In 1991, when I was a student at the SAIC, the Art Institute hosted a retrospective exhibition of Martin Puryear’s sculptures. Most of the pieces on display were made of wood and somehow familiar and mysterious at the same time. Some resembled boats, others were like human figures; but the works would turn away and in on themselves, refusing to be defined.
When Puryear was invited to illustrate a new edition of Jean Toomer’s 1923 Harlem Renaissance novel Cane he set himself the challenge of working solely on a flat surface. The wall text that accompanies the Cane woodcuts mentions that Puryear thought these pieces were unlike the rest of his output. In this series he is still walking a fine line between abstraction and figuration, but there are also hints of landscape or environment rather than the voids or simple horizon lines visible in much of the rest of the show.
