Over the last thirty years,Martin Puryear has created a body of work that defies categorization,creating sculpture that examines identity,culture,and history. Departing from the impersonal and machined aesthetic of Minimalism,the dominant sculptural movement of the artist's formative years,Puryear's work combines modernist abstraction with the traditions of crafts and woodworking,in shapes informed by the natural world and by ordinary objects and made with materials such as tar,wood,stone,and wire...

Over the last thirty years,Martin Puryear has created a body of work that defies categorization,creating sculpture that examines identity,culture,and history.Departing from the impersonal and machined aesthetic of Minimalism,the dominant sculptural movement of the artist's formative years,Puryear's work combines modernist abstraction with the traditions of crafts and woodworking,in shapes informed by the natural world and by ordinary objects and made with materials such as tar,wood,stone,and wire.It is quiet but deliberately associative,encompassing wide-reaching cultural and intellectual experiences and drawing on a huge and varied reserve of images,ideas,and information.As a high school and college student,the artist studied ornithology,falconry,and archery,and in the 1960s he volunteered with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone,West Africa,where he schooled himself in the region's indigenous crafts;these are only a few of the influences and methods that have embedded themselves in his work.And as varied as the sources of his sculptures are their possible and openended interpretations."l think there are a number of levels at which my work can be dealt with and appreciated,"Puryear has said."lt gives me pleasure to feel there's a level that doesn't require knowledge of or immersion in the aesthetic of a given time or place."

This publication accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art,New York,that follows Puryear's development from his first solo show,in 1977,to new works that will be shown for the first time at the 2007 MoMA exhibition,it contains essays by John Elderfieid,Michael Auping,and Elizabeth Reede,a conversation with the artist by Richard J.Powell,a chronology by Jennifer Field,and fifty color plates of Puryear's work.

Martin Puryear was born in 1941 in Washington,D.C.,and was educated at Catholic University,the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm,and Yale University.He has shown his work in exhibitions all over the word,with public commissions in Europe,Japan,and the United States.His work was included in the 1992 Documenta exhibition,and he represented the United States at the 1989 Sao Paulo Bienal,where he was awarded the festival's Grand Prize.He is also the recipient of grants from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations,and has recently been awarded the Gold Medal in Sculpture by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Foreword

Acknowledgments

MARTIN PURYEAR: IDEAS OF OTHERNESS

ARTISAN

JOGS AND SWITCHBACKS

A CONVERSATION WITH MARTIN PURYEAR

PLATES

Catalogue of the Exhibition

CHRONOLOGY

Bibliography

Exhibition History

Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art