Noriyuki Haraguchi

Noriyuki Haraguchi was a prominent Japanese artist renowned as a leading figure in both the Mono-ha and Post-mono-ha movements.

Biography of Haraguchi

Noriyuki Haraguchi was born in Yokosuka, Japan, in 1946. He graduated from Nihon University, Tokyo, in 1970, specializing in oil painting. His artistic journey began during his college years amid political turmoil, campus protests, and student riots against the Vietnam War and the Japan-US Security Treaty.

Yokosuka, the home port of the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, significantly influenced Haraguchi’s early works. His paintings and sculptures, including the Ships series (1963–65), Tsumu 147 (Freight Car) (1966), and Air Pipes series (1968–69), reflect the aesthetics and materials of militarism and heavy industry.

In 1968–69, Haraguchi created the iconic sculpture A-4E Skyhawk, a full-scale reproduction of a US Navy fighter jet, behind the student barricades at Nihon University. This piece was displayed at the university before riot police retook the campus.

Haraguchi's work has been showcased extensively both in Japan and internationally since the early 1960s. His notable exhibitions include Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany (1977), and retrospectives at Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich (2001), BankART, Yokohama (2009), and Yokosuka Museum of Art (2011). Recent group exhibitions include "Requiem for the Sun" at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2012), and "Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012).

Noriyuki Haraguchi died in 2020.  

Noriyuki Haraguchi's Art Style

Haraguchi's work is characterized by meticulous attention to materials—often industrial—their spatial arrangement, their interaction with the exhibition space, and the processual nature of the artistic practice. Haraguchi's early works referenced the aesthetics and materials of militarism and heavy industry. From the 1970s onward, he shifted focus to issues of perception and representation, creating a complex dialogue between raw and manufactured materials. His works explored themes of modernity, industrialization, and nature, all while maintaining a captivating formal beauty.

The artist was affiliated with Mono-ha (School of Things), a 1960s art movement in Japan and Korea that examined the connections between the natural and industrial worlds. Unlike his contemporaries Nobuo Sekine, Lee Ufan, and Kishio Suga, who primarily used natural materials, Haraguchi employed industrial components such as waste oil, I-beams, automobile parts, miniatures and models, plastics, and rubber.

Haraguchi's work is often characterized as both personal and political, influenced by his birthplace, Yokosuka—a port city where the United States stationed its forces during the Vietnam War era. His art reflects on the military-industrial complex and the interplay between Japanese modernity and its relationship with the United States military.