Martin Puryear

Martin Puryear
Puryear in 1984
Born (1941-05-23) May 23, 1941
Washington, D.C., United States
EducationThe Catholic University of America
Yale University (MFA)
Known forSculpture
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship
Rome Prize
National Medal of Arts
J. Paul Getty Medal

Martin L. Puryear (born May 23, 1941) is an American artist known for his devotion to traditional craft. Working in a variety of media, but primarily wood, his reductive technique and meditative approach challenge the physical and poetic boundaries of his materials.[1]: 54–57 

Puryear has participated in the Whitney Biennial three times and he has represented the United States multiple times with solo exhibitions at international biennials, including in 1989 at the São Paulo Biennial and in 2019 at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Early life and education

Martin Puryear was born May 23, 1941, in Washington, D.C., to Reginald Puryear and Martina Puryear. His father and mother worked as a postal worker and teacher, respectively.[2] Puryear was the eldest of seven children, with four brothers and two sisters.[3]

Puryear attended Syphax Elementary in Washington before going on to graduate from Archbishop Carroll High School, a Catholic school in the Brookland neighborhood.[4] He began exploring traditional craft methods in his youth, making tools, boats, musical instruments, and furniture.[5] He enrolled at The Catholic University of America in Washington in 1959, originally studying biology before switching to art as a junior. While an undergraduate, he learned about the Washington Color School painters, including faculty member Kenneth Noland, and he participated in several group exhibitions in the Washington area. Puryear graduated from Catholic with a BA in art in 1963.[6]

After graduation, Puryear spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone.[7] From 1966 to 1968, he studied printmaking at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, funded by a grant from The American-Scandinavian Foundation.[6] He returned to the United States in 1969 after receiving a grant to enroll in the graduate program at the Yale School of Art. Among his professors and visiting teachers at Yale were sculptors Robert Morris, James Rosati, Salvatore Scarpitta, and Richard Serra, and he became close with the painting faculty member Al Held.[8] Puryear graduated from Yale in 1971 with an MFA in sculpture.[9] Although he discovered Minimalism at a formative period in his development, Puryear would ultimately reject its impersonality and formalism.[10]: 168–197 

Life and career

1971–1979

In 1971, Puryear was hired to teach at the historically black Fisk University in Tennessee, having been offered the position by art department chair David Driskell.[9]

Puryear staged his first solo art exhibition in the United States in January 1972 at the Henri 2 Gallery in Washington.[9] The show received positive coverage from local critics.[11][12]

Puryear staged his second solo exhibition at Henri 2 Gallery in 1973.[13][14] He also left Fisk in 1973 and moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 1974, he accepted a job offer at the University of Maryland, College Park, and began spending half of each week in both New York and Maryland.[9]

In 1977, following a devastating fire in his Brooklyn studio, Puryear moved to Chicago and began teaching at the University of Illinois.[15] In the summer of 1977, Puryear developed an outdoor installation for Artpark in Niagara County, New York. His work, Box and Pole, consisted of a 100 foot tall wooden pole placed next a 54 inch wooden cube and opened to the public in August 1977.[16] The same month, he opened a two-room exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, his first solo museum show. He exhibited a seventeen foot tall yurt-like wooden structure covered in animal hides that visitors could enter in the first room, along with a series of smaller sculptures in the second room.[17][18]

In 1979, Puryear was included in the Whitney Biennial at New York's Whitney Museum.[19] He also staged a solo exhibition at Protetch-McIntosh Gallery in Washington in 1979, showing a number of circular sculptures hung flat on the wall, made of various types of wood.[20][21]

1980–1989

In 1980, Puryear opened a small solo exhibition at the Joslyn Art Museum in Nebraska. He exhibited five new wood and stone sculptures, all abstract variations of a form similar to a mount or shark's tooth.[22] He participated in the Whitney Biennial again in 1981.[23]

Puryear staged a solo exhibition in February 1982 at Washington's McIntosh/Drysdale Gallery, showing new circular, wall-based works made of wood. Most of the sculptures comprised partial or imperfect circles hung on the wall, each with different stained or painted surface techniques and colors.[24] In October 1982, Puryear unveiled a commission for Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania to create a permanent public sculpture commemorating the university's 150th anniversary.[25] His commissioned sculpture, Sentinel,[26] a large wall-like concrete and stone form with rocks embedded in its surface, was funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.[27][28] The same year, he completed a commission for Governors State University in Illinois, building a large-scale land art piece titled Bodark Arc. The work consisted of two pathways in the form of a broad arc bisected by a straight line, with each path leading to a cast bronze chair sculpture.[29]

Puryear travelled to Japan in 1982 through a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship where he investigated architecture and garden design.[30]

The University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst[a] organized the first traveling museum survey of Puryear's work in 1984, exhibiting his art from the previous ten years.[38]

In January 1985, Puryear opened his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at Margo Leavin Gallery, showing a range of new sculptures including works from his Boy's Toys series, all comprising small wooden forms attached to wooden rods, which several critics visually compared to phalluses or toilet plungers.[39][40][41] He exhibited several of his Boy's Toys sculptures in a solo show in August 1985 at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, as part of the museum's MATRIX exhibition series.[42][43] Puryear staged a solo exhibition at Chicago's Donald Young Gallery in October 1985. He presented the show across two gallery locations, exhibiting wall-based sculptures in one gallery and several large freestanding works in a separate location.[44] The same year, he completed a commission for the River Road station in Chicago, permanently installing River Road Ring. The work, a monumental wooden circle sculpture, was suspended from the ceiling in the station's open atrium.[29][45] Also in 1985, Puryear submitted a final design for a commission titled Arc at York College in Queens. The sculpture, completed in the ensuing three years, comprised a large skeletal form of copper tubes suspended from the ceiling in a long, narrow space in the college's interior walking mall.[46]

In 1986, Puryear married Jeanne Gordon, an artist and classical pianist.[30] The Chicago Cultural Center organized a ten-year survey of Puryear's work in February 1987.[29][47] In September 1987, he presented another solo show at Donald Young Gallery in Chicago, primarily centered around a monumental work stretching 30 feet across the gallery, comprising a skeletal cone made from reeds attached to an oblong form of wire mesh covered in tar.[48] He staged a solo show at New York's McKee Gallery in November 1987, his first commercial gallery show in the city.[49][4]

Puryear opened a solo exhibition at McIntosh/Drysdale Gallery in Washington in March 1988, his first in the city in over five years. He showed several wall-based wood sculptures crafted so the thinned wood appeared to flow like a liquid.[4] In October 1988, he participated in a four-artist show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington as part of the Spectrum exhibition series, showing a new bird-like iron sculpture as well as several older works.[50] He was commissioned by New York's Brooklyn Museum in November 1988 to create an installation for the museum's large atrium, reworking two previous monumental wood and mixed media pieces, one vertical and one horizontal, to fit the tall space.[51]

Puryear staged another solo exhibition at Margo Leavin Gallery in L.A. in April 1989, showing a number of new wood sculptures.[52][53] He was also included in the Whitney Biennial again in April 1989.[54][55][56] In July 1989, Puryear was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.[57]

In October 1989, Puryear represented the United States at the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil, becoming the first black artist to represent the United States with a solo show at a major international biennial. His presentation, curated by Kellie Jones and featuring nine large sculptures mostly made of wood,[58] was awarded the grand prize of the biennial.[59]

1990–1999

In 1990, Puryear was the inaugural participant in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's Connections exhibitions series, creating new work in response to art from the museum's collection. Taking inspiration from a 17th-century painting of a falcon, he built a wooden yurt structure with gridded wooden slats, surrounded by abstract birdlike works made from wood, iron, bronze, and rawhide, all arranged on ledges on the walls.[60][61]

The Art Institute of Chicago[b] mounted a twenty-year traveling retrospective of Puryear's art in 1991, featuring forty works.[72][73][74] The same year, Puryear was introduced to the choreographer Garth Fagan and began a collaboration on Fagan's dance work Griot New York.[75][76] Puryear designed the elaborate sculptural wooden sets for the piece, a reflection on the African diasporic community and culture of New York City, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December 1991.[77][78]

Puryear staged a solo exhibition in March 1995 at McKee Gallery, his first in New York since 1987.[79] He showed four new sculptures, including several bulbous circular wood sculptures and a tall columnar work.[80][81] Also in 1995, Puryear completed a commission in Battery Park City, installing two large stainless steel pylon sculptures on the shoreline at the North Cove Marina.[82][83]

In 1996, Puryear completed a commission for Wanås Konst, an outdoor sculpture park in a forest at Sweden's Wanås Castle. His sculpture Meditation in a Beech Forest consisted of a 16 foot tall abstract biomorphic form covered in a thatch material traditionally used for roofs in the region.[84] He was commissioned by the federal General Services Administration in the mid-1990s to create a sculpture for the new Ronald Reagan Building in Washington's Federal Triangle area, although work was temporarily suspended on the project in 1996 amidst a budget shortfall.[85][86][87] His work Bearing Witness, a monumental abstract bronze sculpture, was completed in 1998 and permanently installed in a plaza outside the building.[88]

In 1999, Puryear completed That Profile, a public sculpture commissioned for the Getty Center in Los Angeles.[89] The work, installed at the arrival plaza for the museum's tram system, comprises a tall, oblong skeletal form made of long steel tubes joined together with bronze.[90] In November 1999, he completed a commission in the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, for the Festival d'automne à Paris, an annual arts festival in Paris. His commissioned installation, This Mortal Coil, consisted of a monumental wooden spiral form within a wooden frame, displayed in the circular chapel building.[91]

2000–2009

In 2000, Puryear collaborated with Arion Press to design a deluxe reissue of the novel Cane, originally published at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, after meeting Arion's founder Andrew Hoyem at a print fair. Puryear designed a multi-toned wooden slipcase for the book and seven abstract woodcut prints that were bound in each copy.[92]

Puryear staged a traveling survey in 2001 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia,[c] exhibiting twelve large sculptures.[98] He staged a solo exhibition at McKee Gallery in New York in 2002, showing four new wood sculptures.[99][100][101]

He opened a survey exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2004, his first solo exhibition in the country, presenting sculptures from the previous two decades.[102][103] In 2006, he mounted a solo show at Donald Young Gallery in Chicago, his first exhibition in the city in fourteen years.[104]

New York's Museum of Modern Art[d] organized a traveling thirty-year retrospective in 2007 of Puryear's work.[109][110]

2010–2019

In 2012, president Barack Obama awarded Puryear the National Medal of Arts.[111] Puryear also mounted another solo show at McKee Gallery in 2012, exhibiting around a dozen new sculptures, including several that appeared like wheeled wooden carts.[112][113][114]

Puryear staged a solo exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York in 2014. He showed nine new sculptures and two works on paper, all visually based on the phrygian cap, a well-known symbol of freedom and emancipation from slavery.[115][116]

In 2015, the Morgan Library & Museum[e] in New York premiered a traveling exhibition of Puryear's drawings and works on paper, titled Martin Puryear: Multiple Dimensions.[121][122]

Puryear installed Big Bling, a monumental wood, fiberglass, and gold leaf sculpture, in New York's Madison Square Park[f] in 2016 for several months as part of the park's public art program.[125][126] The sculpture consisted of a forty foot tall skeletal wooden form covered with a chainlink fence, topped with a massive gold shackle.[127]

In 2017, he staged a forty-year retrospective of more than thirty works at London's Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, his first solo show at a nonprofit institution in the United Kingdom.[128][129]

Puryear represented the United States at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 with an exhibition commissioned by Brooke Kamin Rapaport, senior curator of Madison Square Park's public art program.[130][131] His exhibition Liberty/Libertà in the American pavilion featured eight abstract sculptural works exploring themes of slavery and freedom, including a work dedicated to Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman whom American president Thomas Jefferson owned and is alleged to have fathered several children with.[132][133]

2020–present

In 2021, Puryear staged another solo show at Matthew Marks Gallery, exhibiting five sculptures from his Venice exhibition along with one new work, a large bronze basket sculpture that he had previously made in wood in several iterations.[134][135][136]

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston opened a traveling survey of Puryear’s career in 2025 titled Martin Puryear: Nexus, highlighting the variety of materials used in his sculptures.[137][138]

Artwork

Vessel (1997–2002), Smithsonian American Art Museum
Bearing Witness in Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Washington, D.C.

The artwork of Martin Puryear is a product of visibly complex craft construction and manipulation of pure material; its forms are combinations of the organic and the geometric. His process can be described as reductive, seeking to bring work and material close to its original state and creating rationality in each work derived from the maker and act of making. This is what Puryear calls "inevitability", or a "fullness of being within limits" that defines function.[1]: 54–57 

Often associated with both Minimalism and Formalist sculpture, Puryear rejects that his work is ever non-referential or objective. The pure and direct imagistic forms born from his use of traditional craft are allusive and poetic, as well as deeply personal. Visually, they encounter the history of objects and the history of their making, suggesting public and private narratives including those of the artist, race, ritual, and identity.[139] His work is widely exhibited and collected both in the United States and internationally.

For close to fifty years, Puryear has created works that transpose his distinctive abstract sculptural language to a monumental scale. From his earliest outdoor work at Artpark, in Lewistown, New York, in 1977 to his newly inaugurated 2023 permanent commission for Storm King Art Center, Puryear's public and site-specific sculptures originate with the artist's hand, whether through drawings or with models that the artist carves or fashions from pieces of wood.[140]

Lookout (2023)

In 2023, Puryear completed Lookout, his first large-scale sculpture made of brick, at Storm King Art Center in New York's Hudson Valley.[141][142][143] The artwork is a compound-curved domed shell, pierced by 90 circular apertures of various sizes. Visitors can walk around and into the sculpture, enjoying the views of the surrounding area.[144]

This project had been a structural puzzle until a meeting in 2019 between the artist and MIT professor and structural engineer John Ochsendorf unlocked a solution. Ochesendorf has extensively researched ancient and traditional architectural technologies, particularly masonry vaults and domes. Their meeting resulted in a near-instantaneous collaborative scheme that incorporated the principle of Nubian vaulting, an ancient building method with which Ochsendorf and Puryear were both familiar. Engineering services were provided by Silman Associates, Structural Engineers.[141]

At Storm King the construction was led by Lara Davis (Limaçon Design), a vaulting specialist and practicing architect. After refining the material selection and detailing the construction method, Davis collaborated with the Puryear Studio to build the sculpture. The work was completed over a period of two summers.[141]

Puryear considers Lookout to be the most complex sculpture he has completed to date.[142]

Notes, citations, and references

Notes

  1. ^ After closing in Amherst, the exhibition traveled to the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts,[31] the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury, Massachusetts,[32] the New Museum in New York,[33][34] and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.[35][36][37]
  2. ^ After closing in Chicago, the retrospective traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.,[62][63][64][65] the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,[66][67][68] and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[69][70][71]
  3. ^ After closing in Richmond, the exhibition traveled to the Miami Art Museum,[93][94] the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California,[95] and the Des Moines Art Center in Des Moines, Iowa.[96] It was originally scheduled to travel to the Seattle Art Museum but that tour stop was canceled.[97]
  4. ^ After closing in New York, the retrospective traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Fort Worth, Texas,[105] the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,[106] and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[107][108]
  5. ^ After closing in New York, the exhibition traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago (the organizing institution),[117] and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.[118][119][120]
  6. ^ After going off view in New York, the sculpture was subsequently temporarily reinstalled in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia,[123] and at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts.[124]

Citations

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  7. ^ Field (2007), p. 168–169.
  8. ^ Field (2007), p. 170.
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