The hugely successful Richard Serra retrospective that closes this month at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City won't be an easy act to follow. But if anybody can do it, it's the African-American sculptor Martin Puryear, whose retrospective opens at MOMA Nov. 4. Like Serra, Puryear can plausibly be called one of the greatest living American artists. He's a post- Minimalist with a craftsman's soul. His pieces are expertly carpentered, woven and braided. But his work is about more than the consummate handling of wood or stone. As post-Minimalists do, he finds ways to make abstract forms speak to things outside themselves. Subtly, but irresistibly, they carry us back to the forms of nature, stir buried longings for shelter and refuge, or reach into our deepest intuitions about the body.
— RICHARD LACAYO