"The work is flowing from an inner knowing of how things really are"
About this Quote
Art that "flows" from "inner knowing" is a polite-sounding provocation. Martin Puryear is pushing back on the idea of sculpture as mere problem-solving: form, material, and technique arranged into something impressive. He’s pointing to a different source of authority, one that isn’t granted by critics, markets, or even the art-school toolkit, but by a lived sense of truth - "how things really are". The line works because it claims certainty while refusing to specify its contents. That vagueness is the point: the knowing isn’t a slogan, it’s embodied, private, and hard-won.
Puryear’s practice makes the subtext legible. His sculptures often read as spare and inevitable, as if they’ve been discovered rather than invented. He uses craft traditions and humble materials without turning them into nostalgia, and he favors forms that feel archetypal but not didactic. "Flowing" suggests a process where decisions are guided by attunement instead of anxiety: the hand follows insight, not fashion.
There’s also a quiet defiance here against an art world that can reward cleverness over conviction. "Inner knowing" is not anti-intellectual; it’s anti-performative. It hints at a studio ethic where meaning accrues through attention, repetition, and restraint, and where the artist’s job is less to announce a message than to make an object sturdy enough to carry an experience of reality. The phrase lands like a manifesto for integrity, smuggled in as serenity.
Puryear’s practice makes the subtext legible. His sculptures often read as spare and inevitable, as if they’ve been discovered rather than invented. He uses craft traditions and humble materials without turning them into nostalgia, and he favors forms that feel archetypal but not didactic. "Flowing" suggests a process where decisions are guided by attunement instead of anxiety: the hand follows insight, not fashion.
There’s also a quiet defiance here against an art world that can reward cleverness over conviction. "Inner knowing" is not anti-intellectual; it’s anti-performative. It hints at a studio ethic where meaning accrues through attention, repetition, and restraint, and where the artist’s job is less to announce a message than to make an object sturdy enough to carry an experience of reality. The phrase lands like a manifesto for integrity, smuggled in as serenity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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