Hanging weight is where bronze functions. Our pendulous and precarious existence is shaped by gravity.--Isamu Noguchi, 1987 Isamu Noguchi was an important American sculptor who combined the sense of form from sculpture in the first half of the century with his own Asian heritage. Born in Los Angeles, he studied in Paris with Constantin Brancusi and went on to design sets and costumes for dance performances as well as furniture, lamps, and gardens. Noguchi incorporated the Japanese word shodo, which means calligraphy, into the titles of several of his works. He likened sculpture to calligraphy because, as he wrote, both depend on a balance between an original thrust and an opposing, equivalent tension. In form, Shodo Hanging also resembles a calligraphic character: asymmetrical, yet visually in perfect balance.

Chris Ofili is one of the best known of the generation of YBAs, or Young British Artists. His intense and original colorful visual style combines the worlds of kitsch, hip-hop music, decorative art, Pop Art, blaxploitation films, the London Zoo, and the Zimbabwe plains. These six untitled watercolors, small in size, exude a delicacy that is energized by the artist's signature use of bold color: his simple lines and curves, almost reminiscent of Japanese brush work, convey elegance and beauty. The women depicted do not appear to be specific models; in fact, they have a generic quality similar to the magazine photos that adorn the artist's paintings. Like all of Ofili's works, these are charged with feeling as well as complex meanings.

In 1989, the Walker acquired a remarkable collection of more than 500 objects and documents related to Fluxus, an interdisciplinary movement that emerged on the international art scene in the early 1960s. Including books, boxes, manifestos, posters, photographs, films, and performance relics, this material documents the unconventional and largely underground activity of the wide-ranging group of artists associated with Fluxus whose art crossed boundaries between painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and performed events. The collection was the source for the successful Walker-organized exhibition In the Spirit of Fluxus in 1993. Flux Year Box 2, a signature Fluxus production, is a boxed anthology of works by 17 artists that was edited and assembled by Fluxus "chairman" George Maciunas beginning in about 1965. The second in a planned annual series, this piece was conceived as a "game box" that would hold small objects, flip books, cards, and films, including a handheld viewer for looking at the 8mm film loops. Like all Fluxus editions, the contents of each box varies depending on what Maciunas had available at the time. This copy contains many of the works usually seen in Flux Year Box 2, including Ben Vautier's Total Art Matchbox (a box of matches instructing the holder to burn down all libraries and museums), a loop of Yoko Ono's infamous buttocks Film No. 4, Willem de Ridder's folding paper games entitled Paper Flux Work, and George Brecht's box Closed on Mondays (glued shut). In addition, this box has two special features: it includes a unique variation of Vautier's Flux Box Containing God, and it contains 21 film loops instead of the usual 16.

Born in 1968 in Manchester, England, to Nigerian parents, Chris Ofili graduated from London's Royal College of Art in 1993. His distinctive and intensely colorful visual style unites the worlds of kitsch, hip-hop music, decorative art, Pop Art, blaxploitation films, the London Zoo, and the Zimbabwe plains. He counts American artist David Hammons, also represented in the Walker collection, among his major influences, but his work has been linked to sources as diverse as William Blake, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Judy Chicago, Andy Warhol, West African textiles, Matopos cave paintings, and the visual culture of psychedelia. Third Eye Vision is a kaleidoscopic painting of color and abstract patterns. Its visual elements are distinctive to the work of this self-described "hip-hop artist." The richly layered, hallucinogenic surface combines pointillist patterns with magazine cutouts and glitter with glow-in-the-dark bits of plastic. All of this rests upon Ofili's signature pieces of decorated and varnished elephant dung, which the artist uses as a comment on nature, heritage, and the art world. The third eye at the center of the painting calls to mind the far-reaching, spiritually inflected iconography of Asia and the African Diaspora. Like all of Ofili's work, this painting fearlessly takes on questions of the profane juxtaposed with the sacred, the humorous with the sublime, and the bold with the mysterious. Ofili is one of the most visible of the generation of British artists known as the YBAs (Young British Artists) at the center of the recent controversy between the Brooklyn Art Museum and the city of New York. First featured in a museum in the 1995 Walker exhibition Brilliant! New Art from London, Ofili went on to win the coveted Tate Gallery Turner Prize in 1998. This painting joins a recent acquisition of six watercolors by Ofili, providing further depth to the Walker's collection of work by this young artist. In addition, it builds the museum's growing concentration of work by YBAs (including Angus Fairhurst, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Sam Taylor-Wood, Rachel Whiteread, and Georgina Starr) and enhances the Walker's collection of artists of African descent, including David Hammons, Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, and Adrian Piper.

This tour looks at works of art that explore issues of gender and gender identity. Participants learn that many contemporary artists explore these issues in their work, and in a variety of ways. This activity could be used in the Walker Art Center galleries, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, or in the classroom with a selection of images from Art Collector. The artworks included in the activity are suggestions only and instructors may choose different artworks to accompany the discussion questions. This activity is from the Living in Our Time section of the Tour Guide Tool Kit.