Self
Martin Puryear (American, b. 1941)

Title

Self

Artist

Martin Puryear (American, b. 1941)

Date

1978

Medium

polychromed red cedar and mahogany

Dimensions

69 × 48 × 25 in. (175.3 × 121.9 × 63.5 cm)

Classification

Sculpture

Credit Line

Museum purchase in memory of Elinor Ashton

Object Number

1980.63

On View

On view

Provenance

Consigned by the artist to Young Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, 1980;
Purchased from Young Hoffman Gallery by Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, 1980.

Exhibition History

Young American Artists: 1978 Exxon National Exhibition, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 5–June 16, 1978.

I-80 Series: Martin Puryear, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, August 2–September 14, 1980.

Chicago/Chicago: An Exhibition of Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Photography, Video, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, October 3–November 9, 1980.

Martin Puryear, University Gallery, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, February 4–March 16, 1984; Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, April 7–May 27, 1984; National Center for Afro-American Artists, Boston, June 10–July 15, 1984; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, July 28–September 9, 1984; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, October 13–December 9, 1984.

Personal References: Three Artists/Three Visions, Kemper Gallery, Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri, September 6–October 5, 1986.

Martin Puryear: Public and Personal, Chicago Library Cultural Center, February 7–April 4, 1987.

Martin Puryear: Sculpture and Works on Paper, Carnegie Mellon University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 12–May 30, 1987.

Martin Puryear, Art Institute of Chicago, November 9, 1991–January 5, 1992; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, February 5–May 10, 1992; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, July 26–October 4, 1992; Philadelphia Museum of Art, November 8, 1992–January 3, 1993, no. 7.

Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, August 14–September 26, 1993.

Martin Puryear, Fundación “la Caixa,” Madrid, Spain, November 15, 1997–January 11, 1998, no. 3.

Martin Puryear, Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 4, 2007–January 14, 2008; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, February 24–May 18, 2008; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, June 22–September 28, 2008; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 8, 2008–January 25, 2009.

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern, London, July 12–October 22, 2017; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, February 3–April 23, 2018; Brooklyn Museum, New York, September 14, 2018–February 3, 2019; The Broad, Los Angeles, March 23–September 1, 2019.

American Art from the Collection of Joslyn Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, July 25, 2022–September 1, 2023.

Published References

Jonathan Crary, “Martin Puryear’s Sculpture,” ARTFORUM 18, no. 2, October 1979, 28, (repro.).

Roger Catlin, “Joslyn Opens Small Show,” Omaha World-Herald, August 24, 1980.

Pauline Saliga, “Chicago, Chicago,” Dialogue (September/October 1980): 43, (repro.).

Hugh M. Davies and Helaine Posner, Martin Puryear, exh. cat. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1984), cover, 14–15, 22–23, 41, 42 (repro.).

Roberta Smith, “Around Town,” The Village Voice, September 4, 1984, 85, (repro.).

Sculptors International 4.1, possibly 1984, 27, (repro.).

Deven K. Golden, ed., Martin Puryear: Public and Personal, exh. cat. (Chicago: Chicago Office of Fine Arts, 1987), 10, 24, (repro.).

Donald Miller, “Related shows center on subway art,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 18, 1987.

Ann Lee Morgan, “Martin Puryear: Sculpture as Elemental Expression,” New Art Examiner, May 1987, 27–28, (repro.).

Colin Westerbeck, “Martin Puryear: Chicago Public Library Cultural Center,” ARTFORUM 25, no.9, May 1987, 154.

Holliday T. Day and Hollister Sturges, eds., Joslyn Art Museum: Paintings & Sculpture from the European & American Collections (Omaha: Joslyn Art Museum, 1987), 225–26, 228, (repro.).

George Melrod, “Martin Puryear: The Art of the Decoy,” Sculpture 10, no. 5, September–October 1991, 32–33, (repro.).

Margo A. Crutchfield, Martin Puryear, exh. cat. (Richmond, Virginia: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2001), 5, (repro.).

Neal David Benezra and Robert Storr, Martin Puryear, exh. cat. (New York: Thames and Hudson; Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1991), frontis, 25, 66–67, (repro.).

Judith Russi Kirshner, “Martin Puryear in the American Grain,” ARTFORUM 30, no. 4, December 1991, 59–61, (repro.).

Robert Hughes, “Delight in a Shaping Hand: An exhibit of the craftsmanlike, poetic forms of Martin Puryear shows why he is one of the best sculptors alive,” TIME 139, no. 9, March 2, 1992, 63.

Enrique Juncosa, Michael Brenson, Luis Monreal, Martin Puryear, exh. cat. (Madrid: Fundación “la Caixa,” 1997), 22, 25, 38, 55, 110, (repro.).

Sharon Patton, African-American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 251–52, (repro.).

Henry M. Sayre, ed., A World of Art, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000), 91, (repro.).

Molly S. Hutton, “Under the Gaze of Sentinel,” Gettysburg, Autumn 2003, 16–17, (repro.).

John Elderfield, Martin Puryear, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2007), 119, (repro.).

Roberta Smith, “Humanity’s Ascent, In Three Dimensions,” The New York Times, November 2, 2007, 28, (repro.).

Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley, eds., Soul of a Nation Art in the Age of Black Power, exh. cat (London: Tate Publishing, 2017), 13, 15, 249, (repro.).

Darby English and Charlotte Barat, eds., Among Others: Blackness at MoMA (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2019), 376, (repro.).

Martin Puryear et al., Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà, exh. cat. (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2019), 85–92, 96–97, (repro.).