A Polychrome Profusion; sculptor George Sugarman, Fine Arts Building, New York, New York BYLINE: RUBINSTEIN, RAPHAEL Best known today for his public art, George Sugarman began his career with formally eccentric painted-wood sculptures. In a revelatory New York exhibition, early pieces were shown alongside the 86-year-old artist"s more recent aluminum work. In the course of 1998, there were a number of important sculpture exhibitions in New York galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art"s Tony Smith retrospective, Dia"s presentation of Richard Serra"s Torqued Ellipses, and a group of David Smith"s late painted-steel works at Gagosian Gallery. For me,...
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.