Martin Puryear at MoMA

Martin Puryear's work has everything sculpture was supposed to have: texture, shape, structure, color, and volume. It's romantic in the way it asks us to surrender to the classical purity of material and form. It's so simple, so spare, so minimal that just when you think a Puryear is as easy as it looks, it reveals itself in a whole new way.

The Martin Puryear sculpture retrospective, curated by John Elderfield and on view now at MoMA, is a pure delight. The show will travel to Washington, Fort Worth, and San Francisco, but it's hard to imagine it looking any better than it does in MoMA's sixth-floor galleries. While the second floor of the Taniguchi MoMA was built with Richard Serra in mind, Puryear's minimalist, handsy, detailed forms hover between fields of drywall, making it look like the sixth floor was made for him. (This should not be a surprise: After Kirk Varnedoe did his American Painters series of shows (Twombly, Johns, Pollock), he turned MoMA's attention toward David Smith, Serra, and Puryear. Smith ended up at the Gugg, but I think that it's no coincidence that Serra and Puryear fit into these spaces so well.)

There are 47 Puryears here -- 42 upstairs and five more in the atrium -- groupings that could have seemed overwhelming, but don't. The sheer number of sculptures reminds me of one of my favorite things about Puryear's work: Puryear's shapes lurk at the edges of recognition. Deadeye looks like a hot water bottle... but not quite. Brunhilde looks like, like, well, something I know I've seen before, I'm just not sure what. That vaguely familiar feeling keeps us looking, and as we look we see the grain of the wood Puryear used, its color, its texture. We see the armature that holds a piece together, and realize that it's not just holding a sculpture together, it's taking away from its transparence or it's adding to its solidity. We realize that a sculpture's size contributes to the object's familiarity but no, it's a little too big, or a little too small. And how did he get that wood to do, well, that? Large sculpture rarely feels intimate, but even Puryear's biggest pieces feel personal.

One reason is because of their size -- most Puryears in this show are no bigger than the human body (a scale Puryear regularly exceeds in work not made for the white cube). But another is because of the way a Puryear sculpture draws us into it. Puryears beg to be touched, but of course we can't do that. All those open spaces beg to be penetrated, but that would be wrong. No matter, visually they pull us in by steps: First toward the surface of the work, then into the (often) hollow core, then out the other side, which gives us a sense of the sculpture's volume, its relationship to the room, to other Puryears nearby. Puryear's sculptures remind me of Pieter de Hooch's keyhole paintings in that they suck us in, then in again, and finally out to somewhere else entirely.

Of course de Hooch's paintings are substantially studies in perspective, and that's the unifying theme of Puryear's art: Using abstract sculpture to explore the centuries-long, mostly painterly and representational art historical march from flatness to depth and back again. Ever since at least 1976-77's Box and Pole Puryear has regularly mixed perspective and the lack thereof in single sculptures. The result of that exploration has been the push-me-pull-you that gives his art its intensely personal sense of engagement. Even as you're looking into or through many Puryears, they maintain a solid, physical presence right in front of you.

Elderfield's show engages this duality mostly in MoMA's atrium, where MAMFW's Ladder to Booker T. Washington hovers above, where Desire runs away and holds its own, and where Ad Astra (2007) updates Box and Pole.

For all the Puryear that's here -- and there isn't a dud in the exhibition -- this could have been a more comprehensive show. Elderfield chose not to represent important outdoor installations, such as Puryear's masterful untitled piece at California's Oliver Ranch or his Getty Center installation. (Granted, including photos or models of outdoor pieces is always tricky and often fails.) Puryear doesn't often work in metal, but a metallic piece or two would have demonstrated much about Puryear and his use of materials. (There are two pieces in the show substantially made out of wire.) Major gallery-sized works such as Vessel, Vault, and the California African American Museum's Her and She -- Puryear's most underrated works -- are missing. Maybe other venues will make some additions.

Coming up: Each day this week I'll feature a post on Puryear's exploration of perspective, usually with works that aren't in the MoMA show (or couldn't be).