thrusting sculpture that keeps its complexities partly hidden.
Yellow and White (1995) is a roughly 5 1/2-foot-high aluminum work composed of two elements: a gracefully twisted white shape at once suggestive of a
curving funnel on a ship, a megaphone and the pistil of a flower, and, at its base, a boxy yellow form with irregular folds and scalloped edges. Sugarman
works against our expectations by placing the more brightly hued, petal-like form on the floor rather than at the top of the stemlike white form. He also
creates a work which, with its tapering edges, torqued planes and opened and closed volumes, offers the mobile viewer an equally mobile set of formal
relations.
In his introduction to the catalogue that accompanied the Hunter show, Museum of Modern Art curator Robert Storr suggests that there is a resonance
between Sugarman’s work and that of younger sculptors such as Polly Apfelbaum, Charles Long and Peter Soriano. I agree with Storr in seeing an affinity
between their work and Sugarman’s (particularly his painted-wood sculptures of 1963-67), and would only add to his list three more American sculptors:
Jeanne Silverthorne, Jessica Stockholder and Daniel Wiener. One quality of Sugarman’s work that links it to the sculpture of artists 40 or more years his
junior is that in the early 1960s he rejected the notion of “troth to materials,” happily obscuring the “natural” properties of the wood he used with repeated
coats of acrylic paint. Another is his Baroque-influenced fondness for extended forms that undertake unruly excursions from their bases.(10)
Given these affinities with younger artists, it’s surprising that Sugarman’s achievement isn’t more widely recognized and that it was left to Hunter College,
rather than a major American museum, to offer this survey. No doubt, Sugarman’s long focus on public art (rather than on gallery and museum work) has
been a factor. Also at play, I fear, is the profound indifference shown by large swaths of the art world to the kind of formal inventiveness and complex visual
thinking on which Sugarman’s art is based. I can only hope that the art students who made up a significant portion of the audience for this exhibition found
some of their late-century assumptions about art-making challenged by the high order of visual invention on hand.
(1.) Quoted in Barbara Rose and Irving Sandler, “Sensibility of the Sixties,” Art in America, January-February, 1967, p. 51.
(2.) Amy Goldin, “George Sugarman,” in George Sugarman: Plastiken, Collagen, Zeichnungen, Kunsthalle Basel, 1969, unpaginated.
(3.) John Perreault, “George Sugarman, Joslyn Art Museum,” Artforum, Summer 1982.
(4.) Stephen Davis, “Disparity in Sugarman,” George Sugarman, New York, Hunter College, 1998, p. 8. Davis also points out the similarities between
Sugarman’s work and Frank Gehry’s architecture, especially his Guggenheim Bilbao.
(5.) See Holliday T. Day, Shape of Space: The Sculpture of George Sugarman, Omaha, Joslyn Art Museum 1982, p. 16.
(6.) Artist’s statement in George Sugarman, Tokyo, Contemporary Sculpture Center, 1993, unpaginated.
(7.) Day, p. 42.
(8.) Ibid., “Recollections,” p. 88.
(9.) Irving Sandier, Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 608 to the Early 908, New York, HarperCollins, 1996, p. 144.
(10.) Compare Bardana and Ritual Place with Silverthorne’s Untitled (Fragment), 1996 [A.i.A., June '97, p. 100] or Wiener’s Ball, 1993 [A.i.A., Nov. '95, p.
105].
“George Sugarman” was seen at the Gallery in the Fine Arts Building, Hunter College, New York [Feb. 18-Apr. 11, 1998]. The accompanying catalogue
includes texts by the curator Stephen Davis and by Robert Storr. Sugarman was also included in a recent three-person show at Tatunz Gallery, New York
[Feb. 2-Mar. 20]. His newest large-scale public sculpture will be inaugurated in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in July, as part of the Universiada Sculpture
Park.
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