublime. 51 Beginning in 1959, New York Times art critic John Canaday made known his distaste for the Abstract Expressionists work, criticizing not only the art, but also the artists themselves, calling them cheats, freaks, charlatans, greedy lackeys, and senseless dupes. 52 He also 50 For a comprehensive examination of the political and racial tensions within the New York School, see: Ann Eden Gibson, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). 51 A Life Round Table on Modern Art, Life, October 11, 1948, Sandler,

28 condemned the abstractionist journal It Is as esoteric balderdash. 53 In 1961, after nearly two years of insults, forty-nine artists, critics, and curators wrote an open letter to Canaday in the Times denouncing his abuses toward the Abstract Expressionists: To keep referring to these [insults] in order to impugn the whole, instead of attempting to deal seriously with the work, of the movement, is the activity not of a critic but of an agitator. 54 Intriguingly, in a 1962 review of Canaday s Embattled Critic: Views on Modern Art, New York Times writer John Richardson claimed the critic never directly referenced any specific artists or pieces in his columns. Richardson states that readers must also bear in mind that the quickest way for an art critic to win a reputation and a following is to promote or demote an artist or movement. 55 Regardless of Canaday s motives for so harshly critiquing the Abstract Expressionists, there were politicians who believed the American Expressionist movement bore the underpinnings of communist thought, and should therefore be regarded as dangerous. Perhaps the most famous proponent of this idea was Republican Senator George Dondero, who denounced non-academic twentieth-century painting as Communist subversion. 56 This notion of Abstract Expressionism was only popular for a few years. In 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower arranged for the artists works to go on a tour of Europe in order to promote the American ideal of freedom and expression. Eisenhower who wrote a foreword for The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin supposed that if American culture reached European nations before Communism, the Communist threat could be thwarted John Canaday, In the Gloaming, New York Times, September 11, Letter to the New York Times, New York Times, February 26, John Richardson, An Exposed Position, New York Times, May 6, Anfam, Abstract Expressionism, Morris,

29 A variety of factors, such as psychoanalysis and primitive cultures, influenced the shaping of the Abstract Expressionists modes of art making. Perhaps most importantly, though were the events of World War II that the artists saw depicted in popular media of the era. When news of the Holocaust started trickling into America in late 1939, the stories and photographs that ran in the New York Times, Life and Time magazines immediately affected Barnett Newman. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the subsequent internment of Japanese- Americans, Isamu Noguchi realized for the first time a color line [he] had never known before. 58 Finally, when the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, both Newman and Noguchi were confronted with overwhelming news images and stories of the horrors unfolding in Japan. This study examines the journalistic stories and photographs in the New York Times, Life and Time, detailing these three events as they related to Newman and Noguchi s artistic and personal sensibilities within the Abstract Expressionist movement. To achieve a consistent timeline, these events will be explored chronologically (with some overlap) beginning with the Holocaust. 58 Isamu Noguchi, I Become A Nisei, in Isamu Noguchi s Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, by Amy Lyford (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013),

30 CHAPTER TWO: Barnett Newman and the Holocaust Photographers have sent pictures so horrible that no newspaper would normally use them, but they were less horrible than the reality, for they could not portray the stench of filth and death which clings to one s nostrils for days after one has visited a concentration camp. 59 On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops stumbled upon Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps the most infamous of the Nazi concentration camps. 60 What they found horrified them: stacks of emaciated bodies, inmates riddled with disease and starvation, and tell tale signs of terrible tortures. But Auschwitz was only the beginning. Three months later, on April 11, U.S. troops liberated 28,000 inmates from Buchenwald; four days later, on April 15, British troops freed 60,000 prisoners at Bergen-Belsen. Finally, on April 29, 1945 one day before Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker American troops liberated 32,000 inmates from Dachau. 61 News of the Nazi camps quickly found its way to the front pages of the New York Times and Time and Life magazines. While the existence of the camps had been known since the early 1940s, Allied governments thought many of the accounts were stories, as German atrocities from World War I had often been grossly inflated. 62 After the liberations, Allied officials and a group of newspaper editors, including Joseph Pulitzer, toured the liberated camps to make certain that what they had been printing in their papers had not been fabricated. In response, 59 Harold Denny, The World Must Not Forget : What was done in the German prison camps emphasized the problem of what to do with people who are morally sick, New York Times, May 6, Auschwitz, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed October 14, 2014, 61 Timeline of Events: , United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, last modified June 20, 2014, accessed October 14, 2014, 62 Jane Brooks, Uninterested in anything except food : the work of nurses feeding the liberated inmates at Bergen-Belsen, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21:

31 Pulitzer wrote, We [the editors] were asked to go there to verify the conditions reported in the press. We found that they were not exaggerated. As a matter of fact, they were understated. 63 Photojournalists, such as George Rodger and Margaret Bourke-White, began documenting the images from the concentration camps for Americans to see the crimes the Nazis had perpetrated. One such American was Abstract Expressionist painter Barnett Newman, who was living in New York City at the time of the War s end. Although Newman s response to the horrors of Auschwitz and Dachau were not immediate, he slowly began commenting as to the War s impact on his means of art making. In a 1966 television interview, Newman stated, the feeling I had at the time of the War in 41 was that the world was coming to an end. And to the extent that the world was coming to an end, the whole issue of painting, I felt, was over because it was impossible to paint flowers, figures, etcetera, and so the crisis moved around the problem of what can I really paint. 64 Newman s first showing of his fourteen Stations of the Cross and a fifteenth painting, Be II ( ) was held From April to May of that year (1966). Art historians have argued that this series was a response albeit delayed one to Newman s Jewish identity after witnessing images of the Holocaust. However, before examining either the media s coverage of the Holocaust or Newman s painting of the Stations, it is necessary to briefly discuss the artist s earlier works and philosophical influences in order to establish a framework for his post-war thought. 63 U.S. Editors Back, Urge Harsh Peace: 15 of 18 Who Viewed Atrocity Camps of Nazis Declare Horrors All Too True, New York Times, May 9, Mark Godfrey, Barnett Newman s Stations of the Cross and the Memory of the Holocaust, in Reconsidering Barnett Newman, edited by Melissa Ho (Philadelphia: Publishing Department Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2005),

32 Barnett Newman: Artist and Intellectual Barnett Newman was born on January 29, 1905, in Manhattan s Lower East Side, to Abraham and Anna Newman, Jewish immigrants from Łomża, Poland. The eldest of four, Newman was exposed to the Jewish faith at an early age. While his father did not make Newman or his siblings attend synagogue regularly, Abraham Newman supported the National Hebrew School in the Bronx and also had a tutor teach his children Hebrew prayers. 65 In 1927, Newman graduated from City College of New York with a degree in philosophy. Hoping to become an artist, his dreams were soon thwarted by his father s wish to have his son help with the family clothing business, Newman Clothing Company. Newman agreed, supposing the job would only last a few years. However when the Great Depression hit, Newman took on a second job as a substitute art teacher in New York s public schools. 66 Newman, an outspoken anarchist, generally believed that any work for governmental institutions did not qualify as honest work, and refused employment with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for this very reason, despite the extra income it would have generated. 67 Although Newman s contemporaries, such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, worked for the WPA, he held that working under such an organization would stifle his free artistic expression. 68 During the late 1930s and early 1940s, most of Newman s work was intellectual and curatorial, not artistic. In 1944, he organized an exhibition of Pre-Columbian art at the Betty Parsons Gallery. Two years later, in 1946, he prepared a showing of Northwest Coast Indian painting, and in 1947 Newman organized The Ideographic Picture exhibition, both at Betty 65 Melissa Ho, Chronology, in Barnett Newman, edited by Ann Temkin (Philadelphia: Philadephia Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2002), Ibid, Richard Shiff, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, and Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné (New York: The Barnett Newman Foundation and Yale University Press, 2004), Ann Temkin, Barnett Newman on Exhibition, in Barnett Newman, edited by Ann Temkin (Philadelphia Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2002),

33 Parsons. Despite Newman s presence at galleries around New York City, he did not begin making art full-time until around 1947, preferring instead to write. He wrote extensively on the matter of the Sublime ( The Sublime Is Now ) and pictorial subject matter ( The Ideographic Picture, The First Man Was an Artist, and The Object and the Image ). In fact, when Newman did start exhibiting his early works in shows, critics were generally hostile toward him, likely because of his reputation as a man of words, not images. 69 Onement I On January 29, 1948, Newman s forty-third birthday, he completed what was to be a paramount turning point in his artistic repertoire. Onement I is considered to be the first of Newman s true zip paintings; it was a thickly layered red-orange zip situated on a thinly painted field of brown (see Figure 7). 70 He had created earlier versions of what would evolve into his zip in Moment (1946) and Two Edges (1948), but neither of these affected Newman to the degree that Onement I did (see Figure 8). 71 While the painting may appear unfinished to spectators and critics, as the strip of masking tape still rests under the orange zip, Newman was wholly astounded by what he had created. In fact, he ceased painting for eight to nine months after the completion of Onement I to ruminate on the new direction his art was taking. When he began again, in mid-october 1948, Newman entered his most fruitful period of artistic 69 Ibid, Newman s zip was a thinly painted line intersecting his paintings. The purpose of the zip was not to divide the canvas, but to unite the two resulting halves through color. Harold Rosenberg commented in 1978 that the zip was a channel of spiritual tension, introduced on the canvas with infinite care for its placement. (Harold Rosenberg, Barnett Newman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1978), 52). Additionally, Armin Zweite argues that Newman s zip, [i]n a figurative sense, [denoted] life, energy, dynamism and power through its onomatopoeic whizzing sound. (Armin Zweite, Barnett Newman (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 1999), 71.) 71 Shiff, Mancusi-Ungaro, and Colsman-Freyberg,

34 production. 72 In a 1963 interview, Newman commented, I realized that what I had been doing up until [Onement I] was filling the void with forms [I was] involved with a kind of fantasy. [But in Onement I] I was able to say something direct and real. 73 Figure 7. Barnett Newman, Onement I Figure 8. Barnett Newman, Two Edges Linguistically, onement is an obsolete, late Middle English word, [that] does indeed mean physical, emotional, and spiritual unity. 76 This unity translated to Newman s canvas when he declared that his newfound zip did not divide the canvas, but rather united it with both the viewer and the artist. Later, art critic Harold Rosenberg would claim that Newman s zip was at length recognized by Newman as his Sign; it stood for him as his transcendental self. 77 Interestingly, the spirituality of the zip in Onement I taken in tandem with the title of the work lends itself to another interpretation. In his book Barnett Newman, art historian Armin Zweite 72 Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Barnett Newman s Pilgrimage in Paint, in Reconsidering Barnett Newman, edited by Melissa Ho (Philadelphia Publishing Department Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2005), Shiff, Mancusi-Ungaro, and Colsman-Freyberg, Barnett Newman, Onement I, 1948, oil on canvas and oil on masking tape on canvas, accessed 25 Oct < 75 Barnett Newman, Two Edges, 1948, oil on canvas, accessed 25 Oct < 76 Armin Zweite, Barnett Newman (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 1999), Rosenberg,

35 states the word onement lives on in the word atonement and especially in Day of Atonement, the name given to the most solemn feast of the Jewish year. 78 In 1948, the Day of Atonement came late, around mid-october, thus begging the question if Onement I served as Newman s own atonement for the works he previously felt inadequate. 79 As he was primarily a writer, his explorations into painting and drawing had been sporadic and stylistically inconsistent. Newman never felt as if he had achieved pure expressionism in his early art, as he often made sketches before painting. This defeated the Abstract Expressionist purpose of experiencing the Sublime. 80 Regardless of the real reason behind Newman s titling of his first zip painting, it is clear that this artistic realization, taken together with images of World War II, radically altered his philosophies on art making. Reacting to the scientific bankruptcy stemming from the Nazi eugenic experiments and the atomic bomb, Newman destroyed most of his early works in There are a few drawings that remain, but none that speak to any cohesive artistic development in Newman s early years. Perhaps, as Zweite suggests, Newman realized his art was failing to connect with the deepening crisis in history. 81 In this failed connection, Newman would have believed these works no longer communicated a sense of place or emotion to his viewer, and therefore had become a European work of art-for-art s-sake, exactly what he aimed to avoid. He said, The Depression and the War made the history of painting obsolete. 82 However, with the birth of Onement I and his own artistic rebirth coincidentally occurring on his birthday Newman found a manner of painting that suited his desire to achieve a sublime, immediate effect on his viewers. Onement I paved the way for later canonical works such as Vir 78 Zweite, Shiff, Mancusi-Ungaro, and Colsman-Freyberg, Mancusi-Ungaro, Zweite, Shiff, Mancusi-Ungaro, and Colsman-Freyberg,

36 Heroicus Sublimus ( ), Cathedra (1951) (see Figure 9), and The Stations of the Cross ( ). Figure 9. Barnett Newman, Cathedra 83 Begun during his recovery from a heart attack, The Stations have been suggested to be not only a reflection on the images of the Holocaust, but also a commentary on the frayed political and cultural atmospheres of the post-war world. Newman remarked, No painting exists than the photographs of German atrocities. The heaps of skulls are the reality of [Pavel] Tchelitchew s vision. The mass of bone piles are the reality of Picasso s bone compositions, of his sculpture. The monstrous corpses are [Max] Ernst s demons. The broken architecture, the rubble, the grotesque bodies are the surrealist reality. The sadism in those pictures, the horror and the pathos around us. 84 To make evident how the Holocaust affected Newman through The Stations, it is necessary to assess what exactly the painter had seen printed in mass media during and after World War II that lent itself to such interpretation. 83 Barnett Newman, Cathedra, 1951, oil and magna on canvas, accessed 29 Oct < 84 Barnett Newman, Surrealism and the War, in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, edited by John P. O Neill (New York: Knopf, 1990):

37 Images and Stories of the Holocaust: The New York Times, Time and Life On April 30, 1945, Time magazine published a photo series in its Foreign News section of the images captured by Allied photographers inside the newly liberated concentration camps. One image showed a mass burial at Nordhausen (see Figure 10), while another illustrated the reaction of a Red Cross volunteer to the stacks of bodies discovered at Bergen-Belsen (see Figure 11). A third image, displayed on the final page of the spread, was that of a deceased inmate, his body wasted from starvation and his hands outstretched (see Figure 12). This third image, whose caption reads simply Starved Prisoner (Belsen), is reminiscent of a Christ figure, his arms looking almost as if they had been nailed to an invisible cross. It was this image in particular that scholars have pointed to as inspiration behind Newman s Stations. 85 Even the prisoner s lightly agape mouth harkens to the cry of Christ that Newman discussed in his writings, and used as a subtitle to his series: Lema Sabatchtani? Why have you forsaken me?, for what purpose? 86 In order to more fully explore the relationship between Newman s Stations and this photograph, this image will be returned to later in the discussion of the 1966 Guggenheim exhibit. 85 In addition to reading about the Holocaust, by 1942, Newman was acutely aware that his parents hometown of Łomża, Poland, had been completely drained of its Jewish population. (Temkin, 27). 86 Barnett Newman, From Barnett Newman s The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani, in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, edited by John P. O Neill (New York: Knopf, 1990):

38 Figure 10. Mass Burial (Nordhausen) 87 Figure 11. Human Cordwood (Buchenwald) 88 Figure 12. Starved Prisoner (Belsen) 89 Even before the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, they had already begun rounding up and deporting Jews and other non-aryans. The assination of Ernst vom Rath, a secretary at the German Legation in Paris, on November 9, 1938, by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17year-old Polish Jew, exacerbated the Nazis treatment of Jews. Vom Rath s death incited the 87 Mass Burial (Nordhausen), Time, April 30, 1945: 38. Human Cordwood (Buchenwald), Time, April 30, 1945: Starved Prisoner (Belsen), Time, April 30, 1945:

39 Kristallnact, or Night of Broken Glass, in which Nazis systematically destroyed and looted Jewish shops throughout Germany and Austria. 90 One New York Times article, published nearly one year after the Nazi attacks detailed: At 4 A.M. the synagogues and chapels of Jews were ordered to be set afire. At 6 A.M. the destruction and looting of shops and houses were ordered to begin in the city. After the vom Rath assassination and the anti-jewish outbreak, some Jews committed suicide, others hid in the woods and still others went to friendly doctors and had their stomachs opened so as to be in hospital. 91 Another Times story declared that Jews in Munich would have to pay for the debris of the [burned synagogue] to be cleared but it would be left for a few days as a treat to Aryan eyes. 92 At this early stage in the Nazis extermination policy, thousands of Jews were actually being released from the camps after a stay of a few weeks if they promised to be out of Germany and Austria within eight weeks. Although many of the former concentration camp inmates were weak and fatigued, they were not in ill health. 93 However, by 1940 and through the rest of the War, what the American and other Allied readers thought of as political hard labor camps soon evolved into horrific grounds of starvation, torture, disease, and medical experiments. In fact, [t]he Nazis master plan originally called for a Jew-free Reich by April 1, 1942, as a 90 Nazi Camps Release 7,000 Jews: Many Are Victims of Cold Wave: Dozens of Amputations, Hundreds of Cases of Pneumonia Reported Freezing of Men Follows Criticism of Veterans Arrest, New York Times, December 24, Raymond Daniell, Nazi Tortures Detailed by Britain; Concentration Camp Horrors Told: White Paper Says Practices Recall Darkest Ages Diplomat s Reports Give Data on Flogging and Killings by Guards, New York Times, October 1, Munich Rescinds Jews Expulsion: But Nazis Will Operate Shops After Owners Repair Them, Bavarian Minister Says, New York Times, November 12, Freed Jews Reach Vienne: 110 in Largest Group Released from Concentration Camps, New York Times, June 22,

40 birthday present to Adolf Hitler. 94 With the sealing off of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, and the establishment of the Krakow Ghetto one year later, the fate of the European Jews was dismal. 95 German Atrocities: Torture, Medical Experiments and Extermination As the camps were being liberated, the New York Times printed extensive coverage from the field, many of their accounts coming from reports issued by Allied armies abroad. One of the first stories printed by the Times was on April 29, 1945: Not only were prisoners exterminated by starvation, abuse, beatings, torture, and unsanitary conditions, but many internees were used as guinea pigs for testing new toxins and anti-toxins, dying as a result. 96 Accompanying this story were photographs that gave Americans a glimpse inside the concentration camps (see Figure 13). Figure 13. Atrocity Report Issued by Army, New York Times 94 80% of Reich Jews Murdered by Nazis: All Those Left in Europe Were Marked for Death by 1946, AMG Investigation Show, New York Times, June 10, Warsaw Ghetto Sealed, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, last modified June 20, 2014, accessed October 26, 2014, 96 Atrocity Report Issued by Army: At Two of the Horror Camps Liberated by the Allies, New York Times, April 29,

41 When the Allies seized the German commanders running the camps, the reports only worsened, as large portions of the Nazis statements were printed in the Times throughout April and May: [G]uards had driven people into gas chambers with sticks and, when they became too full, children were tossed in through the windows. The gas was then let in through three ventilating shafts and within three minutes most of the inmates died screaming in agony. 97 According to one of the editors who toured the liberated camps, there were small glass peepholes through which the German guards could observe the dying agonies of the condemned. 98 At Buchenwald, victims were forced to stand on low chairs, place a rope through a ring high on the wall and fasten the noose around their necks. The next victim got the job of kicking the chair from under them. 99 And at Auschwitz (the Times referred to Auschwitz by its Polish equivalent, Oswiecim ), [b]abies born in the camp were killed if they survived the attempted abortions on mothers. 100 Many of the camps were also rampant with disease, not only from the Nazis experiments, but also from severe lack of sanitation. At one camp, the hospital was without medicines, without therapy, where moribund persons were sent to die among the raging typhus and tuberculosis. 101 Glaring death tolls soon captured the headlines in the Times, accompanied by more indepth accounts of the tortures executed by the Nazis. 5,000,000 Reported Slain at Oswiecim, read one headline from April 12, while another from September 1, 1945 declared, 1,500, Americans Seize Mass Gas Killer: Kaltenbrunner, Originator of Germans Technique of Execution in Custody, New York Times, May 16, U.S. Editors Back, Urge Harsh Peace: 15 of 18 Who Viewed Atrocity Camps of Nazis Declare Horrors All Too True, New York Times, May 9, Gene Currivan, Nazi Death Factory Shocks Germans on Forced Tour, New York Times, April 18, C.L. Sulzberger, Oswiecim Killings Placed at 4,000,000: Soviet Commission Reports Death Camp in Poland Was Founded by Himmler, New York Times, May 8, William S. White, War Crime Report Horrifies Capital: Silence Grips Both Houses as German Regime Is Indicted by Congressional Body, New York Times, May 16,

42 Killed by Nazi Monster, and, on June 10, 1945, the Times reported 80% of Reich Jews [were] Murdered by Nazis. One manner of murdering camp inmates at such high numbers came in the form of mass starvation. In her paper Uninterested in anything except food : the work of nurses feeding the liberated inmates at Bergen-Belsen, Jane Brooks stated that prisoners were living on fewer than 800 calories per day, or less than half of what a healthy adult consumes. 102 One inmate testified, We were not allowed to drink water. We got 200 grams (seven ounces) of bread a day. The soup was just water. 103 These conditions of starvation often incited atrocities of their own. A Times articles printed in 1946 detailed how inmates sometimes cut up corpses, cooked pieces and ate or sold them. 104 At the trial of Josef Kramer in September 1945, prosecutors said that by the time Auschwitz had been liberated, some inmates had been driven to the length of cutting flesh from bodies and eating it. 105 Additionally, American Colonel Jack Taylor, who had been a prisoner at the Mauthausen camp, testified, there was evidence of cannibalism. There were bodies from which the heart, liver and some muscles had been torn out and eaten by the victim s own bedmate. 106 Perhaps the most common medical tests suffered by inmates were inoculation experiments. At the Nuremberg Trials in early 1946, one survivor testified, [d]uring August 1944, 150 men died in one experiment on typhus vaccines. 107 German doctors and even captured Polish doctors forced to experiment on their fellow countrymen also tested castration, sterilization of women, artificial injection with cancers malaria germs, [and] tests 102 Brooks, ,000 Reported Slain in 3 Camps: Americans and Britons Among Gestapo Victims in Lwow, Poland, Says Russian Body, New York Times, December 24, Drew Middleton, Ribbentrop Winces At Crime Trial: Removes Earphones and Drops Chin on Breast as Witness Tells of Leg Screw Torture, New York Times, January 30, SS Killed 4,000,000 at Oswiecim Prosecutor Says at Kramer Trial, New York Times, September 18, Captive in Germany Recalls Cannibalism, New York Times, March 31, Drew Middleton, Ribbentrop Winces At Crime Trial: Removes Earphones and Drops Chin on Breast as Witness Tells of Leg Screw Torture, New York Times, January 30,

43 of the effects of poisons. 108 At an earlier trial in September 1945, another survivor recounted how her bedmate had tried suicide because the successive experiments with artificial insemination left her sterile. 109 Freezing experiments dubbed human icicle tests were also common within the camps. One Times article told how [i]nmates of the concentration camp were placed in water of 2½ to 12 degrees centigrade [36.5 to 53.6 degrees Fahrenheit] for three hours or tied naked out of doors in freezing temperatures as long as fourteen hours. 110 Other times, the prisoners were bound and put into barrels of water and then [placed] outside in below-zero temperature, with guards standing over them until they became frozen in ice. 111 Although the Nazi doctors tried to justify some of their heinous medical experiments, such as the vaccine tests, there seems to have been little explanation for the freezing tests or the other malicious tortures inflicted upon the inmates. As one prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials stated, The defendants may plead that they were engaged in research for the benefit of science and society, but there is no escaping the conclusion that the mass killing and destruction of a large block of humanity were the real purpose. 112 Lastly, if the tales of medical torture and starvation were not enough to horrify American audiences, the Times frequently published alarmingly macabre testimonies from the war crimes trials. Whether these stories were intended to further anger the American people against Germany s atrocities or whether they served an informative journalistic purpose is unclear. However, one story related how the commander of one of the camps, the Yanov camp, threw 108 C.L. Sulzberger, Oswiecim Killings Placed at 4,000,000: Soviet Commission Reports Death Camp in Poland Was Founded by Himmler, New York Times, May 8, Belsen Survivor Picks Out Nazis: Jewish Woman Physician Who Was Also in Oswiecim Camp Is Witness at Trial, New York Times, September 22, Dachau Data Called Worst Murder Tale, New York Times, December 12, ,000 Reported Slain in 3 Camps: Americans and Britons Among Gestapo Victims in Lwow, Poland, Says Russian Body, New York Times, December 24, The Nazi Doctors, New York Times, November 21,

44 two 4-year-old children in the air and shot them to amuse his own 9-year-old daughter. 113 Yet another was the dying testimony of Standartenführer Franz Ziereis, commander of Mauthausen, after he was mortally shot by advancing American troops in 1945: I used a small caliber rifle and had a room arranged in which a loudspeaker played music. In the adjoining room I had a gun mount erected behind a screen and as the inmates entered the room the idea was to hit them in the neck. After a while I discontinued the radio music and turned on one of the turbines of the gas chambers, which also drowned out the noise of the shooting. 114 Life magazine, too, endeavored to tell of the Nazi crimes, but through photographs rather than news stories. On May 7, 1945, eight days after the Time magazine photo spread ran, Life released a series of its own. 115 Entitled Atrocities, and opening with an image of a young boy calmly strolling by piles of bodies, this truly spoke to the horrors of what Allied soldiers had uncovered (see Figure 14). Images of charred bodies, inmates who had become mentally handicapped from starvation, and stills of mass graves were only some of the photographs Life published ,000 Reported Slain in 3 Camps: Americans and Britons Among Gestapo Victims in Lwow, Poland, Says Russian Body, New York Times, December 24, ,500,000 Killed by Nazi Monster : Director of Hell Camps Earned a Cent for Each Execution His Dying Testimony Told, New York Times, September 1, Atrocities: Capture of the German Concentration Camps Piles Up Evidence of Barbarism That Reaches the Low Point of Human Degradation, Life, May 7, 1945, Life photographers actually took significantly more photographs than they published, editors perhaps deeming some of the images their photographers returned with too gruesome for the American audience. Images, such as those that document the liberation of Buchenwald, are available at and accessed October 24,

45 36

46 Figure 14. Atrocities, Life Indeed, the New York Times and Life magazine had no shortages of atrocities to tell the American people. Moreover, shortly after the liberation of Dachau, film companies began producing documentaries from footage captured by the Army Corps as they pushed their way through Germany and Poland. If Americans wanted to turn a blind eye to the newspaper coverage of the unfolding holocaust in Europe, the films were harder to overlook. These movies, such as We Accuse, released in summer of 1945, furthered the worldwide cry for German reparations. British media, too, released their own documentaries. One reviewer in the Times wrote, 37

47 the reels [included] scenes of piles of the dead, pitiful specimens of the living dead, the crematoriums in which victims were disposed of and other bodies exhumed from graves for identification [from] Nordhausen, Buchenwald, Ohrdruf and Hadamar. 117 In addition to movies, Allied troops began tacking up large posters around Germany of scenes within the camps so inhabitants will be compelled to view them as they go to and from their homes. 118 This was part of a re-education program for German citizens, who largely claimed they had no knowledge of the camps existence. American troops that had liberated Buchenwald actually forced the citizens of the nearby town of Weimar to attend tours of the camp to show the people what had been occurring mere miles from their homes. News of the Jewish extermination was promulgated everywhere in the spring and summer months of 1945, and into 1946 and 1947 as the trials of Nazi war criminals commenced. One tale that caught the attention of the American public, including Barnett Newman, was that of Ilse Koch, whose fascination with collecting the tattooed skins of dead inmates and turning them into lampshades and other household items both horrified and engrossed American audiences. Ilse Koch: The Bitch of Buchenwald Will the modern aesthetician who takes this position, if he s confronted with the parchment lamps that were made from the skins of the Jews killed by the Nazis, just criticize [them] on the grounds that it s just pretty good work? Barnett Newman 119 This statement, made by Newman in a discussion of modern aesthetics, demonstrates he was clearly aware of the horrors unfolding in the pages of the New York Times, Time and Life. 117 Camp Horror Films Are Exhibited Here, New York Times, May 2, Charles E. Egan, All Reich to See Camp Atrocities: Allies Will Billboard Scenes in Each Community to Teach Germans They Have Guilt, New York Times, April 24, Shiff, Mancusi-Ungaro, and Colsman-Freyberger,

48 Ilse Koch was the 28-year-old wife of Karl-Otto Koch, the commandant of the Buchenwald camp, and was soon known by Allied media as the Bitch of Buchenwald. Originally sentenced to life in prison following her trial at Dachau in 1946, Koch s sentence was later commuted to four years time-served in 1948, due to lack of evidence. 120 In fact, General Lucius D. Clay, the United States Military Governor in Germany, even stated that Koch s case had been based on hearsay, not factual evidence. 121 Despite this purported lack of substantiation, the New York Times ran two articles before Koch s trials claiming that she was not the only member of the Nazi regime engaged in such acts. One states, [t]he ten members of the British Parliament who toured Belsen brought back pieces of the tattooed skin of victims. 122 The other detailed what German citizens had witnessed on one of the Allies forced tours: One of the first things that the German civilians saw as they passed through the gates was a display of parchment. This consisted of large pieces of human flesh on which were elaborate tattooed markings. These strips had been collected by a German doctor and also by the 28-year-old wife of the Standartenfuhrer or commanding officer. She had a mania for unusual tattoos, and whenever a prisoner arrived who had a rare marking on his body, she would indicate that the trophy would make a valuable addition to her collection. In addition to the parchments were two large table lamps, with parchment shades also made out of human flesh. 123 Prisoners, too, testified to Koch s grisly decorations. At Koch s trial one inmate said, one of his jobs had been to wash and prepare executed inmates for dissection. Another inmate 120 Jack Raymond, Trials of War Criminals Are Now Over in Germany: Death, Paroles and Appeals Have Greatly Changed Picture Since Nuremberg Days, New York Times, December 25, Walter H. Waggoner, Army Shows Films on Nazi Murders: Narrator Declares Ilse Koch Had Lampshades Made From Human Skin, New York Times, October 23, Buchenwald Tour Shocking to M.P. s: Congressmen Also Stunned British Group Hears Details of Horrors at Oswiecim, New York Times, April 23, Gene Currivan, Nazi Death Factory Shocks Germans on Forced Tour, New York Times, April 18,

49 was charged with preparing tattooed skins of prisoners. 124 Other camp commanders kept souvenirs of their deeds as well. A Times article from April 18, 1945 described: There were shelves of bottles filled with various organs of the human body. In one was half a human head. This head once belonged to a prisoner, as did all the other human parts so displayed. In another room there were a dozen death masks, skulls and shrunken human heads. 125 What effect did these stories and photographs have on Americans? Many were outraged, calling for immediate recompenses from the Germans. Others were horrified and in disbelief. Still others, such as the New York School artists and later Abstractionists, found ways to communicate their responses in their works. Newman s Stations, Rothko s Entombment I (1946) and Frank Stella s Arbeit Macht Frei (1967) (see Figure 15) all spoke abstractly of the horrors and consequences of the Nazi Holocaust. Figure 15. Frank Stella, Arbeit Macht Frei Inmates Skinned, Koch Trial Hears: Prosecution Witness Says He Was Ordered To Help Tan Tattooed Victims Skin, New York Times, November 29, Gene Currivan, Nazi Death Factory Shocks Germans on Forced Tour, New York Times, April 18, Frank Stella, Arbeit Macht Frei, 1967, lithograph, accessed 27 Dec < 40

50 The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani ( ) It s interesting to me that with a large, tragic theme of this kind for example, when Picasso did Guernica, he couldn t do it in color, he did it in black and white and gray. I couldn t make a green Passion or a red one. You wouldn t have me make a purple Jesus or something like that. It had to be black and white. The compulsion was absolute I was compelled to work this way. Barnett Newman 127 In 1958, Barnett Newman suffered his first heart attack. While recovering, he began working on a 6½ X 5 foot canvas. Instead of priming and preparing the canvas like he did in his earlier works, Newman decided to leave the canvas raw, painting directly on the surface. He also chose to eliminate all color for this piece, painting only in black and white. Newman saw this radical elimination of superfluous elements as a challenge he wanted to see if he could paint without any color at all. 128 Although color was struck from his palette, Newman retained his zip, creating one thick band of black at the left edge and a roughly marked black zip toward the right. This canvas would become Newman s First Station (see Figure 16). 129 Figure 16. Barnett Newman, First Station 127 Mancusi-Ungaro, Ibid, Barnett Newman, First Station, 1958, magna on canvas, accessed 28 Oct < 41

51 Three more paintings of the same size and color or lack thereof would follow, becoming the second, third and fourth Stations, respectively. While Newman did not utilize color in these paintings, he did use different kinds of paint, such as oil or acrylic polymer, in order to address the physicality of the paint. 130 These varying textural effects would give each painting its own life while remaining coherent to the others. It was not until the Fourth Station (1960) did Newman realize what he was doing (see Figure 17). In the catalogue for the exhibition he wrote, 131 Figure 17. Barnett Newman, Fourth Station When I did the fourth one, I used a white line even whiter than the canvas, really intense, and that gave me the idea for the cry. It occurred to me that this abstract cry was the whole thing the entire Passion of Christ. The cry of Lema for what purpose? this is Passion and this is what I have tried to evoke in these paintings Ibid, Barnett Newman, Fourth Station, 1960, oil on canvas, accessed 28 Oct. 2014, < 132 Barnett Newman, The Fourteen Stations of the Cross, , in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews (New York: Knopf, 1990),

52 Stations five through fourteen manifested themselves during the next six years, with Newman working on them sporadically between other paintings, including Be II, which would accompany The Stations at the Guggenheim in Upon understanding what the series would become, Newman addressed the size of the canvas, which coincidentally was roughly the height of a person. He said, he wished no monuments, no cathedrals. [He] wanted human scale for human cry. 133 Additionally, although the series encompassed fourteen paintings, Newman wanted the collection to be seen as one single event, rather than a series of anecdotes. 134 Instead of each station representing a moment in Christ s walk down the Via Dolorosa (Way of the Cross), or a tragic moment in the European theater of World War II, Newman wanted the viewer to be overcome with the question posed in his title: Lema? why? In his book Abstraction and the Holocaust, historian Mark Godfrey states that in creating this sense of oneness in the canvases, the process of identification is the process that the viewer goes through as they become the tragic subject. 135 Just as Newman s Vir Heroicus Sublimus engulfed viewers, he wanted his Stations to do the same. This was achieved through the positioning of the canvases on the walls at the Guggenheim. When The Stations of the Cross were exhibited in 1966 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, they were positioned so that viewers would simultaneously observe one painting with the others. Art historian Ann Temkin writes in her chapter Barnett Newman On Exhibition : The two bays on the left [of the Guggenheim] held the first four Stations. The next ten occupied the High Gallery: the Fifth Station through Eighth Station hung on the east wall, the Ninth Station to Thirteenth Station on the south wall (facing the center of the museum), and the Fourteenth Station hung on the west wall. Be II hung alone in the bay to the right of the High Gallery Ibid, Shiff, Mancusi-Ungaro, and Colsman-Freyberger, Mark Godfrey, Abstraction and the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), Temkin,

53 She continued, One could get a single eyeful of almost all the paintings while standing at the entrance to the High Gallery, but under no circumstances could the beginning and end be seen simultaneously. 137 Just as the first pilgrims walked the Via Dolorosa to identify themselves with the original moment, the Guggenheim viewer was to walk Newman s Stations and identify themselves with his original moment of artistic creation. 138 Their overwhelming nature would connect artist and viewer (see Figure 18). Figure 18. Robert E. Mates, Barnett Newman s Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani. 139 Returning to the image of the starved prisoner at Belsen (see Figure 12, page 28), Godfrey argues that it was republished in 1960, but might have been known at the end of the war and may have been among the photographs of German atrocities [Newman] wrote about in Ibid, Barnett Newman, From Barnett Newman: The Stations of the Cross, Lema Sabatchtani, in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, edited by John P. O Neill (New York: Knopf, 1990), Robert E. Mates, Barnett Newman: The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani, 1966, photograph, accessed 29 Oct < 140 Mark Godfrey, Barnett Newman s Stations of the Cross and the Memory of the Holocaust, in Reconsidering Barnett Newman, edited by Melissa Ho (Philadelphia: Publishing Department Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2005),

54 This statement was made in an earlier version of his book chapter, in 2005, but in both versions, Godfrey fails to mention this image was published in Time magazine in April A third version of Godfrey s paper appeared in 2004 (likely the first version), where, again, no mention of Time magazine occurred. 141 Given the evidence of Newman s awareness of events such as Ilse Koch s trial and the photographs of German atrocities, it is undeniable the artist would have also seen this image. Furthermore, in Abstraction and the Holocaust, Godfrey states, Around , when the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was forcing Americans to confront the events of the Holocaust, the internationally established metaphor of the Crucifixion had ongoing currency. 142 Americans had been faced with news of the Nuremberg trials as early as 1945, again, facts with which Newman would have been well acquainted. Whether the republication of the Times photo taken together with the Eichmann trial unconsciously spurred Newman s imagination is unclear from his writings. Given the agape mouth of the prisoner in the photograph, it could be read as a cry, not only the cry of Christ, but also the cry of terror from primitive man Newman concerned himself with in earlier works. Nonetheless, it is evident from his writing that Newman very much internalized emotional responses before expressing them in his artwork. His inspiration was more than imitation of images, but a reflection on what he witnessed and experienced in daily life, particularly through the media. The graphic nature of the photojournalism and stories on the Holocaust would have indisputably affected Newman and prompted him although unconsciously at first to begin creating the Stations series Mark Godfrey, Barnett Newman s Stations and the Memory of the Holocaust, October, 108 (Spring 2004): Godfrey, While it has become popular art historical thought to believe that Newman s Stations were a direct response to the Holocaust, Newman s contemporary critics were unsure of what to think, especially since the title of the series is Catholic in origin, rather than Jewish. Some critics, such as John Canaday were wholly unimpressed by Newman s intellectual response to the devastation in Europe, stating they were 14 examples of Mr. Newman s 45

55 If Newman s Stations were supposed to be evocative of a single event the entirety of the Holocaust, as has been suggested then Be II (see Figure 19) served as a closing, or as Godfrey suggests, a re-beginning, as a moment of confirmation or awareness. 144 Figure 19. Barnett Newman, Be II 145 Just as the fifteenth station of the Roman Catholic Stations is the resurrection of Christ, Be II served as a resurrection and reflection for the Guggenheim viewers. It was a time to ruminate on the fourteen Stations and question what the future held. Newman also added a zip of cadmium red to this final piece, breaking his monkish dedication to the monochromatic Stations, and beckoning toward a new beginning. 146 usual product, which is never subject to more than minimum variation within its acutely limited boundaries. However, Canaday held that Newman believe[d] in what he [was] doing, giving credibility that the Stations were to Newman anyway a true, internal reaction to the Holocaust. John Canaday, Art: With Pretty Through Execution, New York Times, April 23, Godfrey, Abstraction and the Holocaust, Barnett Newman, Be II, , oil and acrylic on canvas, accessed 25 Oct < 146 Rosenberg,

56 While Newman concerned himself with creating a series illustrating metaphorical suffering and redemption, Noguchi s post-internment sculptures were concerned with incidents he personally faced, not merely read about in the media. 47

57 CHAPTER THREE: Isamu Noguchi and the Japanese Internment The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas. Excerpt from Executive Order On December 7, 1941, more than 350 Japanese naval aircrafts launched a surprise attack on the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing nearly 3,000 Americans. 148 The same day, Japanese Emperor Hirohito declared war on the United States and Great Britain, citing the countries allegiance to the Chinese Chungking regime as the primary incentive. 149 In the text printed by the New York Times on December 8, 1941, Hirohito declared, [t]his situation being as it is, our empire, for its existence and self-defense, has no other recourse but to appeal to arms and to crush every obstacle in its path. 150 The Hawaiian Islands were immediately placed under martial law, and would remain under the control of the United States Army throughout the 147 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Transcript of Executive Order 9066: Resulting in the Relocation of Japanese (1942), Our Documents, accessed November 26, 2014, page=transcript. 148 Charles Hurd, Heroic Acts: 2,897 Defenders Killed in Gallant Battle Base Not on Alert, New York Times, December 16, Japan did not approve of America s open-door policy with China and its siding with China after Japanese forces invaded Manchuria in September 1931, in an effort at expansion. Further, Japan demanded that American, British, and other European troops leave Japan and lift the economic boycott of Japanese goods imposed a few weeks before Pearl Harbor. Talks were in effect between Japanese and American leaders in Washington at the time of the Pearl Harbor, but were immediately called off when the base was attacked. The United States had been asking Japan to break its treaty with Axis leaders Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to no avail. Furthermore, the U.S. was concerned with advancing Japanese interests in the Philippine Islands, which were rich with raw resources and transportation lines indispensible to our [America s] national security. Japan, U.S. Close 88 Years Peace, New York Times, December 8, Text of War Declaration by Hirohito, New York Times, December 8,

58 War. 151 On December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on the Japanese Empire (see Figure 20). Figure 20. U.S. Declares War, New York Times 152 One week later, on December 15, 1941, Life magazine ran a feature boldly titled WAR detailing some of the damage from Pearl Harbor (see Figure 21). 151 Robert Trumbull, Call Martial Law Vital to Hawaii: War Chiefs Say Continuance Is Essential for Security There and Continental Defense, New York Times, September 16, U.S. Declares War, Pacific Battle Widens; Manila Area Bombed; 1,500 Dead in Hawaii; Hostile Planes Sighted At San Francisco, New York Times, December 9,

59 Figure 21. WAR, Life WAR: Japan Launches Reckless Attack On U.S. In Desperate Gamble on Victory or Suicide It Strikes First Blow at Hawaii, Life, December 15, 1941,

60 Life ran additional images on December 29, 1941, describing more of the carnage created at Pearl Harbor. These photographs were more intimate, and featured injured and deceased American citizens, scraps of twisted metal, and massive plumes of smoke (see Figure 22). 154 Figure 22. Attack on Hawaii, Life 154 Attack on Hawaii: First Pictures of Jap Onslaught Show Death & Destruction At American Base, Life, December 29, 1941, For complete photo series, see Gk4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA11&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed November 26,

61 What these images, and others like them, such as the ones printed by the New York Times on December 18, 1941, did was help promote a wartime atmosphere of racial hysteria and discrimination (see Figure 23). The principal targets of the increasing ethnic tension in America were those of Axis ancestry: the Japanese, the Germans, and the Italians. According to reports in the New York Times, innocent Japanese aliens were arrested in huge numbers mere hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. 155 However, federal officials declared that loyal Japanese natives and Japanese-Americans need not worry, as there would be no wholesale arrests of Japanese based on their race. 156 Despite these promises from government officials, scores of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans were arrested outright following the attack on Pearl Harbor on both the East and West Coasts. 157 Many were questioned, detained, and some were even sent to Ellis Island for deportation or turned over to the United States Army for internment for the duration of the War. Figure 23. The Morning of Dec. 7 At Pearl Harbor, New York Times Robert F. Whitney, Only 2,971 Enemy Aliens Are Held: Rest of the 1,100,000 Being Watched Here Are Unmolested, New York Times, January 4, Entire City Put on War Footing: Japanese Rounded Up by FBI, Sent to Ellis Island Vital Services Are Guarded, New York Times, December 8, Despite the Army and federal officials being in charge of the round-ups, the Army refused to have any part of actually running the internment camps, as it went against treaties signed during the Geneva Conventions, some of which outlined the treatment of prisoners. (1864). Lawrence E. Davies, Evacuee Camps Probed: Internment Centers Are Investigated as Tokyo Halts Exchange of Internees, New York Times, December 19, The Morning of Dec. 7 at Pearl Harbor: Enemy Planes, Anti-Aircraft Fire, Burning Battleship, New York Times, December 18,

62 This racial tension came to a head two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on February 19, 1942, when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order This order effectively allowed Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to relocate any aliens to internment camps for every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material. 160 All foreigners of Axis descent fourteen years of age and older were also ordered to acquire identification cards by February 24, 1942, and failure to do so would have resulted in immediate internment. 161 This order, enforced by U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle, affected almost 1.1 million aliens residing in the United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor assault. 162 One of these Japanese-Americans was Isamu Noguchi, who by this time was an established sculptor, living primarily in New York City between his long periods of travel. However, unfortunately for Noguchi, he was visiting California with his friend, artist Arshile Gorky, when the Japanese attacked Hawaii. 163 Although Noguchi initially returned to New York, he soon volunteered to intern himself at the Colorado River Relocation Center (commonly known as Poston) in the Arizona desert in the spring of 1942, with the purpose of creating parks and recreation centers for the internees. 164 When Noguchi s plans went unrealized, his frustration grew and blossomed into many of his best-known inter-war works, such as My Arizona (1943) and Kouros ( ). These works not only echo the defeat he felt from his failings at Poston, 159 Although Roosevelt did not sign EO9066 until February 19, 1942, the FBI and other federal agencies had been monitoring and rounding up aliens of Axis ancestry for months. The primary targets of these surveillance operations were those of Japanese decent living on the West Coast, especially with the increasing tensions between the United States and Japan. Tillman Durdin, West Coast Acts For War Defense: Japanese Are Rounded Up, New York Times, December 8, Roosevelt, Our Documents. 161 Biddle Warns Aliens to Register by Today: Those Without Identification Face Internment, He Says, New York Times, February 28, Axis Aliens to Get Cards of Identity: Germans, Japanese, Italians in Western States to Be Called First, Feb. 2 to Feb. 7, New York Times, January 16, Isamu Noguchi, A Sculptor s World (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968), Amy Lyford, Isamu Noguchi s Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, (Los Angeles: The Getty Foundation and the University of California Press, 2013), 116,

63 but the conflict of his mixed race identity at a time when Japanese-Americans were viewed with suspicion. Isamu Noguchi: The Hybrid Sculptor Isamu Noguchi was born on November 17, 1904, in Los Angeles to Yonejiro (Yone) Noguchi, a Japanese poet, and Léonie Gilmour, an American teacher. 165 Unlike his contemporary Barnett Newman, who did not travel outside of the United States until 1964 at the age of 59, Noguchi moved to Japan at the age of two with his mother. 166 However, by the time they arrived in 1906, Yonejiro had already taken a Japanese wife and started a new family. 167 Noguchi briefly studied at a French Jesuit school in Yokohama, but was soon being home-schooled by Gilmour at the age of ten. In his autobiography, Noguchi recalled his mother s influence. My fondest recollection is of my Mother reading to me. She read to me according to her taste, Noguchi wrote. As a result I believed in Apollo and all the gods of Olympus long before I knew of any other. 168 Gilmour also apprenticed her son to a Japanese cabinetmaker in nearby Chigasaki the same year. When Noguchi was thirteen-years-old, Gilmour decided to send him to study in the United States at an experimental school in Indiana called Interlaken, headed by Dr. Edward A. Rumley. 169 According to Noguchi, his mother was growing increasingly concerned with the hostile and unfortunate situation of children of mixed blood growing up in Japan half in and 165 Sam Hunter, Isamu Noguchi (New York: Abbeville Press, Inc. Publishers, 1978), John P. O Neill, Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews (New York: Knopf, 1990), xxxi. 167 Hunter, Noguchi, Lyford,

64 half out. 170 Because of the First World War, Interlaken never officially opened, and Noguchi moved in with Rumley for roughly five years, until he graduated from LaPorte High School in After completing a brief apprenticeship with Connecticut-based sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who declared Noguchi would never be a sculptor, the young artist decided to enroll in medical school at Columbia University in January 1923 at the urging of Rumley. 172 While in New York City, Noguchi frequented the Alfred Stieglitz Gallery and the Brummer Gallery; in 1926, the Brummer Gallery featured works by Constantin Brancusi, a Romanian abstractionist sculptor based in Paris, which caught Noguchi s attention. 173 One year later, in 1927, Noguchi applied for and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel to Europe and Asia for three years. In his application, Noguchi stated: I have selected the Orient as the location for my productive activities for the reason that I feel great attachment for it, having spent half my life there. My father, Yone Noguchi, is Japanese and has long been known as an interpreter of the East to the West, through poetry. I wish to fulfill my heritage. 174 On his second day of his Fellowship time in France, writer Robert McAlon introduced Noguchi to his idol, Brancusi. Brancusi agreed to take Noguchi on as an apprentice, teaching him precisely how a chisel should be held and how to true a plane of limestone. 175 Noguchi spent one year in Paris with his mentor, traveling to London briefly to study ancient Asian religious philosophy. He soon had no desire to complete the remainder of his fellowship in Asia and India, 170 Noguchi, Hunter, It was also in 1923 that Noguchi more fully embraced his Japanese heritage. He changed his name from Gilmour to Noguchi, which consciously reorient[ed] his identity emphasizing his Japanese rather than his Euro- American parentage. He adopted this name change regardless of his fractured relationship with his father, who had rejected his visits many times. Lyford, Noguchi, Isamu Noguchi, Guggenheim Proposal, in Isamu Noguchi: Essays and Conversations, edited by Diane Apostolos-Cappandona and Bruce Altshuler (New York: Abrams in association with the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, 1994), 17. (Hereafter, sources from this book are noted as Noguchi 2.) 175 Noguchi, A Sculptor s World (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968),

65 preferring to stay in Paris instead. The Guggenheim Fellowship expired in 1928 and was not renewed. Noguchi went back to New York that same year. 176 Upon his return, he began to question his lessons from Brancusi, arguing that his French mentor practiced a geometrically derived abstraction that left him cold. Noguchi felt at this time he was too young and inexperienced for abstractions, preferring instead to study botany, zoology, and paleontology. Thus, he moved back to realism, creating sculptures of heads. 177 It was in this line of work he met artist R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller created art based on a utopian belief in the interdependence of social, scientific, and esthetic solutions art that was not just aesthetic, but socially beneficial. This resonated with Noguchi who thus began to propose socially conscious sculptures, monuments, and playgrounds. 178 The WPA and Noguchi s Monument to the Plow (1933) While Barnett Newman steadfastly rejected any involvement with government programs, Noguchi was the opposite, preferring to be engaged with the community in as many ways as possible. In late 1933, Noguchi applied for and was subsequently accepted to the Public Works of Arts Program (PWAP), the precursor to the Works Progress Administration s Federal Art Project. 179 The artists in the PWAP were charged with producing work that would represent the American scene, a concept loose enough to encourage a positive response from the public to the government s sponsorship of public art. 180 Noguchi proposed Monument to the Plow, an engaging, pyramidal earthwork sculpture that was to be created in the Midwestern United States. 176 Hunter, Noguchi, 38, Hunter, Lyford, Ibid, Lyford notes that an exemplary member of the WPA arts program was Grant Wood, the famous American scene painter responsible for work such as American Gothic (1930). 56

66 According to Noguchi, the idea of incorporating a steel plow within the earth was distinctly American: The steel plow, Dr. Rumley told me, had been devised through correspondence between [Benjamin] Franklin and [Thomas] Jefferson. My model indicated my wish to belong to America, to its vast horizons of earth. 181 The Monument was to have three sides: one that would be left barren, one that would be tilled, and one that was planted with wheat every year and would require attendance to by regional farmers. Noguchi hoped this giant earthwork would give work to some of the farmers left unemployed by the Dust Bowl and Depression. 182 However, not only was Monument to the Plow rejected by the PWAP committee, critics scorned the drawing, and Noguchi left the organization after only two months, in February Afterwards, he repeatedly applied to the WPA arts program, but was refused as being too successful to qualify for it. 183 Having felt rejected and humiliated by his country, Noguchi spent a few months in Hollywood, California, making head sculptures before leaving for Mexico City in 1935 to work with Mexican artists José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera the same primitive muralists that influenced Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock. 184 While in Mexico, Noguchi joined nine other artists in creating a public space, which satisfied his desire to incorporate art with social engagement. His History Mexico (1936), a large-scale cement mural embodied Noguchi s dissatisfaction with the capitalist government system in America, displaying a fat capitalist being murdered. 185 The mural also featured symbols of the rising totalitarian and fascist governments in Europe, such as a prominent swastika. 181 Noguchi, Lyford, This success was largely based on his head sculptures, which had garnered their own show, Fifteen Heads at Marie Sterner s Gallery in Noguchi, Valerie J. Fletcher, Isamu Noguchi Master Sculptor (Washington, D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2004), Lyford

67 Noguchi returned to New York City in 1937, where he worked on a relief for the Associated Press Building in Rockefeller Plaza titled News ( ). He also designed a piece for the Ford Motor Company for the 1939 New York World s Fair, where he discovered the medium of magnesite, a hard, synthetic material he used for his post-internment sculptures. 186 In 1941, he headed to California with Gorky in search of new sculptural materials. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Noguchi was headed to San Diego from Los Angeles. He stated later: I felt I ought to be able to help in some way. I felt that I ought to be contributing to something. 187 It was this attitude toward community service and democracy that led Noguchi to voluntarily intern himself at Poston Camp I in May Noguchi in the New York Times In the mid- and late-1930s, Noguchi s work was often highlighted inside the New York Times, both in critical reviews and features. Interestingly, regardless of the type of coverage, Noguchi s Japanese heritage was always a defining characteristic. For instance, in a December 1937 story, Noguchi is identified as the son of [a] Japanese poet, rather than as an artist. 188 When Noguchi won the contest to design News for the Associated Press Building, the lead of the story again focuses on his race, labeling him as a 34-year-old American-born Japanese. 189 Even after the War ended, Noguchi s Japanese culture was the foremost emphasis for the Times. His art is featured in a 1959 article titled, Modern to Ancient, which aligned his 186 Hunter, 62, Lyford, Auction Here Aids Fund for Chinese; Noguchi, Son of Japanese Poet, Explains Why He Helps Cause He Wins an Auto, New York Times, December 6, Art Panel Chosen for A.P. Building: Isamu Noguchi s Design for Main Entrance to Structure Wins First Prize, New York Times, October 10, For additional examples of Noguchi in the New York Times, see: Our Japanese Artists, February 12, 1935; To Show Lynching Art, February 13, 1935; Dance is Pictured in Brooklyn Show, January 30, 1936; Art for China s Sake, December 12, 1937; and Ruth Green Harris, Art in Our Daily Lives, May 1,

68 sculpture Calligraphics with Pre-Columbian. This could be seen as a link to the Abstract Expressionists preoccupation with primitivism, however, the Times states: Calligraphics succeeds in transferring from script to three dimensions the appeal of oriental symbols such as have greatly influenced modern painting. 190 Whereas the other Abstract Expressionists were seen as evoking Sublime, primitive terror of ancient civilizations, Noguchi was seen as simply drawing on his Japanese ethnicity. 191 Images and Stories of the Japanese Internment: The New York Times and Life 192 Raids and Internment of Enemy Aliens 193 Following the Pearl Harbor attacks and President Roosevelt s controversial Executive Order 9066, federal and local law enforcement began raiding cities on the West Coast, specifically in California, Oregon, and Washington. These areas were included in Attorney General Francis Biddle s newly designated prohibited zones, and aliens were forbidden to enter. According to General Hugh A. Drum, commander of the Eastern Defense Command, these zones: 190 Howard Devree, Modern to Ancient: American Art Today Old Mexico, New York Times, May 3, For more examples of Noguchi s later mentions in the New York Times, see: Aline B. Louchheim, Noguchi and Sculptured Gardens, September 30, 1951; Howard Devree, Nature and Art: Whitney Show Traces Abstract Paths, January 19, 1958; and Thomas M. Folds, Americans Again: Chicago s Cross-Section of Painting And Sculpture Is Avant-Garde, December 6, For additional images of the Japanese internment and raids conducted by federal officials, see Appendix. 193 According to a proclamation made by President Roosevelt and the War Department on December 8, 1941, an enemy alien was defined as natives, citizens, subjects or denizens of Germany, Italy and Japan who had not on that date acquired American citizenship. Other Axis-descended aliens, such as Austrians or Koreans, were exempted from this order, but were still subjected to apprehension, detention or internment if they displayed subversive actions. James G. McDonald, Letters to The Times: Alien Enemy Control Urged, New York Times, April 6,

69 embrace[d] generally a public utility; a military, naval or civil instillation; a commercial or defense facility; a territorial region, or a strip of coastline or waterfront, or other place, whose individual importance to the national defense and security will vary in accordance with local or other conditions. 194 [A] great section of the California coast [up] to 150 miles inland had been declared off-limits for Axis-descended Americans. 195 In April 1942, sixteen East Coast cities were similarly divided into forbidden zones. 196 By the summer of 1943, there were over 139,000 enemy aliens interned in camps throughout the United States. 197 Biddle also established a curfew for Japanese, German, and Italian foreigners they were not allowed outside of their homes between 6 P.M. and 9 A.M. 198 Travel was restricted for Axis-descended aliens, who had to apply for permission to travel and provide a detailed memorandum of their intended plans. In addition, air and sea travel abroad was strictly prohibited. 199 Furthermore, aliens on both coasts were ordered to surrender their cameras, shortwave radios, firearms, ammunition, and a long list of other items to the government for safekeeping. 200 Failure to adhere to these rules would have meant internment for the duration of the War or possible deportation. By 1943, the U.S. Army had established ten War Relocation Authority centers in the Western states that contained 105,750 Japanese internees. Interestingly, sixty-seven percent (or 71,000) of those interned were American citizens of those 71,000, ninety-two percent were 194 Text of General Drum s Statement, New York Times. April 27, Lawrence E. Davies, Enemy Aliens Baffle West Coast Authority: Restrictions Prove Hard to Enforce And Problems Are Many and Varied, New York Times, February 15, Army to Dim Shore; All of East Coast To Be New Military Area: General Drum Reveals Plans to Protect Shipping and Control Enemy Aliens, New York Times, April 27, ,058 Prisoners Are in Internment Here; Camps Will Be Added for African Captives, New York Times, July 22, West Coast Japanese Go to Enemy Camps As Army Maps Widen Prohibited Zones, New York Times, February 24, Robert F. Whitney, Only 2,971 Enemy Aliens Are Held: Rest of the 1,100,000 Being Watched Here Are Unmolested, New York Times, January 4, Call for All War Goods: Attorney General Orders Delivery to Police by Thursday, New York Times, January 6,

70 considered Nisei, or American-born Japanese. 201 Noguchi was included in this group. While some Americans believed these Nisei were loyal to the United States proved further by their peaceful internment others thought that Japanese-Americans were actually more dangerous than native Japanese due to their closeness with the country. Los Angeles mayor Fletcher Bowron forced all city employees of Japanese descent to take leaves of absence during the War. We just felt that for the safety of the city it was best to remove all employe[e]s with Japanese connections, Bowron insisted, Many of them had access to important city records, maps, and other valuable documents. 202 While some Japanese internees held that their time in internment camps was not too harsh, these conditions quickly came under scrutiny. In 1943 and into 1944, the Japanese government demanded a halt to all prisoner-of-war exchanges until they could examine the conditions within American camps. However, these demands also brought to light contradicting reports of circumstances within Japanese prisoner of war camps and this quickly became a heated source of tension between the two warring nations. Conditions in American Internment Camps and in Japanese Prison Camps When American journalist and Japanese prisoner Robert Bellaire was released to the United States, he had horrific stories to tell about his time in Japan. Bellaire reported that many American journalists were arrested and charged with espionage, and that nearly all reporters in Japan at the time of Pearl Harbor spent time in jail. According to Bellaire, the Japanese would hold American journalists in hotels for days without food or water and beat them until they 201 New Policy on Interned Japanese Urged By Senate Military Affairs Committee, New York Times, May 8, Lawrence E. Davies, West Coast Moves To Oust Japanese: Los Angeles Permits Nipponese on City Payroll to Take Leaves of Absence, New York Times, January 29,

71 agreed to write stories or broadcasts detailing the favorable conditions in the Japanese camps. He wrote in the New York Times: I was beaten and choked by Japanese police during that period, as were some other American newspaper men, because I refused to write a statement which I considered improper a statement which, in my judgment, the Japanese intended to use for propaganda. 203 Two days later, Otto Tolischus, another American reporter, wrote the Times to tell of his Tokyo tortures. 204 He said that American journalists were kept in solitary confinement away from the general population because the Japanese government believed they were all spies because they try to find the truth. 205 Journalist Max Hill claimed that the police used torture as their main weapon during his captivity, and that food was scarce: There was constant cold, day and night, with ice forming on the water basin. Breakfast was a small bowl of mixed barley and rice and a small cup of soup made of seaweed or turnip tops boiled in water. Lunch was the same. So was dinner. 206 Perhaps the most common Japanese torture described by American prisoners was the water cure, or water treatment, which was a method of forcing quantities of water down the throat of the victim until he is unconscious and in a semi-drowning condition. 207 Both Bellaire and Tolischus complained of the constant cold, tortures, and rapid weight loss due to virtual starvation, but this did not seem to be the case for all American prisoners. In the same article, Jennifer White claimed, the Japanese imposed the most general rules. Otherwise we were permitted to govern ourselves. White went on to state that the camp 203 Robert Bellaire, Writer Describes Tokyo Treatment: Robert Bellaire Says Japanese Choked Him With Tie Until He Signed Statement, New York Times, July 25, This testament was also printed in the August 3, 1942, issue of Time magazine. 205 Otto D. Tolischus, Writer Tells Of Tortures Japanese Used on Captives, New York Times, July 27, Max Hill, Relman Morin, James D. White, and Jennifer White Japanese Treatment of Americans, New York Times, July 27, Ibid. See also Tillman Durdin, Shanghai Reveals Torture Secrets: Brutality in Bridge House Was Suffered by Allied Citizens, Chinese and Japanese, New York Times, September 18,

72 she lived in had their own police, a sanitation and health department, as well as a sizeable hospital central kitchen a fire department, and a sports and music committee. 208 When the Red Cross visited Japanese camps in 1944, they found the prisoners in decent health despite the cold in winter [and] a lack of enough protein and fat in their diet. Further, the Red Cross claimed that prisoners had access to heaters and foods such as rice, bread, vegetables, fruit, a small amount of meat and fish, some fat and margarine, sugar, salt, and green tea. 209 These disparities in treatment across the camps could be attributed to many factors. One possibility is that Japanese police tended to treat Allied citizens less harshly than journalists or soldiers, just as they treated the Americans less harshly than the British. 210 Whatever accounted for such disparate conditions, Japanese internees in relocation camps tended to be treated less viciously. 211 Because of the close monitoring of internees by the American government, there are few accounts of the conditions within internment camps. One Japanese man interned at Ford Richardson, Alaska, claimed, he had been treated so well he felt his wife and children should be interned to enjoy the same comforts and privileges. 212 Others, such as Noguchi, protested the constant Western heat, the lack of supplies, and the frustration of being confined. Again, just as the opposing accounts of instances in Japanese prison camps, there can be many possibilities for such differing sentiments. For one, Japanese-Americans would have likely been accustomed to 208 Ibid. 209 Captives in Japan Lack Basic Foods: Red Cross Aide Find Camps Crowded, Cold in Winter, but Generally Satisfactory, New York Times, August 26, Otto D. Tolischus, Writer Tells Of Tortures Japanese Used on Captives, New York Times, July 27, Because the Japanese-Americans were not prisoners of war, they were not subjected to tortures and interrogations like the Allied POWs in Europe and Asia. A Times article detailing conditions within the camps reported, citizens and aliens were treated with kindness, fairness, and with utmost consideration [and] their food was sufficient and wholesome, and that living conditions, recreational and medical facilities were adequate and satisfactory. Lawrence E. Davies, Evacuee Camps Probed: Internment Centers Are Investigated as Tokyo Halts Exchanged of Internees, New York Times, December 19, Japanese Enjoys Internment, New York Times, June 13,

73 freedom and felt discouraged or betrayed by their own country. Many had to sell their homes and farmlands to be forcibly interned by a government that had promised to protect them during the War. 213 While these internees were not technically prisoners of war as the Americans were in Japan, they were still treated with suspicion and resentment by the majority of the public. This suspicion often turned discriminatory, particularly in popular media. Two Kinds of Japanese : Racial Discrimination in the Media Placing Japanese Americans and other foreign-born aliens into internment camps did not seem to ease the hysteria of the nation; in fact, it seemed to do the opposite by promoting blatant racial profiling. Americans wanted a way to tell which enemy alien was actually an enemy, simply by looking at them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had constant watch on innumerable aliens who were not interned because Americans were unsure of which foreigners they could trust. For instance, Noguchi himself was under continuous FBI surveillance when he returned to New York City from his stint at Poston. 214 Lyford writes: On an unlined index card, someone working for the FBI had typed the following: It was alleged by a confidential informant that one Isamu Noguchi, formerly of 52 West 10 th Street, was an artist, a Communist, and anti-japanese. 215 Noguchi, along with the rest of the Nisei and the Japanese nationals, had been singled out and targeted for observation based on their race. According to the U.S. government, none were entirely faithful. On December 22, 1941, Life magazine took racial profiling to another level when it published a spread explaining how Americans could tell the difference between the Chinese 213 Lawrence E. Davies, Will Speed Output On Farms Of Aliens: Federal Agencies Get Control of Producing Lands on Coast Which Are Evacuated, New York Times, March 18, Lyford, Ibid, 3. 64

74 considered allies and the Japs (see Figure 24). Life pointed out several minute physical differences between the two nationalities. They contrasted the parchment yellow complexion of the Chinese to the earthly yellow complexion of the Japanese. According to Life, Chinese nationals had longer, narrower faces while the Japanese possessed massive cheek and jawbone[s]. The Japanese were also short and squat while the Chinese were tall and slender Figure 24. How to Tell the Japs From the Chinese, Life The New York Times, too, ran stories of questionable journalistic bias. In one article from 1943, the Times acknowledged there were two kinds of Japanese, one who are loyal Americans of Japanese descent and others who are the kind of Japanese who have been recently making trouble. This story goes on to state, [w]e can t give leeway to possible spies and saboteurs because we believe that human nature, including that which is wrapped in a 216 How to Tell Japs From the Chinese, Life, December 22, 1945, How to Tell Japs From the Chinese, Life, December 22, 1945,

75 saffron-colored skin, is inherently good. 218 Even when discussing the prison camps, the Times found occasion for racism: The accumulating filth and vermin were no concern of the Japanese guards, and sanitation, primitive even by oriental standards, likewise was a matter of indifference. 219 This xenophobia and cloud of distrust that hung over the Japanese-Americans during and after the War s conclusion clearly affected Noguchi and the production of his inter- War works. Noguchi s Post-Internment Works, While Newman waited almost fifteen years to respond to the Holocaust, Noguchi began producing art as soon as he returned to New York City in November Many of these were directly related to his experience of internment and his grappling with his Japanese-American heritage. Was he Japanese, as he was interned with the Nisei? Or was he American, as he had been born in Los Angeles as an American citizen? Or, in this turbulent war environment, could he be both? The World is a Foxhole (I am a Foxhole) (1942) One of the first sculptures Noguchi created once back in New York was The World is a Foxhole (I am a Foxhole) (see Figure 25). Made out of bronze a material Noguchi had once been opposed to using because of its necessity to be first molded in clay and more natural materials (wood, string, and fabric), this sculpture evoked the loneliness and isolation of the foxholes used by soldiers during World War I. 220 Foxholes were made for one person and often 218 Two Kinds of Japanese, New York Times, November 20, Tillman Durdin, Shanghai Reveals Torture Secrets: Brutality in Bridge House Was Suffered by Allied Citizens, Chinese and Japanese, New York Times, September 18,

76 separated the soldier from the rest of their regiment. Noguchi felt this same seclusion during his internment; he was segregated from both Japanese and American groups, not allowed to fully integrate in or belong to either heritage: The war weighed heavily on my mind after my escape from that reality to the safety and remoteness of New York. To this haven came other refugees The World is a Foxhole was among my works reflecting this situation. The thoughts of a soldier in a foxhole: a red rag atop a pole a signal of hope and despair. 221 Figure 25. Isamu Noguchi, The World is a Foxhole (I am a Foxhole) In a 1979 interview with Paul Cummings, Noguchi stated he had always had a suspicion about bronze, because things that are made in bronze immediately become bronze. It was for this reason that early in his career, Noguchi practiced taille directe, or direct carving, on his marble and stone sculptures he wished to have a direct impact on his art-making. It is unclear why Noguchi turned to bronze for this and subsequent sculptures. Perhaps it is because the artist often stated he liked to change which media he used, as not to become tied to one medium. In the same interview, he said, if Mark Rothko hadn t been tied to his brush he could have had a whole new life and started all over again. In turn, this harkens to the Abstract Expressionist belief that the artist should be completely and wholly immersed in his art. Noguchi 2, Isamu Noguchi, The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (New York: Harry N. Publishers, 1987) Isamu Noguchi, The World is a Foxhole (I am a Foxhole), , bronze, wood, string, and fabric, Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, Long Island, NY, accessed 13 Nov < 67

77 My Arizona (1943) Perhaps the most direct reference to his internment was the sculpture My Arizona created in 1943 (see Figure 26). Figure 26. Isamu Noguchi, My Arizona 223 Named for both the state of Noguchi s internment Arizona and one of the ships the U.S.S. Arizona that sank at Pearl Harbor, this sculpture suggests both physical and political landscapes. The crisp, geometric sculpture evokes a biomorphic representation of the barren Arizona desert, the magenta square likely representing the 130-degree summer heat about which [Noguchi] had complained bitterly in letters written from Poston. 224 The starkness and emptiness of the landscape forms echoes the same desperation Noguchi felt both at the Poston camp and upon his return to New York. At Poston, the continual lack of progress on his proposed projects, coupled with the insufficient tools discouraged the sculptor, making him feel useless. Conditions in the camps did not help matters. Noguchi wrote: 223 Isamu Noguchi, My Arizona, 1943, magnesite, wood, and plastic, Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, Long Island, NY, accessed 13 Nov < 224 Lyford,

78 We [the internees] have moments of elation only to be defeated by the poverty of our actual conditions; the lack of water and equipment for farming, of tools and materials, our barrack surroundings. Sixteen dollars a month seems hardly an incentive to some. 225 Additionally, during his internment, several of Noguchi s works were featured at the San Francisco Museum of Art from June to August Grace Morely, the museum s director, believed that in showing his work, there was the possibility of rehabilitat[ing] the image of Japanese Americans in California. John Collier, the same man who had arranged Noguchi s voluntary internment, however, barred the artist from attending his own show. 226 Monument to Heroes (1943) Unlike his Monument to the Plow, which would have glorified the American agricultural industry and provided hope following the devastating Dust Bowl, Monument to Heroes (see Figure 27) is no monument at all. It was small enough to sit on a shelf and was constructed out of portable materials: a black-painted paper cylinder, string, and dry, brittle femur bones that Noguchi claims he stole from the Natural History Museum Isamu Noguchi, I Become A Nisei, in Isamu Noguchi s Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, by Amy Lyford (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013): Ibid, Lyford,

79 Figure 27. Isamu Noguchi, Monument to Heroes War monuments typically capture heroic moments. Contrarily, Noguchi s sculpture is devoid of life, focusing exclusively on death and the barbarism of war in the modern era (where armaments can burn flesh from bones in an instant). 229 Noguchi commented that Monument to Heroes was a dirge for heroes who killed themselves for what? He continued, this is what you sacrifice your life for and this is all that remains. 230 The feelings evoked in Noguchi s Monument paralleled the millions of American soldiers who were dying overseas. 228 Kouros and the Fourteen Americans ( ) In 1946, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized the Fourteen Americans exhibit, in which Noguchi participated. It was his first show in over ten years after being harshly critiqued for Monument to the Plow. By including Noguchi in an exhibition focusing on distinctly American artists, Amy Lyford suggests that MoMA was attempting to promote 228 Isamu Noguchi, Monument to Heroes, 1943, cardboard, wood, bones, string, Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, Long Island, NY, accessed 13 Nov < 229 Fletcher, Ibid,

80 artistic democracy by including artists of varied cultural and ethnic backgrounds shortly after the conclusion of World War II. 231 One of the fifteen works Noguchi displayed was Kouros, a monumental, nine-foot marble sculpture (see Figure 28) Figure 28. Isamu Noguchi, Kouros Figure 29. Statue of a kouros (youth) A reinterpretation of the ancient Greek kouros figures (see Figure 29), Noguchi s sculpture was the antithesis of these classical monuments. Whereas the Greek kouros statues depicted heroic male nudes, Noguchi s Kouros was an abstracted and fractural skeletal form. Like his New York School counterparts, the artist appropriated ancient tradition to resonate his internal feelings of angst and depression toward World War II. Lyford writes: 231 Lyford, Isamu Noguchi, Kouros, , pink Georgia marble, Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, Long Island, NY, accessed 25 Nov < 233 Statue of a kouros (youth), ca B.C marble and naxian, accessed 27 Nov < 71

81 Noguchi s Kouros thematizes the heroic male nude as a moveable effigy and does so in ways that subtly mimic the sculptor s own relocations during the late 1930s and early 1940s including stints in Mexico City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the internment camp for Japanese Americans at Poston, Arizona. 234 Interestingly, despite MoMA s recognition of Noguchi as an American artist, a spread in Life magazine from the same year and that featured Kouros, called into critical focus Noguchi s Japanese ancestry. The magazine even labeled his latest pieces as weird. Life seemingly belittles Kouros, stating that the sculpture was supposed to represent mankind, and that it was Noguchi s conception of man s existence. The fact that Kouros, with its abstracted heroicism and monumental implications, could be dismantled in three minutes was found to be almost comical to the magazine s authors (see Figure 30). Figure 30. Speaking of Pictures, Life 235 Ironically for Noguchi, though, Kouros s ability to be so quickly torn down for transport echoed the ease with which the United States was able to tear Japanese-Americans from their 234 Lyford, Speaking of Pictures, Life, November 11, 1946, 12 13,

82 homes and transport them into internment camps. 236 While Noguchi was coming to terms with his heritage following his time at Poston, the U.S. government launched an atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forever altering the global political landscape and the ways in which Abstract Expressionists such as Noguchi and Newman produced art. 236 Lyford,

83 CHAPTER FOUR: Newman, Noguchi, and the Atomic Bombs Does anyone feel pity or compassion for the poor devils about to die? Not when one thinks of Pearl Harbor and of the Death March on Bataan. William L. Laurence, science writer for the New York Times 237 At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the American B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay flew over the port city of Hiroshima and dropped the first atomic bomb, codenamed Little Boy. Sixty percent, approximately four square miles, of the city were decimated. 238 In mere milliseconds, the resulting blast and firestorm killed at least 70,000 Japanese civilians outright and wounded more than 120,000 more (see Figure 31). 239 Figure 31. First Atomic Bomb Already Obsolete, New York Times William H. Laurence, Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki Told by Flight Member: Seething Pillar of Fire Rose 60,000 Feet From Blast Planes High Up Rocked, New York Times, September 9, W.H. Lawrence, 5 Plants Vanished: 4.1 Square Miles of City Laid Waste, Photos of Epic Blow Show, New York Times, August 8, Tokyo Puts Toll of Atomic Bombs At 190,000 Killed and Wounded, New York Times, August 23, First Atomic Bomb Already Obsolete: Nagasaki Missile Found More Potent Than One That Tore Up Hiroshima 3 Days Earlier, New York Times, August 12,

84 Hours after the explosion, President Harry Truman spoke to an intrigued American public: We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories and the communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan s power to make war. 241 Truman stated that Japan s rejection of the terms of surrender during the July 26, 1945, Potsdam Declaration was the United States primary reason for detonating this new atomic weapon. 242 He continued, [i]f they do no not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. 243 When Japan refused to capitulate, and after the Soviet Union declared war on the ravaged country one day later, Truman made good on his promise. Three days after the attack on Hiroshima, on August 9, a larger, plutonium-derived bomb Fat Man fell over Nagasaki, instantly killing between 35 45,000 people. 244 Fires burned in the razed city over twelve hours after the explosion, and later photographs would reveal that the atomic bomb had made a huge crater on the western bank of the Urakami River, a crater that was not indicated in the picture of the Hiroshima bomb damage (see Figure 32) Text of Statements by Truman, Stimson on Development of Atomic Bomb, New York Times, August 7, Terms of the Potsdam Declaration included: the elimination of Japan s military; a call for Allied occupation in Japan until new rule could be established; stern justice for war criminals and the establishment of freedom of speech, religion and thought ; and destruction of war industries but maintenance of essential peacetime industries and of access to, rather than control of, raw materials. End of an Empire: Japan s Collapse, New York Times, August 12, Text of Statements by Truman, Stimson on Development of Atomic Bomb, New York Times, August 7, Gamma Ray Cause of 20% of Deaths: Violent Injuries and Physical Disturbances Revealed by Survey, New York Times, June 30, Atom Bomb Razed 1/3 of Nagasaki; Japan Protests to U.S. on Missile, New York Times, August 11,

85 Figure 32. First Atomic Bomb Already Obsolete, New York Times Japan surrendered on August 15, effectively ending World War II on all fronts. The Red Army withdrew its forces from Manchuria, and on September 2, Japan officially signed her terms of surrender aboard the USS Missouri, which was docked in Tokyo Bay. 247 But at what price did this world war close? What did the American people think of this innovative technology, a technology that had been forged in secret, hidden cities for over three years? The atomic bombs had monumental social, political, and cultural implications, all of which bore through in media coverage during the days following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Furthermore, both Newman and Noguchi s post-1945 works were impacted by this new awareness of potential atomic annihilation their preoccupation with ancient myths and the Sublime took on a new appearance, one derived from the volatile clouds that lingered over the destroyed Japanese cities First Atomic Bomb Already Obsolete: Nagasaki Missile Found More Potent Than One That Tore Up Hiroshima 3 Days Earlier, New York Times, August 12, Frank L. Kluckhohn, Japan s Surrender Ordered Over Militarist Opposition, New York Times, September 2,

86 In her essay The Bomb in the Postwar Era: From the Sublime to Red Hot Candy, art historian Mona Hadler states that in the 1940s, the image of the mushroom cloud dominated the media as a veritable incarnation of the atomic sublime, a fitting corollary to the Abstract Expressionists ruminations of the mythic forces of terror and evil. 248 The terror expressed in Mexican and Pre- Columbian art was no longer an academic contemplation. It was real. Media Coverage of the Atomic Bombs: The New York Times, Life and Time When Japan capitulated, the images of the atomic clouds and destruction began to surface in American media. Hadler argues that the American government waited to release these photographs until after the Japanese surrendered in order to cement America s military victory and superiority in the mind of her people. 249 On August 12, The New York Times ran some of the first pictures, which captured the two mushroom clouds hanging over the cities. Next, Life magazine published a lengthy feature in their August 20 edition, detailing not only the ruin wrought by the bombs, but also narrating to its readers the science-fiction-like story of how the bombs were created. This story was complete with a fanciful cast of genius scientists, secret cities where the bombs were produced by unsuspecting American citizens, and gripping dialogue and description. Such novel accounts were also printed in the Times, both with the implication suggested by Hadler: to reinforce America s political and military supremacy. To better examine these stories in their shaping of Americans response to the atomic bombs, this topic will be revisited in the subsequent section. 248 Mona Hadler, The Bomb in the Postwar Era: From the Sublime to Red Hot Candy, Notes in the History of Art, 21, no.1 (Fall 2001): Ibid,

87 What American readers saw in Life were scenes of utter obliteration. Not only did it print the familiar images of the mushroom clouds, but also aerial shots of the port cities that fully demonstrated what the bombs had done (see Figure 33) Figure 33. War s End, Life War s End: Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Life, August 20, 1945, Ibid,

88 On September 17, Life ran more photographs, this time shot from the ground at Hiroshima (see Figure 34). Figure 34. What Ended the War, Life 252 Although the media published photographs of war-torn cities such as Stalingrad, Warsaw, and Tokyo, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as seen above were completely wiped from the map (see Figure 35). 252 What Ended the War, Life, September 17, 1945, For additional images of damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki unpublished in Life magazine, see 79

89 Figure 35. W.H. Lawrence, Visit to Tokyo, New York Times One article in the Times claimed the buildings of Nagasaki had literally disintegrated, and went further to state, [t]he area where the bomb hit is absolutely flat and only markings of the building foundations provide a clue as to what may have been in the area before the energy of the universe was turned loose to destroy the industrial potential of Japan. 254 Another wrote about how Japanese radio reports said that the first atomic bombing of Hiroshima seared and crushed every living thing in the area of the bomb impact. 255 Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, said at a press conference: W.H. Lawrence, Visit to Hiroshima Proves It World s Most-Damaged City: Four Square Miles Leveled by the Atomic Bomb People Reported Dying at Rate of 100 a Day Hate for Us Shown, New York Times, September 5, W.H. Lawrence, Dead Nagasaki Seen From a B-17; Atomic Bomb Wiped Out Center, New York Times, August 27, Atom Bomb Razed 1/3 of Nagasaki; Japan Protests to U.S. on Missile, New York Times, August 11,

90 What had been Hiroshima was going up in a mountain of smoke. First I could see a mushroom of boiling dust apparently with some debris in it up to 20,000 feet. The boiling continued three or four minutes as I watched. Then a white cloud plumed upward from the center to some 40,000 feet. An angry dust cloud spread all around the city. There were fires on the fringes of the city, apparently burning as buildings crumbled and gas mains broke. 256 Perhaps the most telling account of the destruction came when U.S. Admiral William R. Purnell went on record and claimed that the bombs were far too big for the cities: The damage wrought by the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima brought the realization to those charged with handling it in the forward areas that almost all the targets slated for atombombing in Japan were too small to be attacked. Even after working on the bomb for three years, we [the scientists and government] were stunned and dazed by what it actually did. 257 This information withstanding, the government still decided to release a bomb over Nagasaki. The Atomic Narrative: Truman s Hidden Cities and W.L. Laurence s Accounts When President Truman addressed the nation on August 7, he revealed that work on developing an atomic weapon had begun in early 1940, after the Allies learned that both Germany and Japan were likely trying to produce their own. Truman stated that the United States and Great Britain collaborated research efforts starting in 1939, and in 1941 following Pearl Harbor, the decision was made to go all-out on research work and the project. The government then began construction on three hidden cities across the country in 1942 where the bomb would be assembled by over 125,000 unsuspecting workers. Truman disclosed: 256 W.H. Lawrence, 5 Plants Vanished: 4.1 Square Miles of City Laid Waste, Photos of Epic Blow Show, New York Times, August 8, Atom Bomb Held Too Big For Japan: Admiral Who Worked on It Says Most Targets Were Too Small for Its Power, New York Times, August 20,

91 [t]he work has been so completely compartmentalized so that while many thousands of people have been associated with the program in one way or another no one has been given more information concerning it than was absolutely necessary to his particular job. As a result only a few highly placed persons in Government and science know the entire story. 258 But what was the entire story? Located in the seclusion of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was the Clinton Engineering Works, and the heart of the Manhattan Project (see Figure 36). Here 78,000 volunteers lived with their families, assembling various elements of the atomic project. A second plant housed 17,000 workers at the Handford Engineering Works in Pasco, Washington. Finally, a third laboratory was hidden in the New Mexico desert, just outside of Santa Fe. It was here that Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer the genius leader in charge operated. And it was at this base that the first atomic test took place on July 16, Figure 36. Jay Waltz, Atom Bombs Made in 3 Hidden Cities, New York Times New York Times writer William Laurence had direct access to the most groundbreaking events in the atomic narrative. Not only was he present at the July 16 test in New Mexico, he was also aboard the B-29 Superfortress The Great Artiste when the bomb was detonated over Additionally, it was decided by both governments that construction of the bomb would take place in the United States since Great Britain was under constant air attack by Axis forces. Text of Statements by Truman, Stimson on Development of Atomic Bomb, New York Times, August 7, Waldemar Kaempffert, The Story Behind the Atomic Bomb: Vast Enterprise of Governments Found The Great Secret, New York Times, August 12, Jay Walz, Atom Bombs Made in 3 Hidden Cities, New York Times, August 7,

92 Nagasaki. 261 In one article written on September 9, 1945, Laurence said that several cities had been chosen as targets for the second bomb, eloquently writing, The winds of destiny seemed to favor certain Japanese cities that must remain nameless. We circled about them again and again and found no opening in the thick umbrella of clouds that covered them. Destiny chose Nagasaki as the ultimate target. After dropping Fat Man, Laurence noted that the cloud was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes. 262 By personifying the debris cloud, Laurence effectively wove a science-fiction tale into his articles. The bomb became a figurative monster instead of a literal eruption that killed thousands. It became an exciting narrative to the American audience rather than a terrible truth. He continued: At one stage of its evolution, covering millions of years in terms of seconds, the entity assumed the form of a giant square totem pole, with its base about three miles long, tapering off to about a mile at the top. Its bottom was brown, its center was amber, its top white. But it was a living totem pole, covered with the many grotesque masks covering the earth. 263 Laurence s mythic totem harkens to the primitive leviathans and terrors of the Abstract Expressionists work. Should Newman or Noguchi have seen these stories, it would have likely resonated and influenced the shaping of their reaction to the atomic explosions. Adding to the Times exploration of the atomic story, Life magazine delved further into the Manhattan Project, glorifying Oppenheimer and other members of the project with scientific 261 William L. Laurence, Dec. 2, 1942 The Birth of the Atomic Age: Story of the great experiment which first released the energy that runs the universe, New York Times, December 1, William L. Laurence, Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki Told By Flight Member: Seething Pillar of Fire Rose 60,000 Feet From Blast Planes High Up Rocked, New York Times, September 9, Ibid. 83

93 greats such as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein (see Figure 37).264 The multi-page spread, simply entitled Atomic Bomb, provided illustrations on how nuclear fission worked, and took an inside look in the top-secret laboratories (see Figure 38). It also gave audiences a glimpse at a piece of uranium, the man-made element used in the Hiroshima bomb (see Figure 39). 265 Figure 37. Atomic Bomb: Manhattan Project, Life Interestingly, it was Albert Einstein who first discovered the possibility of atomic energy in his 1905 theory of relativity. William L. Laurence, Atom Bomb Based On Einstein Theory: Missile First Practical Use of Theory Developed by Man Whom Nazis Drove Out, New York Times, September 28, Atomic Bomb: Manhattan Project, Life, August 20, 1945, Atomic Bomb: Nuclear Fission, Life, August 20, 1945, 87C 87D. 84

94 Figure 38. Atomic Bomb: Many Years of Atom Smashing Proceed Bomb, Life 267 Figure 39. The Atomic Bomb, Life Atomic Bomb: Many Years of Atom Smashing Precede Bomb, Life, The Atomic Bomb: Its First Explosion Opens A New Era, Life, August 20, 1945, 87B. 85

95 Contrarily, these stories may have convoluted the issue of the bomb: was it a fantastic weapon that ended the war and saved countless American lives, or was it a scientifically bankrupt mistake that scarred and maimed Japanese civilians who had little or no political stake in the War? The conflicting reports and photographs in the Times and Life magazine seemed to tell both versions, leaving more questions than answers for the American public. After-Effects: Injuries and the Legality of Atomic Bombs Immediately following the dropping of the bombs, the Japanese government in Tokyo held that the United States had violat[ed] international law with its new weapon. It cited the Hague Convention of 1907 claiming, belligerent nations are not entitled to unlimited choice in the means by which to destroy their opponents. 269 Tokyo also compared the bomb with poison gas, which it said the warring countries had refrained from using because of an ethical standard whose basic principle was that no arms or weapons, when they are capable of mass slaughter of humanity, are to be allowed to be used as actual weapons against man. 270 The Japanese government s questioning of the United States morals soon gave way to its fear of lingering radiation at the blast sites. While both governments agreed that most of the deaths resulted from the concussive blast, there was continual contradiction regarding radiation poisoning that developed in victims causing further deaths. 271 On August 8, 1945, Oppenheimer issued a statement through the War Department stating, there is every reason to believe that there was no appreciable radioactivity on the found at Hiroshima and what little there was 269 W.H. Lawrence, 2D Aerial Blow: Japanese Port Is Target in Devastating New Midday Assault, New York Times, August 9, W.H. Lawrence, Nagasaki Flames Rage For Hours: Smoke Rises to 20,000 Feet Long After Atomic Bombing Blast Visible Many Miles, New York Times, August 10, After-Effects of The Bomb, New York Times, September 13,

96 decayed very rapidly. 272 Brigadier General T.F. Farrell sided with Oppenheimer and denied categorically that [the bomb] produced a dangerous lingering radioactivity in the ruins of the town or caused a form of poison gas at the moment of explosion. 273 Furthermore, American scientists claimed the radioactivity had been tested at the New Mexico test site and showed no harmful after-effects. 274 However, one story published in the Times on September 5, 1945, reported how civilians that had only been slightly injured on the day of the blast suddenly lost 86 per cent of their white blood corpuscles, developed temperatures of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, their hair began to drop out, they lost their appetites, vomited blood and finally died. 275 This was the first sign of radiation poisoning in Japanese victims. Less than a year after the bombings, in June 1946, the Times ran a lengthy article detailing the findings of a survey on post-atomic illnesses conducted by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The story divulged, fifteen to 20 per cent of the atomic bomb deaths in Japan were caused by the new killers of the atomic age gamma and other lethal rays. It said, [t]he victims of these rays who did not die instantly were made sterile; pregnant women suffered miscarriages; some lost their hair, suffered diseases of the mouth, pharynx and intestinal tract, or they had hemorrhages of gums, nose and skin. Autopsies showed remarkable changes in the blood picture almost complete absence of white blood cells, deterioration of bone marrow. Mucous membranes of the throat, lungs, stomach and intestines showed acute inflammation Japanese Stress Hiroshima Horror : Atomic Bomb Radioactivity Killed 30,000, Says Tokyo Sympathy Effort Seen, New York Times, August 25, W.H. Lawrence, No Radioactivity In Hiroshima Ruins: Army Investigators Also Report Absence of Ground Fusing 68,000 Buildings Damaged, New York Times, September 13, After-Effects of The Bomb, New York Times, September 13, W.H. Lawrence, Visit to Hiroshima Proves It World s Most-Damaged City: Four Square Miles Leveled by the Atomic Bomb People Reported Dying at Rate of 100 a Day Hate for Us Shown, New York Times, September 5, Gamma Ray Cause of 20% of Deaths; Violent Injuries and Severe Physical Disturbances Revealed by Survey, New York Times, June 30,

97 If these descriptions of suffering were unable to make Americans query the morality of its weapon, two years later, in 1947, Life magazine printed a photograph of a Hiroshima survivor, his skin badly scarred with keloids from burns (see Figure 40). 277 Figure 40. The Peace City, Life 278 By this time, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had begun rebuilding with tremendous aid from the United States, and Hiroshima was on its way to becoming the Peace City. Debates continued to rage about the legality of atomic bombs, with many nations including Great Britain calling for rigorous international control of atomic energy and weapons. 279 While 277 This was one of the few photographs the media published of bomb survivors, even years after the attacks. Whether it was because they did not want Americans to see what their atomic weapon had done, or whether they were deemed too graphic is unclear. The latter explanation, however, seems unlikely, as media outlets did not censor other war casualties, such as those in the Nazi concentration camps. It should be noted that President Truman, in his August 7, 1945, address acknowledged that the media had cooperated with the government in keeping quiet any information they obtained regarding the Manhattan Project. Text of Statements by Truman, Stimson on Development of Atomic Bomb, New York Times, August 7, For images not published in Life magazine, see The Peace City: A Survivor Hopes His Wounds Will Serve Peace, Life, September 1, 1947, Britons Revolted By Use of Atom-Bomb, New York Times, August 9,

98 citizens around the world reacted with editorials, Newman and Noguchi turned to their art to voice their views on the atomic blasts. Barnett Newman and Isamu Noguchi s Atomic Works Newman s Pagan Void (1946) Today no terror. Atomic Bomb. Atomic Bomb is new fate that disappeared with Greeks [when they introduced aesthetics]. We are not afraid. Bomb hangs like fate. No matter what we do as individuals we are helpless. Renewed tragedy of action. One man pushing a button that can kill his father and desecrate his mother. Barnett Newman 280 In the mid- to late-1940s, Newman was chiefly concerned with developing his own Abstractionist response to the terrible sublime and curating shows for his gallery friends. The revelation of the Holocaust in the spring of 1945 struck Newman deeply, but the terror of the Second World War did not fully permeate the artist until news of Hiroshima and Nagasaki spread. The Nazis Holocaust had been a systematic round up of select ethnicities and nationalities, and while his parents Jewishness would have made him a target in Europe, he remained safe in New York City. However, the atomic bomb, and William L. Laurence s Atomic Age was shrouded in uncertainty anyone, anywhere, could seemingly fall prey to the new weapon. 281 The Japanese cities had been completely unaware of their fates, and several New York Times pieces made it clear that if the weapon fell into enemy hands, America would be no better defended against a nuclear holocaust. Laurence wrote, the resistance to [an atomic] blast of American residences in general would not be markedly different from those in Hiroshima and 280 Richard Shiff, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, and Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné (New York: The Barnett Newman Foundation and Yale University Press, 2004), Laurence coined the term Atomic Age in his 1946 piece on the birth of the atom bomb. William L. Laurence, Dec. 2, 1942 The Birth of the Atomic Age: Story of the great experiment which first released the energy that runs the universe, New York Times, December 1,

99 Nagasaki. In fact, he claimed, it would be worse, as many Japanese buildings were reinforced with concrete to protect against earthquake damage. 282 Laurence s monstrous, mushroom-cloud behemoth and its resulting crater first slipped into Newman s 1946 piece Pagan Void (see Figure 41). Figure 41. Barnett Newman, Pagan Void 283 Pre-dating Newman s breakthrough piece Onement I, Pagan Void is reminiscent of his early biomorphic explorations. It is a methodically constructed painting, built up passage by passage, with no indication of changes or revisions. 284 The colors are earth tones, and as critic Harold Rosenberg pointed out in his 1978 biography of Newman, the shapes as in others of Newman s early work are suggestions of plant-life, and of fluid, the cell, the egg. 285 The artist s biomorphic abstractions imply not only life, but also death, both of which permeate in Pagan Void. 282 William L. Laurence, Atomic Effects: Extent and Degree of Nuclear Desolation Are Depicted, New York Times, August 17, Barnett Newman, Pagan Void, 1946, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., accessed 27 Dec < 284 Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Barnett Newman s Pilgrimage in Painting, in Reconsidering Barnett Newman, edited by Melissa Ho (Philadelphia: Publishing Department Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2005), Harold Rosenberg, Barnett Newman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1978),

100 In her article, Hadler comments, [a]s [Guggenheim curator] Jeffery Weiss has demonstrated, Barnett Newman s Pagan Void of 1946 conflates studies of microscopic life and solar eclipses with the great void of nuclear devastation. 286 In the painting, skeletal hands grasp from their engulfment in the black void, possibly alluding to the crater that formed at Nagasaki near the impact site. One Times writer even described the pancaked buildings of Hiroshima as skeletons. 287 The mangled, straining blue forms could also be a representation of the consummation of trees and all living vegetation in the bomb s flames. On December 31, 1945, Time magazine named President Truman their Man of the Year. His photograph was placed on the cover before an illustration of a hand clutching a fiery explosion; it was an illustration of man s harnessing the power of the universe, a phrase Truman himself used more than once in his descriptions of the bomb (see Figure 42). Inside, there was an image of a lone, stripped tree set against the desolate, twisted wreckage of Hiroshima (below). Figure 42. Hiroshima After the Bomb, Time Hadler, Leslie Nakashima, Hiroshima Gone, Newman Finds: City Vanished Under Single Blow of Atom Bomb, He Says After Tour of Area, New York Times, August 31, Hiroshima After the Bomb, Time, December 31, 1945,

101 This stripped tree bares a striking resemblance to the flailing blue figures in Pagan Void. Another of Newman s less blatant reflections on the atomic weapon was his review of the Art of the South Seas, gallery written in February 1946 for MoMA. It was published in Spanish in the magazine Ambos Mundos and examined the relationship between South Seas Oceanic art on display at the Museum and the style of surrealism. Coincidently, the review appeared in June 1946, mere days before the well-announced atomic tests took place at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. 289 The South Seas had been the primary destination for atomic explosions, occurring in Japan, and now in the Pacific islands, and fortified the image of the blossoming mushroom cloud in the minds of Americans. Newman wrote about how the South Seas art possessed a Sublime terror based on magic, similar, but not identical to the African and Mexican art of the New York School s fixations. It was through the atomic blasts that the terror of nature s meaning emerged, Newman argued, creating a romantic surrealism in the region s primitive artworks. 290 From that time on, art historians Richard Shiff, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, and Heidi Colsman-Freyberger propose in their Catalogue Raisonné, there could be no foreseeable end to the threat known as the Bomb; its presence become general rather than limited to the final days of the conflict with Japan. It came from nowhere, went nowhere. 291 The Ideographic Picture Show in Post-War America (1947) The culmination of Newman s primitivistic ponderings took shape in the form of the 1947 Ideographic Picture exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, which he curated for his friend. The premise of the show, according to Newman s catalogue essay, was to introduce 289 Shiff, Mancusi-Ungaro, and Colsman-Freyberger, Barnett Newman, Art of the South Seas, in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, ed. John O Neill (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), Shiff, Mancusi-Ungaro, and Colsman-Freyberger,

102 contemporary art [that] was being redefined in the postwar years through the use of ideographs that would be legible across cultural traditions. 292 These ideographs would connect all people to the terror and tragedy wrought by the events of World War II, most recently, those of the atomic bombs in Japan. Included in the show were Abstract Expressionist titans such as Pollock, de Kooning, Kline and Rothko. Notably absent, however, were artists of ethnic backgrounds, such as Gorky and Noguchi. Regardless of Noguchi s cultural connection to the bombs and the war in general, his myth-inspired artworks were not seen as American enough to qualify as primitive or ideographic. This exclusion perhaps contributed to his disillusionment of New York City in the late 1940s, and his desire to escape to Europe and the Far East. However, even when Noguchi reached Asia in 1949, he was still confronted with cultural exclusion, this time coming from the Japanese rather than the Americans. Noguchi s Two Bridges for Peace Park ( ) and Memorial to the Dead, Hiroshima (1952) My depression was increased by the ever-present menace of atomic annihilation. This was no doubt, a theme of art. But prophecy, I had decided, had better be left to painters. Isamu Noguchi 293 Unlike Newman, Noguchi s reaction to the atomic bombs was abrupt and direct. In her book Isamu Noguchi Master Sculptor, art historian Valerie Fletcher noted, 292 Amy Lyford, Isamu Noguchi s Modernism (Los Angeles: The Getty Foundation and the University of California Press, 2013), Isamu Noguchi, A Sculptor s World (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1968),

103 At first the American reaction to the nuclear blasts had been relief that the war had ended. But as the devastation and suffering of the survivors were documented in newsreels and photographs, many people reacted with horrified guilt, which tempered their initial elation. When the Soviets soon thereafter acquired the capability, initiating the international tensions of the Cold War, Noguchi sank almost to despair. 294 Shaken by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his exclusion from Newman s Ideographic Picture gallery in 1947, Noguchi was also profoundly saddened by Gorky s suicide in In 1949, he applied to and was subsequently accepted for a Bollingen Foundation grant. 295 This allowed Noguchi to escape New York City and travel throughout the world he visited England, Spain, France, Greece, India, Cambodia, and Indonesia. 296 In 1950, he returned to Japan and spent four months in Tokyo where he begun drawing up plans for his two Peace Bridges with the assistance of architect and friend Tange Kenzo: 297 One bridge culminates in a circular disk form like the rising sun and symbolizes its life-giving energies; it is called Tsukuru (to build). The other faces the setting sun and is named Yuku; it is meant to suggest departure from the world and the funerary boats of Egypt [see Figure 43] Valerie Fletcher, Isamu Noguchi Master Sculptor (Washington, D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2004), The Bollingen Foundation was established in 1945 to create a larger audience for Carl G. Jung s theories by publishing his works in English. The Foundation grew to include publications in the fields ranging from aesthetics to comparative religions. Noguchi was issued a grant in order to publish a book on Eastern architecture, art, and sculpture. The Foundation folded in Library of Congress, Bollingen Foundation Collection, Selected Special Collections, last modified December 5, 2012, accessed January 12, 2015, /rr/rarebook/coll/031.html. 296 Bruce Altshuler, On Sculpture: Introduction, in Isamu Noguchi: Essays and Conversations, eds. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Bruce Altshuler (New York: Abrams in association with the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, 1994), Hiroshima s Peace Park and the Peace Festival that was held there in August 1947 was an effort by the Japanese and American governments to achieve a lasting peace between the nations. A Peace Bell was tolled in the Peace Tower to remember the victims of the atomic bombs. Hiroshima Marks Bomb Anniversary: British General Emphasizes Betrayal of Friends Led to Atomic Warfare, New York Times, August 17, (Images of the ceremony printed in the New York Times can be seen in the Appendix, Figure 45. The same photograph was shot by Life photographers, but was not printed in the magazine). 298 Sam Hunter, Isamu Noguchi (New York: Abbeville Press, Inc. Publishers, 1978),

104 Figure 43. Isamu Noguchi, Two Bridges for Peace Park After completing the Peace Park Bridges, Noguchi was commissioned by Kenzo and the mayor of Tokyo to design a memorial for the dead of Hiroshima. In his plans, Noguchi wrote, The requirements specified that the core, or repository of names, should be underground. A cave beneath the earth (to which we all return). It was to be a place of solace to the bereaved suggestive still further of the womb of generations still unborn who would in time replace the dead. Above ground was to be a symbol for all to see and remember. It was to be a mass of black granite, glowing at the base from a light beyond and below [see Figure 44] Isamu Noguchi, Two Bridges for Peace Park, Hiroshima, , concrete, Hiroshima, Japan, accessed 13 Nov < 300 Isamu Noguchi, 1952 Project for Memorial to the Dead: Hiroshima, in A Sculptor s World by Isamu Noguchi (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968),

105 Figure 44. Isamu Noguchi, Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima However, Noguchi s design was rejected; in fact, Kenzo and the mayor neglected to even bring the plan before the committee in charge of accepting entries. Later, Kenzo would claim that Noguchi s memorial to the dead was inappropriate, as he was an American citizen. Noguchi realized what his friend had been planning, reflecting years later in his book, The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum: Was it because I was American, or was it a case of someone not having the proper authorization to which my proposal fell victim? Tange was obligated to draw up the design himself, within a week, to meet the deadline and have something ready for an anniversary celebration. This is what is there now in Hiroshima Isamu Noguchi, Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima, 1952, composite photograph of plaster model, Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, Long Island City, New York, accessed 27 Dec < 302 Isamu Noguchi, The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999),

106 Betrayed by his friend and shunned by his heritage, Noguchi felt more isolated than ever. His Americanness had prevented him from paying homage to the fallen Japanese citizens, and he once more became trapped and simultaneously rejected by his dual heritage. In 1960, Noguchi meditated on his heartache at the rejection of his Memorial, stating, I was opposed by the people of Hiroshima because I am an American. Certainly, I am an American, but my heart is that of a Japanese and how it ached the days of the B29 air raids My feeling was unbearable when Tokyo was burning and the nuclear bomb was falling on Hiroshima. Therefore I felt guilty for the people who lost their lives all at once. I wanted them [the committee] to let me do the design more than anyone else 303 Whether the reaction of these two artists to the atomic bombs was metaphorical and introspective, such as Newman s, or more literal, such as Noguchi s, it is undeniable that the media reports of the atomic bombs had a profound impact on both artists. Newman would go on to discover his zip painting, while Noguchi fed up with post-atomic American culture looked toward nature for answers. The booming post-war economy provided Noguchi with the means to create his sculpture of spaces, which took the form of over twenty gardens, parks, and plazas around the world Isamu Noguchi, Isamu Noguchi no Naka ni Aru Higashi to Nishi (The East and West within Isamu Noguchi, interview, Fujin Gahō, July 1960, Bruce Altshuler, On Sculpture: Introduction, in Isamu Noguchi: Essays and Conversations, edited by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Bruce Altshuler (New York: Abrams in association with the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, 1994),

107 Conclusion When World War II finally ended, more than 85 million people had been killed, over half of these being civilian deaths. 305 The exact death toll will likely never be known, nor will the countless personal stories and experiences likely ever fully be told. However, many accounts were printed in the New York Times, Life magazine and Time magazine as both journalistic reports and individual testimonies. This thesis has explored a small fraction of these media clips as they related to and influenced Abstract Expressionists Barnett Newman and Isamu Noguchi, a connection that has not been thoroughly explored. While art historians such as Michael Leja, Amy Lyford, and Irving Sandler often cite select articles or reviews from these publications, no comprehensive examination between the media and the artists has ever been made in either the art historical or journalistic fields. Furthermore, many of these historians concentrate their study on art critiques of these artists that appeared in such publications; for instance, New York Times critic John Canaday draws much scholarly attention for his contempt of Abstract Expressionism. As both Newman and Noguchi were featured in these three publications, they would have undoubtedly been avid consumers of these war stories beginning in 1939, thus influencing certain pieces of their post-war works. Lastly, because neither Newman nor Noguchi experienced the horrors of the war firsthand excluding Noguchi s internment both lived the devastation and the world-changing events through the media s coverage. Thus, while explicit writings by 305 By the Numbers: World-Wide Deaths, The National WWII Museum, last modified 2013, accessed December 27, 2014, 98

108 the artists on the influence of World War II media are not available, it is reasonable to assume this is where they received their information, particularly the three outlets examined in this study. Although Newman and Noguchi are both considered members of the Abstract Expressionist movement, there is no indication the two associated with each other despite their mutual friendships with artists such as Arshile Gorky and Adolph Gottlieb. What connected these two men were their heritages and cultural relationships to events of World War II. Newman s Jewish identity linked him to the Holocaust, and his resulting series The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani was one of the pinnacle exhibits in the late years of the New York School. Meanwhile, Noguchi s experience with internment impacted him more directly than other contemporaneous artists, giving him a breadth of emotional and introspective experiences to translate into his works. Because the events of World War II are so numerous and wide reaching, there is ostensibly unlimited opportunities for further research, even encompassed within the narrow topic of this thesis. While art historian Mark Godfrey, in his articles and subsequent book, has written extensively on Newman s reaction to the Holocaust through the Stations, it would be interesting to draw further connections to Newman s post-1945 works by examining the fruitful writings he left behind. Perhaps the Stations were the artist s most forthcoming response to the Holocaust, but did others of his post-war works possess the same emotion? Surely Newman, being the introspective, thoughtful scholar he was, did not have only one productive response to such horrors, even if it was embodied in a series of fifteen paintings. Are there other clues or works that echo the same starkness of the Stations? Did other examples of his zip paintings or even some of his late biomorphic works offer similar examinations of the World War II years? Likewise, the definite meaning of the Nazi Holocaust was not fully established until well after 99

109 the War ended. In fact, many people saw the Holocaust and the detonation of the atomic bombs as one in the same: an outright massacre of hundreds of thousands of people, one taking years and the other taking mere milliseconds. Newman himself thought in this manner, as is evident in many of his writings in the late 1940s and into the 1950s. As the term Holocaust held several different meanings following the War, Noguchi perhaps interpreted it to mean the atomic annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While Newman was as much shocked as the rest of non-japanese Americans, Noguchi felt utterly lost when his home country, the United States, wiped two Japanese cities off of the map in the name of ending the War. While his post-internment works are relatively straightforward, although by no means simple, his post-atomic works seemingly encompass the remainder of his career. One might argue that because of Noguchi s desolation after the rejection of his Hiroshima monument, the remainder of his artistic career was shaped by August 6 and August 9, One possible avenue of future study would be to assess Noguchi s post-1945 gardens and outdoor instillations to see how the bombs fully disturbed him. In his gardens and playgrounds, Noguchi searched for peace and harmony, a far cry from his early racially charged sculptures, such as Death (Lynched Figure) (1934). Amy Lyford, in her comprehensive study of Noguchi s race relations, ends her analysis at the year However, Noguchi continued working until his death in December 1988, giving nearly four more decades of material and works to study. Additionally, the media outlets discussed in this thesis frequently included Newman and Noguchi in their pages. The Times featured both men numerous times in the years after World War II, concentrating heavily on their post-war abstractions. Were these abstractions further responses to the War and the images and stories they read? Similarly, Life and Time magazines focused extensive coverage on the political, social, and economical aftermaths and consequences 100

110 of the War, filling in gaps of media coverage from the 1930s and 1940s. While both Newman and Noguchi turned their attentions to other matters following World War II, such as zips and playgrounds, the Holocaust, the internment, and the atomic bombs were forever preserved in their artworks, just as these stories were documented in the media of the era. This thesis explored a fraction of the relationship between the media and Newman and Noguchi, and paves the way for future study of these two artists and the extent media s impact on artistic expression. 101

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119 Appendix Figure 45 (see footnote 296). Two Years After The Atomic Bomb Fell In Hiroshima, New York Times, Aug. 16, Additional Images of the Japanese Internment from the New York Times (see footnote 192) Figure 46. Japan Wars On U.S. and Britain, New York Times, Dec. 8,

120 Figure 47. Lawrence E. Davies, Japanese Seizes in Raid on Coast, New York Times, Feb. 3, Figure 48. The New War in the Pacific, New York Times, Dec. 8,

121 Figure 49. The New War in the Pacific, New York Times, Dec. 8, Figure 50. The New War in the Pacific, New York Times, Dec. 8,

122 Figure Are Arrested Here, New York Times, Dec. 10,