User:3pny/Black Sun (sculpture)

Black Sun is a 1969 sculpture by Isamu Noguchi located in Seattle, Washington's Volunteer Park.

Situated on the eastern edge of the park's man-made reservoir and across from the Seattle Asian Art Museum, the sculpture looks down from Capitol Hill to the Space Needle and the Denny Regrade area of the city.

Black Sun is one of Noguchi's many Energy Void sculptures. For Noguchi, "a circular form symbolizes the sun, or pure energy, viewed as the source of all life", and also "the zero of nothingness from which we come, to which we return" [Altshuler 1994].

The sculpture that served as a model for Black Sun was created in 1963 as a study for White Sun, a sculpture in the sunken garden of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University [Altshuler, p. 89]. The model, also titled Black Sun, is a carved disk of Swedish black granite 30 in in diameter. It was acquired by Nelson Rockefeller, and is currently on display in the gardens of his former estate, Kykuit.

Black Sun also bears a strong resemblance to The Ring, a 1948 Noguchi prototype 20 in in diameter. [Hunter ????]