Martin Puryear | Across Media by yrastogi

MA RT IN P U RYEAR A CR O S S M E D I A

MARTIN PURYEAR ACROSS MEDIA

Simon & Schuster Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10020 Copyright © 2016 by Martin Puryear All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Simon & Schuster and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Design: Yash Rastogi Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Puryear, Martin Martin Puryear / p. cm. 1. Puryear, Martin—Sources. 2. Puryear, Martin—Notebooks, Sketches, etc. I. Title. N6537.L54 A2 2014 709’.2—dc21 00-028026 ISBN 0-684-83417-0

C O NT E NT S

Introduction: Heterogeneous Objects : The Sculpture of Martin Puryear

Footnotes

Martin Puryear : Across Media

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

“There is the potential for much more spontaneity

with prints than there is with sculpture, which tends to be very slow, accretive kind of process – labor intensive” — MARTIN PURYEAR

HETEROGENEOUS OBJECTS: The Sculpture of Martin Puryear By Jessica Ann Maxwell “Puryear is, above all, a maker,” declared the late critic Robert Hughes of Time magazine.1 “What makes him different is his hand. Puryear makes his sculptures – of cedar, oak and hickory, of poplar and of ash – with planes and saws and spokeshaves, with a cabinetmaker’s skill. Somehow he’s restored an unfamiliar warmth to the look of current art,” a critic for the Washington Post concurred.2 “Above all, there is a personal touch, with faint echoes of AfricanAmerican roots and ancient cultures, setting him apart from other mainstream sculptors. In an age of high-tech fabrication, his is a laborintensive craftsmanly approach, incorporating folk traditions and motifs,” wrote another for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer in 1993.3 In a declarative statement on his “craftsmanly approach” to sculpture, Puryear finally proclaimed: “I am fundamentally a maker, in the physical sense, in the literal physical sense.” 4

In an era in which the majority of sculptural production plays itself out in the strategies of commodity art which largely involve the appropriation and manipulation of existing cultural goods, Puryear’s “craftsmanly approach” to sculpture, a mode of physical making in which the sculptor’s hand is the primary agent of production, is particularly unique. Puryear’s sculpture is widely appreciated today for its traditional craft and technical competency, rich display of various woods and its formal allusions to the vehicles and vessels of non-Western cultures. In a manner distinct from most other mainstream contemporary sculptors, Puryear constructs his abstract yet highly referential sculptures with layers of wood that he cuts and assembles together, usually around a hollow center. While Puryear’s handwork and appeal to preindustrial materials appear specifically misplaced in our modern present, these practices were actually in close affiliation with those loosely identified as post-minimalist around the time of his emergence in the early 1970s. Countering the austere geometry and anonymous surfaces of minimalism, these practices involved the

performance of manual procedures on such

In addition to these interests, Puryear also

raw substances as rope, leather, and felt,

pursued the arts; while still in elementary school,

producing an aesthetic with which art historian

he attended the children’s art classes of local

and critic Jonathan Crary identified Puryear’s

artist, Cornelia Yuditsky and frequented many of

own handmade constructions,

Washington’s museums, including the National Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Museum of

At first this kind of log-cabin ‘minimalism’ seems

History and Technology, the Washington Zoo

an ironic comment on 1960s sculpture, but it

where he drew animals, and the Natural History

is really part of a specifically ‘70s sculptural

Museum which impacted him enormously. Books

practice, seen in work by Jackie Ferrara, Jackie

were also a staple of his curious diet: “During

Winsor, and others. It involves working with

the last two years of high school and all through

intrinsically simple shapes, then overlaying them

college I worked after school in a public library,

with supplementary signs of the artist’s physical

and so for seven years was surrounded by books.

activity and obsessiveness.

I read a lot, on a variety of subjects. This has not

stopped,” Puryear reminisced. 6 Born in 1941, in Washington, D.C., Puryear grew up in the early days of desegregation, attending

Supplementing his book knowledge with practical

a segregated public school until the sixth grade,

experience, he made things such as classical

when his family moved to the more affluent

guitars, small boats, and furniture, with his hands

northeast quadrant. He found refuge from the

and the aid of instructive books. Though he

city’s grim segregationist politics by spending the

concentrated in painting at the Catholic University

majority of his childhood in inner-city Washington

of America in Washington, he took a required

reading up on topics such as the natural sciences,

sculpture course. There, he began to adapt his

Native American culture, archery and ornithology,

acquired woodworking and guitar making skills

and drawing specific birds and animal species.

to his experiments with sculpture. However,

before his spatial turn to the three-dimensional

as a painter. I didn’t really focus on sculpture

volumes of constructed sculpture was complete,

until I’d left Sierra Leone, and most of my work

Puryear would carve into the shallow recesses of

since then has been abstract,” he recounted in

woodblocks made for printing. Puryear applied

a recent interview. 8 Parallel to his march toward

to the Peace Corps after graduating college in

abstraction, Puryear edged his way toward

1963, for which he served two years in the remote

construction, the joinery techniques of which he

village of Segbwema, in southern Sierra Leone.

adapted from African carpenters. In the wake of

Of this experience, he recalled matter-of-factly,

his new focus on sculpture, Puryear abandoned painting. Harnessing abstraction to construction,

I was in Sierra Leone on the West Coast. I was

he would go on to build abstract forms, the

teaching in a small mission school, way up in the

linear scaffolding of which was inspired by the

country and the isolation was very good for me.

carpentry of Scandinavian furniture design that

I would occasionally get the odd art magazines

he encountered in Sweden. Puryear enrolled in

from home, but I dropped out of what was

the printmaking program of Stockholm’s Royal

going on in art. I drew incessantly and I made

Swedish Academy in 1966. Of his move up to

woodcuts. It was a very simple, non-technical

the frigid north, he recalled,

way to come to grips with myself and to monitor my progress and change it. 7

I wanted a place in Scandinavia. I had been interested for a long time in Scandinavian

Puryear cut graphic portraits of his immediate

woodworking. I was interested in their furniture

surroundings into the flat grounds of woodblocks,

designing in the sixties, Danish and Finnish

monitoring his “progress” from realism toward

design in particular. I thought it was really

abstraction: “I continued to copy nature during

innovative, respectful of the material and function,

this period, but in a more fragmentary way.

and I wanted to see what that was all about. I

Before I went to West Africa I thought of myself

spent a lot of time in Denmark. In Stockholm I

worked with James Krenov who had a very

“I wanted to understand what was happening

strong influence on my work. He was a man

in (the United States) and plug into that,”

who had enormous respect for the material

he revealed.12 While studying with sculptor

and an interesting person. 9

James Rosati and visiting artists Morris, and Richard Serra, and Salvatore Scarpitta, and

Inspired by Krenov’s example, Puryear finally “put the building and art impulse together.”

taking courses in African and pre-Columbian art with Robert Farris Thompson and Michael

Working constructively, utilizing fine woodworking

Kampen, respectively, the newly minted

techniques typically applied to furniture design,

sculptor learned that “what was happening”

the sculptor began to cut, shape and join wood

on the New York art scene largely included

of diverse textures, into abstract forms in the late

minimalism and post-minimalist responses

1960s. Thus, succeeding years of experimentation

to it. Sympathetic to these responses which

with the two-dimensional media of painting

sought to recover the manual process and

and drawing, and printmaking, Puryear finally

so-called natural materials lost to sculpture

committed to sculpture. “I decided that building

with the appearances of Duchamp’s ready-

was a legitimate way for me to make sculpture,

made and the Constructivist model in early

that it wasn’t necessary to work in the traditional

twentieth-century modernity, Puryear seized

sculptural methods of carving or casting, said

the material experience of physical making

Puryear. An alternative to the conventional

with aplomb. Yet, as apparent in Puryear’s

processes of “carving,” “casting,” and modeling

sculpture, this process of making produces

of industrial metals, Puryear’s construction treated

forms that reference the artifacts and shelters

cut, shaped and joined layers of wood as so many

of foreign cultures, the likes of which find

building blocks for sculpture. Upon his return to

their sources in Puryear’s books, travels and

the States, Puryear carried his handcraft with him

museum visits. A great deal is known about

to the graduate program at Yale.

Puryear’s trips to Africa and Sweden in the

early phase of his career and the various craft traditions that he learned and adapted from their local peoples to his art. However, critics have often treated such travels as the sole creative inspiration of his sculpture and thereby, its very subject. As a 1984 review reads, Many artists are currently working in a style that deliberately reaches back to the archaic or primitive, but often their work is decorative, cluttered, and romantic. Puryear, on the other hand, is the real thing, an artist who has studied so-called “primitive” sources and digested them to the point where they are completely integrated in his work. Puryear is a Chicago-based sculptor in mid-career whose style has been influenced more by his travels than his formal study. 13 Echoing these sentiments, New York Times writer Michael Brenson extended further priority to Puryear’s foreign travels as an influence on his art. “Throughout the work, there is a strong feeling for craft and link with tribal sculpture, which reflect the two crucial years Puryear, who is 43 years

old spent, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone,” he wrote. [14] Seconding this remark, he later said: “The importance of Puryear’s two years in Sierra Leone as Peace Corps volunteer, from 1964 to 1966, can hardly be overemphasize. The years in Sierra Leone provided him with a rich source of imagery, shaping his feeling for wood, for crafts, and for a particular approach to craftsmanship – that of the carpenter, not the carver.” 15 The precedence given to foreign travel as the source of this “feeling for craft” in Puryear’s sculpture has not always bode well with Puryear whose practice, according to a 1991 interview, has been evolving in the States as well as abroad: The time in Sierra Leone was 25 years ago, and it’s spoken about as if it were yesterday. That and my time in Sweden are the two determinants; they have become the myth behind the work. I find it’s a little unfortunate because it eclipses the fact that I’ve been working and changing for all of the time since. I mean, I have an enormous admiration for tribal art of all kinds and I had an incredible interest in African sculpture. Being in Africa made me feel

how American I am. I think I always knew it but

Puryear epitomize current ideas and directions

was confronted with it when there. A lot of Afro-

in American sculpture,” so wrote curator and

Americans have the feeling that Africa is ‘home’

critic Kellie Jones in the wake of Puryear’s sole

in a certain sense. But we really are a hybrid

representation of the United States in the 1989

people. We have a complicated and convoluted

São Paolo Bienal, where he was awarded the

identity. The Western legacy is ours too.

grand prize. 17 “Though a personal language

that is at once poetic and allusive as well as Drawing up an analogous relationship between

formally complex, Martin Puryear explores

his African American identity and his sculpture,

not only exterior physical but also interior

Puryear argues that both are inherently “hybrid,”

psychological space, and reflects a new sense

cross-bred between the “complicated and

of wholeness and balance, a contemporary

convoluted” influences of western and non-

American sculpture that benefits from pluralism

western geography. As Puryear’s biography

and internationalism,” she continued. 18

narrates, his commitment to handcraft actually

Synthesizing minimalism’s reductive forms and

originated in his childhood experiments making

earthwork’s natural materials with global sources,

guitars in America and has grown along with

Puryear thus achieves a thoroughly integrated

his travels, domestic and abroad, ever since.

sculpture whose capacity for containing

As critics rightly point out, Puryear certainly has

difference within itself is more characteristically

drawn upon ethnographic material, artifacts

American than commonly believed.

and collections as artistic sources for his sculpture. However, these foreign sources are distilled and mixed with contemporary trends in American sculpture as well. “In their materials, technique, and presence, the works of Martin

FOOT NOTES

1 Robert Hughes, “Delight in A Shaping Hand,” Time 158, no.1 (July 2001): 78.

2 Paul Richard, “He Sawed & Conquered—Sculptor Martin Puryear’s Homecoming at the Hirshhorn,” Washington Post, February 5, 1992, B1. 3 Helen Cullinan, “Getting to Know Award-Winning Sculptor Martin Puryear,” The Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 26,1993, ARTS & LIVING, 41.

10 Puryear, as quoted in Hugh M. Davies and Helaine Posner, “Conversations with Martin Puryear,” in Martin Puryear (Amherst: University Gallery, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1984), 30.

11 Ibid. 12 Puryear, as quoted in Swift and Wittenberg, “An Interview with Martin Puryear,” 34.

13 Christine Temin, “Puryear’s Primitive Sophistication,” The Boston Globe (July 7, 1984), page unknown.

14 Michael Brenson, “Sculpture: Puryear Postminimalism,” The New York Times (August 10, 1984), C24.

5 Jonathan Crary, “Martin Puryear’s Sculpture,” Artforum 18, no.2 (October 1979): 29.

15 Michael Brenson, “Maverick Sculptor Makes Good,” New York Times (November 1, 1987), 90.

6 Puryear, as quoted in a letter to the author, December 14, 2010.

16 Puryear, as quoted in Alan G. Artner, “On Form and Function: The Finely Sculpted Thoughts of Martin Puryear,” Chicago Tribune, November 3, 1991, section 13, 10.

17 Kellie Jones, curator, “Martin Puryear,” in Martin Puryear: 29th International Sao Paolo Bienal 1989. exh. cat. Jamaica, New York: Jamaica Arts Center, 1989; reprinted in Kellie Jones, “Eye-Minded: Martin Puryear,” in Eye-Minded (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2011).

4 Martin Puryear, as quoted in Leonard Lopate Show, November 29, 2007, “Sculptor Martin Puryear at MoMA,” Leonard Lopate in converWsation with Martin Puryear and curator John Elderfield.

7 Puryear, as quoted in Mary Swift and Clarissa Wittenberg, “An Interview with Martin Puryear,” Washington Review of the Arts. (October/November 1978): 34. 8 Puryear, as quoted in Richard Powell, “A Conversation with Martin Puryear,” in Martin Puryear, ed. John Elderfield [New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2007], 101.

18 Ibid. 9 Ibid.

ACROSS MEDIA

UNTITLED, 1997 Wire mesh and pitch; 167.6 Ă&#x2014; 194.3 Ă&#x2014; 94.6 cm. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, Chaim, Fanny, Louis, Benjamin, Anne and Florence Kaufman Memorial Trust, Andrew L. and Gayle Shaw Camden Contemporary and Decorative Arts Fund, Mary Moore Denison Fund, with funds from Friends of Modern Art, Lynn and Stanley Day, Gilbert and Ann Hudson, Burt Aaron, Jeffrey T. Antaya, Desiree Cooper and Melvin Hollowell Jr., David Klein, Dr. Edward J. Littlejohn and Nettie H. Seabrroks, 1999. 1.

UNTITLED I, 2002

THREE HOLES, 2002

Aquatint on cream wove paper;

Color etching and spit-bite aquatint on cream

119 × 152 mm (image/plate); 322 × 355 mm (sheet).

Japanese paper, laid down on white wove paper

The Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Hixon Glore Fund,

(chine collé); 450 × 597 mm (image/plate);

2007.93

728 × 850 mm (sheet). The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Robert O. Delaney Fund, 2007.97

UNTITLED, 1997 P ai nte d c e d ar and pine; 17 2 .7 × 1 4 4 .7 × 129.5 cm. Promised gift of Agnes Gund to The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Cat. No. 8

D R AW I N G F O R U N T I T L E D , 1 9 9 0

D R AW I N G F O R U N T I T L E D , 1 9 9 9

B l a c k c onté c ra y on w i th s mudg i n g , o n i v o r y w o v e

Bl a c k c o n t é c r a y o n w i t h sm u d g i n g, o n i vo ry wo ve

pa per; 735 × 584 m m.

paper; 735 × 584 mm.

Cour t es y of t he A r t i s t

C o u r t e s y o f t h e Ar t i s t

UNTITLED, 2005 White pine, wire and rattan; 160 × 152.4 × 137.2 cm John and Martha Gabbert.

UNTITLED VI, 2012

UNTITLED, 2003

Soft ground etching, drypoint, and spit bite in light brown

Charcoal and Conté crayon on tan wove paper;

and black on ream Japanese paper, laid down on white

127 × 116.8 cm

wove paper (chine collé); 804 × 804 mm (image/plate);

Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Judith

1,091 × 1,038 mm (sheet).

Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection

The Art Institute of Chicago. the John H. Wrenn Memorial,

Gift, 2835.2005

Helen Davis Baily, and Albert H. Wolf funds, 2013.180

S E L F, 1 9 7 8 Stai ne d and p ai nted red cedar and mahogany; 17 5 .3 Ă&#x2014; 1 2 1 .9 Ă&#x2014; 63.5 cm. Josyln Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska. Purchased in memory of El inor Ashton.

D R A W I N G F O R S E L F, n . d .

D R A W I N G F O R S E L F, 1 9 9 7

G ra phi te on i v ory wov e t r a c i n g p a p e r ;

G r a p h i t e o n i v o r y w o v e t r a c i n g p ape r;

300 × 228 mm

Cour t es y of t he a r t i s t

Courtesy of the artist

H O R S E F LY, 1 9 9 6 – 2 0 0 0 Wi re m esh, tar, w ood, and tinted glas s ; 24 6 .3 × 2 4 3 .2 × 200.6 cm. Col lect ion of The Edward R. Broida Trust, Cat. No. 11

PHRYGIAN, 2012

UNTITLED, 2003

Sof t ground etc hi ng, s pi t bi te, d r y p o i n t , a n d

G r a p h i t e o n i v o r y w o v e p a p e r ; 5 8 4 × 7 3 5 mm.

a qua ti nt i n bl a c k a nd gra y on c re a m w o v e p a p e r,

Courtesy of the artist

la i d down on whi te wov e pa pe r ( c h i n e c o l l é ) ; 6 0 5 × 452 mm ( i m a ge/ pl a te) ; 885 × 7 0 6 m m ( sh e e t ) . The A r t Ins t i t ut e of Chi ca go, t h e J o h n H . Wre n n M em or i a l , 2 0 1 3 .1 7 9

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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English, Darby. How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007. Forgey, Benjamin. “Martin Puryear’s Show: An Artist Comes Home,” Evening Star, January 12, 1972, p. B11. 99 Fried, Michael. “Art and Objecthood,” In Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Golden, Deven, K., with essays by Patricia Fuller and Judith Russi Kirshner. Martin Puryear: Public and Personal. Chicago: Chicago Office of Fine Arts, 1987 Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1961. 100 Hughes, Robert. “Art: Delight in a Shaping Hand.” Time 139, no.9 (March 2, 1992): 61-63. Judd, Donald. “Specific Objects,” In Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959-1975. New York and Halifax: The Press of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1975. Kimmelman, Michael. “Martin Puryear.” New York Times, December 2, 1988, p.C24. King, Elaine A. Martin Puryear: Sculpture and Works on Paper. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University Art Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, 1987

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Shearer, Linda. Young American Artists: 1978 Exxon National Exhibition. New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1978

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