Word: puryear
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...funny misunderstanding with Martin Puryear a few weeks ago. We were talking about a work of his from the late 1980s and the problem of beauty in art. You might not know that beauty is a problem, but for a long time it has been suspect as a virtue. If Picasso and Braque had worried about beauty, the thinking goes, they would never have ventured into Cubism. And in due time they found their way to--what else?--another kind of beauty...
...been talking to Puryear about Maroon, a large, dark, bulbous form made mostly from wood and wire mesh covered with tar. The piece is part of his triumphant retrospective that opens Nov. 4 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which was organized by John Elderfield, MOMA's chief curator of painting and sculpture. As soon as I brought up the beauty problem, Puryear agreed. It took me a minute to realize we were talking past each other. He thought the work was so challenging to ordinary notions of what's pleasing to the eye "that...
...Puryear is well understood as a man whose art should never be understood too quickly. What he makes are powerfully ambiguous forms, things that almost correspond to familiar realities but not quite, so that they speak in subtle terms to undisclosed locations within ourselves. It's not uncommon to hear him described as one of the most formidable living American artists. Agreed. And if what he makes is also weirdly beautiful, well, sometimes a question mark is the sexiest curve in the world...
...Menil Collection, one of the city's contemporary-art museums. They were accumulating edgy contemporary art--not just for themselves but also for Enron's new 40-story Cesar Pelli skyscraper. Lea took charge of the firm's art purchases, which included sculptures by Claes Oldenburg and Martin Puryear. The Fastows had plans to be big givers; they channeled $4.5 million, reaped from a $25,000 investment in one of his deals, to the Fastow Family Foundation...
...Menil Collection, one of the city's contemporary-art museums. They were accumulating edgy contemporary art--not just for themselves but also for Enron's new 40-story Cesar Pelli skyscraper. Lea took charge of the firm's art purchases, which included sculptures by Claes Oldenburg and Martin Puryear. The Fastows had plans to be big givers; they channeled $4.5 million, reaped from a $25,000 investment in one of his deals, to the Fastow Family Foundation...