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Isamu Noguchi
Cronos, 1947, cast 1986

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Cronos
Artist name
Isamu Noguchi
Date created
1947, cast 1986
Classification
sculpture
Medium
bronze with steel cable
Dimensions
85 in. × 23 in. × 37 in. (215.9 cm × 58.42 cm × 93.98 cm)
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Copyright
© Estate of Isamu Noguchi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.270
Artwork status
On view on floor 6 as part of German Art After 1960

Audio Stories

Choreographer Margaret Jenkins on Noguchi’s dialogue with dance

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transcripts

NARRATOR:  

Sculptor Isamu Noguchi collaborated for over forty years with modern dancer Martha Graham. This sculpture, Cronos, was inspired by the work he did with dance. We spoke to a local choreographer for her take on it.  

 

MARGARET JENKINS:  

It’s something that is both, has movement and also a kind of profound stillness to it. 

 

I’m Margaret Jenkins and I’m the artistic director of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.  

 

I see the arch as a kind of symbol of weight and a symbol of gravity, and the hanging objects within the arch as symbolic of the ways in which dancers try to defy gravity, although in modern dance I think our friend is gravity.  

 

I also think about the way that dancers entwine themselves around a stronger object. The way a dancer runs across a space and throws him or herself on another object and is totally consumed. 

 

I think of all of it as limbs of a body moving around and looking to kind of find their peace inside that arc. And I think one of the things Noguchi was so determined to do through all of his work was to create environments of peace.  

 

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