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In 1921, Washington native Jean Toomer was invited to serve as the principal of a black school in Sparta, Georgia. While there, he gathered vignettes and impressions that would eventually form the core of Cane. Part prose, part poetry, Cane was lauded upon its publication in 1923 as a work of profound lyricism, written in a distinctly modern voice. In the foreword to the first edition, Waldo Frank wrote, “Cane is a harbinger of a literary force of whose incalculable future I believe no reader of this book will be in doubt. The result is that abstract and absolute thing called Art.” [1] Rather than a linear narrative, Cane weaves together the stories of African Americans in the South, Washington, DC, and New York. In particular, Toomer focused on the experiences of rural African American women.
The Arion Press publication of Cane in 2000 is the result of a collaboration between artist Martin Puryear and the founder of Arion Press, Andrew Hoyem. For the project, Puryear produced ten new woodcut prints and a limited edition of fifty wooden slipcases for the bound book. Puryear recalls that Hoyem “introduced himself at a New York print fair … and immediately invited me to think about what book I might want to develop a visual response to. I suggested Cane, and it turned out to be something he had a special interest in as well.” [2] Puryear remembers that he had read Cane when he was teaching at Fiske University in Nashville, Tennessee. “I was living in the South for the first time. It was good to read the book in context, being there. My experience was similar to Toomer’s. He came as an outsider and was looking at what so defines the South as an outsider. Washington, DC, where I grew up, as did Toomer, is a very southern city, but it is not the South. I had read about the deep South and knew it intellectually, but I hadn’t experienced it. That year I traveled around the South, went to Alabama, Mississippi. It hadn’t changed much from Toomer’s time. This is the work of mine that is most connected to a region and to the experience of being a black man in America.” [3]
Puryear found that developing a visual response to Cane was a challenge. “Early on, I decided to make images inspired by the female characters as a way to organize the work, given the complex nature of the book. The women are such strong, pivotal characters. In retrospect, I see that I was making portraits of these women, but not likenesses. They are abstract, with some reality flowing through.” [4] Puryear chose woodcut prints for the project, since he frequently works with wood in his sculptures. “I’d worked with woodcuts when I was a student,” he said in an interview about the project. “It was a chance to revisit something I was involved with early on. They force decisiveness. There’s nothing black and white in a woodcut. It’s very tedious to get middle tones.” [5]
Arion Press produced four hundred limited edition copies of Cane in 2000. Three hundred and fifty are bound simply in linen. For fifty special editions, Puryear crafted a wooden slipcase of four different types of wood meant to suggest a range of skin tones: African wenge, Swiss pear, American walnut, and sugar maple. The choices of wood also connect to the places that formed Puryear as an artist: Africa, Europe, and America.
Puryear also produced ten woodcut prints for the publication. Seven represent the female characters in Cane. Three smaller prints are Puryear’s reinterpretations of the graphic arcs that Toomer himself created for the original publication. In the “portraits” that Puryear created for Cane, the artist’s organic imagery—seedpods, sunbursts, tree-rings—mirrors Toomer's lyrical treatment of women in his story.
For the story of Avey, Toomer leaves the rural South and transports the story to early twentieth-century Washington, DC. Avey is a highly desirable woman, but, as Toomer describes, her indolence leads her eventually to prostitution. [6] In the text, the narrator encounters her again after a period of years and invites her for a stroll. They walk to a park, where he attempts to woo her. “I talked, beautifully, I thought, about an art that would be born, art that would open the way for women the likes of her. I asked her to hope, and build up an inner life against the coming of that day. I recited some of my own things to her. I sang, with a strange quiver in my voice, a promise-song. And then I began to wonder why her hand had not once returned a single pressure. My old-time feeling about her laziness came back. I spoke sharply. … Then I looked at Avey. Her heavy eyes were closed. Her breathing was as faint and regular as a child’s in slumber. … I sat beside her through the night. I saw the dawn steal over Washington. The Capitol dome looked like a gray ghost ship drifting in from sea. Avey’s face was pale, and her eyes were heavy. She did not have the gray crimson-splashed beauty of the dawn. I hated to wake her. Orphan woman.” [7]
Puryear’s image of Avey is one of the more literal translations of Toomer’s text for the Arion edition of Cane. Avey’s face is depicted in profile against the hill on which she sleeps. Her eye, nose, and mouth are rendered with a series of simplified lines. Her eyelashes fan out over the grass, mirroring the rays of the sun as it comes up over the hill. With admirable economy, Puryear captures a memorable moment from Cane.
Notes:
[1] “The Arion Press Announces the Publication of Cane by Jean Toomer.” Promotional brochure. San Francisco, CA: Arion Press, 2000, 4.
[2] Kenneth Baker, “Carving Novel Images of Black Experience/Sculptor Martin Puryear,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 2011, http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Carving-Novel-Images-Of-Black-Experience-3238439.php
[3] “The Arion Press Announces,” 12.
[4] “The Arion Press Announces,” 12.
[5] Baker, http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Carving-Novel-Images-Of-Black-Experience-3238439.php
[6] Kevin Melchionne, Martin Puryear’s “Cane” Project. Exhibition catalogue. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, 2001), 4.
[7] Jean Toomer, Cane (New York, London: Liveright. First published 1923, reissued 2011), 63.
ProvenanceFrom 2000 to 2001
Michael S. Oruch, New York, NY, Purchased from Arion Press (publisher), San Francisco, CA, on September 26, 2000. [1]
After 2001
Purchased by Reynolda House from dealer Michael S. Oruch, New York, NY on September 17, 2001. [2]
Notes:
[1] Invoice from September 26, 2000
[2] Invoice from September 17, 2001
Exhibition History2005-2006
Paper, Leather, Wood: Materials and African American Art of the Twentieth Century
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (Nov. 15, 2005 - April 16, 2006)
Published ReferencesReynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg 236, 237
DepartmentAmerican Art
Avey
Artist
Martin Puryear
(born 1941)
Date2000
Mediumwoodcut on Kitakata paper
DimensionsFrame: 21 1/8 x 23 1/4 in. (53.7 x 59.1 cm)
Paper: 17 x 20 1/2 in. (43.2 x 52.1 cm)
Image: 10 1/2 x 12 3/4 in. (26.7 x 32.4 cm)
SignedM. Puryear
Credit LineMuseum purchase
Copyright©Martin Puryear, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
Object number2001.4.2
DescriptionMartin Puryear’s Cane reveals the artist’s ongoing interest in African American history and culture. Sculptures in the artist’s oeuvre, such as Some Lines for Jim Beckwourth, 1978, collection of the artist, and Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996, Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, pay tribute to significant African American figures. Cane is Puryear’s response to an important literary work from the Harlem Renaissance, Cane by Jean Toomer.In 1921, Washington native Jean Toomer was invited to serve as the principal of a black school in Sparta, Georgia. While there, he gathered vignettes and impressions that would eventually form the core of Cane. Part prose, part poetry, Cane was lauded upon its publication in 1923 as a work of profound lyricism, written in a distinctly modern voice. In the foreword to the first edition, Waldo Frank wrote, “Cane is a harbinger of a literary force of whose incalculable future I believe no reader of this book will be in doubt. The result is that abstract and absolute thing called Art.” [1] Rather than a linear narrative, Cane weaves together the stories of African Americans in the South, Washington, DC, and New York. In particular, Toomer focused on the experiences of rural African American women.
The Arion Press publication of Cane in 2000 is the result of a collaboration between artist Martin Puryear and the founder of Arion Press, Andrew Hoyem. For the project, Puryear produced ten new woodcut prints and a limited edition of fifty wooden slipcases for the bound book. Puryear recalls that Hoyem “introduced himself at a New York print fair … and immediately invited me to think about what book I might want to develop a visual response to. I suggested Cane, and it turned out to be something he had a special interest in as well.” [2] Puryear remembers that he had read Cane when he was teaching at Fiske University in Nashville, Tennessee. “I was living in the South for the first time. It was good to read the book in context, being there. My experience was similar to Toomer’s. He came as an outsider and was looking at what so defines the South as an outsider. Washington, DC, where I grew up, as did Toomer, is a very southern city, but it is not the South. I had read about the deep South and knew it intellectually, but I hadn’t experienced it. That year I traveled around the South, went to Alabama, Mississippi. It hadn’t changed much from Toomer’s time. This is the work of mine that is most connected to a region and to the experience of being a black man in America.” [3]
Puryear found that developing a visual response to Cane was a challenge. “Early on, I decided to make images inspired by the female characters as a way to organize the work, given the complex nature of the book. The women are such strong, pivotal characters. In retrospect, I see that I was making portraits of these women, but not likenesses. They are abstract, with some reality flowing through.” [4] Puryear chose woodcut prints for the project, since he frequently works with wood in his sculptures. “I’d worked with woodcuts when I was a student,” he said in an interview about the project. “It was a chance to revisit something I was involved with early on. They force decisiveness. There’s nothing black and white in a woodcut. It’s very tedious to get middle tones.” [5]
Arion Press produced four hundred limited edition copies of Cane in 2000. Three hundred and fifty are bound simply in linen. For fifty special editions, Puryear crafted a wooden slipcase of four different types of wood meant to suggest a range of skin tones: African wenge, Swiss pear, American walnut, and sugar maple. The choices of wood also connect to the places that formed Puryear as an artist: Africa, Europe, and America.
Puryear also produced ten woodcut prints for the publication. Seven represent the female characters in Cane. Three smaller prints are Puryear’s reinterpretations of the graphic arcs that Toomer himself created for the original publication. In the “portraits” that Puryear created for Cane, the artist’s organic imagery—seedpods, sunbursts, tree-rings—mirrors Toomer's lyrical treatment of women in his story.
For the story of Avey, Toomer leaves the rural South and transports the story to early twentieth-century Washington, DC. Avey is a highly desirable woman, but, as Toomer describes, her indolence leads her eventually to prostitution. [6] In the text, the narrator encounters her again after a period of years and invites her for a stroll. They walk to a park, where he attempts to woo her. “I talked, beautifully, I thought, about an art that would be born, art that would open the way for women the likes of her. I asked her to hope, and build up an inner life against the coming of that day. I recited some of my own things to her. I sang, with a strange quiver in my voice, a promise-song. And then I began to wonder why her hand had not once returned a single pressure. My old-time feeling about her laziness came back. I spoke sharply. … Then I looked at Avey. Her heavy eyes were closed. Her breathing was as faint and regular as a child’s in slumber. … I sat beside her through the night. I saw the dawn steal over Washington. The Capitol dome looked like a gray ghost ship drifting in from sea. Avey’s face was pale, and her eyes were heavy. She did not have the gray crimson-splashed beauty of the dawn. I hated to wake her. Orphan woman.” [7]
Puryear’s image of Avey is one of the more literal translations of Toomer’s text for the Arion edition of Cane. Avey’s face is depicted in profile against the hill on which she sleeps. Her eye, nose, and mouth are rendered with a series of simplified lines. Her eyelashes fan out over the grass, mirroring the rays of the sun as it comes up over the hill. With admirable economy, Puryear captures a memorable moment from Cane.
Notes:
[1] “The Arion Press Announces the Publication of Cane by Jean Toomer.” Promotional brochure. San Francisco, CA: Arion Press, 2000, 4.
[2] Kenneth Baker, “Carving Novel Images of Black Experience/Sculptor Martin Puryear,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 2011, http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Carving-Novel-Images-Of-Black-Experience-3238439.php
[3] “The Arion Press Announces,” 12.
[4] “The Arion Press Announces,” 12.
[5] Baker, http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Carving-Novel-Images-Of-Black-Experience-3238439.php
[6] Kevin Melchionne, Martin Puryear’s “Cane” Project. Exhibition catalogue. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, 2001), 4.
[7] Jean Toomer, Cane (New York, London: Liveright. First published 1923, reissued 2011), 63.
ProvenanceFrom 2000 to 2001
Michael S. Oruch, New York, NY, Purchased from Arion Press (publisher), San Francisco, CA, on September 26, 2000. [1]
After 2001
Purchased by Reynolda House from dealer Michael S. Oruch, New York, NY on September 17, 2001. [2]
Notes:
[1] Invoice from September 26, 2000
[2] Invoice from September 17, 2001
Exhibition History2005-2006
Paper, Leather, Wood: Materials and African American Art of the Twentieth Century
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (Nov. 15, 2005 - April 16, 2006)
Published ReferencesReynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg 236, 237
Status
Not on view