Word: sculptor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...things go in and out of focus--including beauty. Twenty-five years ago, if an American painter or sculptor, when asked what he wanted to achieve, had replied "Beauty," he might well have earned a double take as a mere decorator. (Decorators were always "mere" back then.) Art was meant to issue political challenges, to confront convention, et cetera. And a lot of truly lousy, polemical art lay in that et cetera...
...What count for much more are those stubborn talents to whom the lyrical and the private are likely to be of more value than the collective. To such artists, beauty without cliche is a supreme goal, and there is probably none around who exemplifies this shift better than the sculptor Martin Puryear...
...possible monument to its obscure founder, in a waterfront park. Justice at last, you'd think: black artist does black pioneer. But nobody really knows what Du Sable looked like, so a "likeness" of him is out of the question. You'd think that would suit an abstract sculptor, which Puryear basically is. But as Puryear knows only too well, an abstract commemoration of Du Sable would invite the criticism that the pioneer was being reduced, as blacks in Western art so often have been, to a kind of "facelessness," an absence where a strong presence should...
...early years, we spent much time together. And even when he moved to Italy, we always kept in touch. I was happy for him when he received the Oscar for his portrayal of Gauguin. He deserved it; he was a marvelous actor! Tony was also an extraordinary artist and sculptor. The last time we had dinner together we discussed putting together another exhibition of his work in Los Angeles. He was a thoughtful friend. Not long ago, I emceed a tribute ceremony to him. That night he gave me a set of gold cuff links that he had designed...
...melodious, the other intimate and jarring. But both, really, tell the same story: a perfectionist with artistic temperament takes the challenge to turn a nobody into a socially attractive commodity. Like George Bernard Shaw and Lerner and Loewe before him, LaBute is updating the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who brought a statue to life...