ISAMU NOGUCHI AND MODERN JAPANESE CERAMICS: A Close Embrace of the Earth, by Louise Allison Cort and Bert Winther-Tamaki, with contributions by Bruce J. Altshuler and Niimi Ryu. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2003; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 240 pp., 81 color photographs, 78 b/w photographs, $44.95 (cloth).

Though known mainly as a sculptor, the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) also created works in clay, most of which were executed in Japan during three short but intensive sessions in 1931, 1950 and 1952. Typical of the artist, these are not nearly so well known as the major works.

Noguchi, however, would have found them of equal importance. He later spoke of his pottery-making experience as "my close embrace of the earth," and said that in it he was searching for an identity with some "primal matter."

At the same time he saw his identification with clay as an expression of his own dichotomy -- an artist, both American and Japanese, working in stainless steel, chrome and magnesite as well as common clay.