MARTIN PURYEAR

Art And Popular Culture

Reuben Shipp

In the USA, the victory by Barrack Obama in the 2008 Election, is seen as the beginning of an era of the affirmation of the equality toward peoples unjustly served. It is culturally obvious, the complaint made by any common populous, it is the lyric of songs, and in the making of images.

The African American Sculptor, Martin Puryear was born in Washington DC, a prodigious woodworker and constantly sketching, he then emerged in the early 70's in complaint of the Minimalist (Rothko, Stella, Reinhardt) movement, that he was originally curated with, unsurprisingly in relation to his crafted and formal style drawing comparison to painterly techniques of abstract expressionism, the bane of the minimalists. The artist had been trained formally at the National Academy of Sweden, where he studied printmaking, he had previously joined the U.S Peace Core, where Humanitarian duties had kept him from the Vietnam War in Sierra Leone, acquiring, al biet from an arms- length distance, a quite intimate understanding of African techniques.

His stature as an Artist afforded the commissioning to produce many designs for environmental works and other public sculptures in the USA with an emphasis given toward granted works within the black communities.

Puryear is thoroughly uncomfortable with assumptive projections toward his imagery, especially racially sensitive, making abrupt correction and criticism to his own work in places when confronted by perceived insinuation, including his own, though would acknowledge diversities including Inca civilization and modern Japan for their cultural contribution. This is evident in a description of a woodworkers tools, with every culture being as the sea lapping upon and into the rock, adding their nuance to make the way things fit into the hand. This is also true in the objectification, and demystification, of such a transference, in the a way communication, or thought develops that then has a life or culture, of its own.

Puryear is identified with celebrity and among bodies voluntarily associated with the democratic change recently seen in America. He prefers to work alone on non- milled materials and often without machines despite work that is both monolithic and monumental. I recall first encountering Martin Puryear in a guitarists magazine that journalised his youthful mastery of fine Musical instrument making.

Bibliography:

Benezra, Neal. MARTIN PURYEAR

London: Thames and Hudson LTD and The Art Institute of Chicago 1991

Elderfield,John. Martin Puryear: Ideas of Otherness(2007) New York: The Museum Of Modern Art 2007

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2007/martinpuryear/flash.html (accessed March 15 2009)

Images:

Ladder for Booker T Washington 1996 Ash and Maple 10.97m x 57.8cm(narrowing to 3.2cm) x 7.6 cm Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth. Reproduced from http://www.pbase.com (accessed March 15 2009)

Bower 1980 Sikta Spruce & Pine 162.6 x 240.7 x 67.6 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. Reproduced from http://www.moma.org (accessed March 15 2009)

C.F.O.A 2006- 2007 Pine and Barrow 255.9 x 196.9 x 154.9 cm Donald Young Gallery Chicago. Reproduced from http://www.moma.org (accessed March 15 2009)