Martin Puryear Gets His Due

NEW YORK—Martin Puryear’s 1984 sculpture Greed’s Trophy is typical of his work in that it seems to be several things at the same time. More than 12 feet high and crafted from steel rod and wire, wood, rattan, and leather, its form suggests something organic—an enormous seed pod or seaweed bladder, perhaps—but, despite its size, it also hints at usefulness, and hangs on the wall like a huge, unwieldy butterfly net or threshing tool. At the same time, the work is just inexplicable and beautiful enough to exist as an object that invites aesthetic contemplation.

Puryear, an underappreciated sculptor whose work evokes natural forms, traditional construction techniques, and the grand scale of contemporary art, is the subject of a 30-year retrospective opening at MoMA this Sunday. His professional career began at the close of the 1960s, and his work derives from the Minimalist and Postminimalist currents prevalent at the time. His sculptures tend to be discrete objects that declare their relationship to their surroundings, maintain an extreme simplicity in their overall form, and employ geometrical or semi-geometrical elements. But his richly suggestive art also stands out from that of his Minimalist contemporaries in several crucial ways, a deviation that is largely explained by his early training.  

To begin with, contradictions are everywhere in Puryear’s art: Often, as in Deadeye (2002), which has the smooth curves of a huge ceramic flask but is actually carved from pine, one material is made to look like another; or, as in The Nightmare (2001–02)—again carved from wood but having a bottle-like mouth—a piece can seem at once solid and hollow. Elsewhere Puryear’s sculptures seem to exist in different sculptural realms at the same time: The title and simple form of Lever #3 (1989) suggests that it is to be seen as an abstract piece, demonstrating no more than a physical principle, but it is also quite obviously a rather cartoonlike representation of a long-necked dinosaur. Such tensions rarely resolve themselves in any simple way; the sculptures, as Puryear would say, retain their “mystery.”

Lever #3 is far from the only example of a title adding a level of resonance or intrigue to the art. A 36-foot-long jointed ash ladder from 1996, a work that twists and bends and, because of the false perspective that it employs, seems even longer that it is, is dubbed Ladder for Booker T. Washington, after the celebrated civil rights leader. One senses that Puryear is at once commenting on the duration and difficulty of Washington’s struggles, and—because the ladder rises higher and higher and seems to float in the air—marveling at his eventual achievements. Other equally evocative names, such as Believer (1977–82), The Charm of Subsistence (1989), and Confessional (1996–2000), hint at realms of philosophy or religion, as though Puryear is inviting us to look beyond the work’s formal characteristics to find our own interpretations of their content. On the other hand, a number of other pieces, in late modernist tradition, remain laconically untitled.

Modernist Effects, Pre-Modern Roots
Crucial to Puryear’s ethos is a belief in the creative importance of craft. At a time when leading Minimalists like Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd were adopting an impersonal, mass-produced industrial aesthetic, which often involved working in manufacturing settings and sending drawings or designs to a fabricator, Puryear remained wedded to the single edition and the handmade. Throughout his career, he has felt that the physical manipulation of materials is essential to his sculptures’ possibilities, and he has spoken of his respect for “vernacular cultures, where people are closer to the source of materials and making objects for use.”

Puryear was born in Washington, D.C., in 1941, the first of seven children. From an early age he showed a particular interest in craft techniques (his passion for basket weaving remains a recurrent influence on his art) and carpentry. “I was always interested in building things,” he has said. “Not sculpture so much, but functional things—guitars, furniture, canoes, and so on.” He was also fascinated by the workings of the natural world and briefly considered a career as an animal illustrator, entering the Catholic University of America as a biology major.