Lot Essay
Martin Puryear has had a lifelong interest in making things, and is as committed to the "making" of an object as to its concept. His experience in Sierra Leone with the Peace Corps exposed Puryear to materials and objects crafted by tribal cultures which left an
indelible impression on Puryear's art.
In 1966, when the Jewish Museum held its watershed exhibition Primary Structures: Young American and British Sculptors, Minimalism was the prevailing movement among young sculptors working in New York. Artists represented at the Primary Structures exhibition included Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Robert Mangold.
Toward the end of the 1960s, the doctrine of Minimalism was being challenged by artists interested in "process" and the bodily presence of the artist. Distinguished by their use of materials such as molten lead, neon, rubber, felt and video, artists like Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman and Eve Hesse were quickly identified as part of the Post Minimalist movement. Another group, feeling constricted by the commercial environment of galleries and the limited interest of the museums, carried their interest in process, concept and nature out into the landscape. Artists like Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Richard Long and Walter de Maria became known for their monumental "Earthworks" projects.
This is the environment Puryear entered at Yale, where he had the opportunity to work with instructors such as Richard Serra, Robert Morris and Salvatore Scarpitta. 'Puryear recalls the clear division that existed between "white-collar" and "blue-collar" artists: that is, between artists who worked with ideas and those who worked with their hands. Not surprisingly, Puryear found himself in neither camp, believing that his conceptual interests were not at odds with his passion for making. Although Puryear enjoyed this dialogue, both in the New York art press and at Yale, he rejected the need to take sides and began to establish a personal definition of what his sculpture could be' (N. Benezra, Martin Puryear, New York 1991, p. 21).
In 1972, several months after receiving his graduate degree, Puryear was given his first American one person exhibition at the Henri 2 Gallery in Washington, followed by a second exhibition in 1973. 'Writing in Art in America on the occasion of Puryear's second Henri 2 Gallery show in 1973, David Bourdon described the work as "a dozen or so carefully crafted objects in an abstract surrealist mode...Puryear works with wood, rope and leather, traditional materials that he converts into a fugitive form of surrealism, a nonrepresentational but highly referential type of abstraction." Although this group of works initially seems aberrant compared to the work that followed, several elements of Puryear's later work appeared here for the first time. For example, a small, free-standing, half-circular arc made of laminated strips of willow wood was Puryear's first bent-wood sculpture, a process that the artist would employ repeatedly later in the decade; a poplar cone painted in bands of copper, green, blue, and yellow, and towering over a minute egg-shaped form below presages Puryear's later engagement with color and his contrast of large and small scale form. Perhaps the most impressive work was Bound Cone, a trim oak spire standing just under six feet high. Split lengthwise from top to bottom, this laceration is healed by a rope carefully wound around the middle of the torso and then pinned in the split above and below, giving the sculpture a feeling of great physical tension. The contrast between inside and out and the allusion to human scale would both become crucial in later work' (ibid., p. 22).
indelible impression on Puryear's art.
In 1966, when the Jewish Museum held its watershed exhibition Primary Structures: Young American and British Sculptors, Minimalism was the prevailing movement among young sculptors working in New York. Artists represented at the Primary Structures exhibition included Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Robert Mangold.
Toward the end of the 1960s, the doctrine of Minimalism was being challenged by artists interested in "process" and the bodily presence of the artist. Distinguished by their use of materials such as molten lead, neon, rubber, felt and video, artists like Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman and Eve Hesse were quickly identified as part of the Post Minimalist movement. Another group, feeling constricted by the commercial environment of galleries and the limited interest of the museums, carried their interest in process, concept and nature out into the landscape. Artists like Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Richard Long and Walter de Maria became known for their monumental "Earthworks" projects.
This is the environment Puryear entered at Yale, where he had the opportunity to work with instructors such as Richard Serra, Robert Morris and Salvatore Scarpitta. 'Puryear recalls the clear division that existed between "white-collar" and "blue-collar" artists: that is, between artists who worked with ideas and those who worked with their hands. Not surprisingly, Puryear found himself in neither camp, believing that his conceptual interests were not at odds with his passion for making. Although Puryear enjoyed this dialogue, both in the New York art press and at Yale, he rejected the need to take sides and began to establish a personal definition of what his sculpture could be' (N. Benezra, Martin Puryear, New York 1991, p. 21).
In 1972, several months after receiving his graduate degree, Puryear was given his first American one person exhibition at the Henri 2 Gallery in Washington, followed by a second exhibition in 1973. 'Writing in Art in America on the occasion of Puryear's second Henri 2 Gallery show in 1973, David Bourdon described the work as "a dozen or so carefully crafted objects in an abstract surrealist mode...Puryear works with wood, rope and leather, traditional materials that he converts into a fugitive form of surrealism, a nonrepresentational but highly referential type of abstraction." Although this group of works initially seems aberrant compared to the work that followed, several elements of Puryear's later work appeared here for the first time. For example, a small, free-standing, half-circular arc made of laminated strips of willow wood was Puryear's first bent-wood sculpture, a process that the artist would employ repeatedly later in the decade; a poplar cone painted in bands of copper, green, blue, and yellow, and towering over a minute egg-shaped form below presages Puryear's later engagement with color and his contrast of large and small scale form. Perhaps the most impressive work was Bound Cone, a trim oak spire standing just under six feet high. Split lengthwise from top to bottom, this laceration is healed by a rope carefully wound around the middle of the torso and then pinned in the split above and below, giving the sculpture a feeling of great physical tension. The contrast between inside and out and the allusion to human scale would both become crucial in later work' (ibid., p. 22).