Eastern Yeast

Because European art is in the doldrums, Americans are turning increasingly to the art of the East, for both diversion and inspiration. In the past three months, Manhattan has seen no less than 16 exhibitions of Oriental art. Last week Manhattan gallerygoers crowded two shows that uniquely bridged East and West.

Both were important sculpture exhibitions, and both were by Japanese-Americans: Isamu Noguchi and Ruth Asawa.

Noguchi, 50, has long been recognized as a leading U.S. sculptor. Born in California, he spent his grammar-school years in Japan, his high-school years in the U.S.

and his most fruitful years of study under Abstract Sculptor Constantin Brancusi in Paris. A consummate technician, Noguchi has variously turned his hand to fashionable portrait busts, abstract stone sculptures cut with a diamond saw, furniture, paper lanterns and stage sets. Since 1950 he has spent half of his time in Japan (where he married Screen Star Yoshiko Yamaguchi), concentrated on deliberately crude ceramic sculptures molded from the native earth, and modeled partly on prehistoric Japanese idols. The ceramics in last week's show were mainly semi-abstractions of figures and faces. They looked lumpish and exuberant at once--like the gingerbread cookies of a playful and somewhat inebriated baker.

Ruth Asawa, 28, is a San Francisco housewife and mother of three. She was born and raised in California, studied under Abstract Painter Josef Albers at Black Mountain College. Her show consists of big, wholly abstract sculptures, made of woven wire and suspended from the ceiling. If Noguchi's ceramics demonstrate a certain grinning bounciness in the Japanese heritage, Asawa's wire constructions show the opposite side: austerity and calm. In their openness, delicacy and symmetry they somewhat resemble blossoms, odorless, colorless, outsize, yet refreshing to contemplate.

Noguchi and Asawa share one quality of Oriental art that Western artists often lack: economy of means. Their Japanese ancestors devoted vast efforts to making a single brush stroke look easy. By confining themselves to simple shapes made of patted mud and woven wire respectively, Noguchi and Asawa also achieved a pleasing quality of ease and oneness with their work. Judged by one standard test of art, i.e., the proportion of visible effort to effect, their sculptures stand high.

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