Bench 1966

This is ‘Bench’ by Isamu Noguchi, and while we don’t know exactly when he made it, we can imagine his hands hard at work, coaxing this form out of stone. It’s incredible what sculptors can do. I think about Noguchi chipping away, feeling the weight and resistance of the material. The bench looks so solid, so permanent, but I bet it took so much trial and error, so much intuition, to get it just right. I love how he's managed to make something both functional and incredibly sculptural. It makes me think about Brancusi, and how he found the abstract in the everyday. I think Noguchi’s searching for something similar. This piece is more than somewhere to sit; it’s a meditation on form, space, and our place in the world. It’s this exchange of ideas across time that inspires us all.