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 Yorkexhibition, 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'sTony Smith retrospective, Dia's presentation of Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses, and a group of David Smith's late painted-steel works at GagosianGallery. For me, however, the most impressive and thought-provoking sculpture show of the year was a concise survey of George Sugarman's workpresented by Hunter College at the galleries in its Fine Arts Building on Manhattan's West 41st Street. Bringing together 16 sculptures made between 1958 and 1995, the exhibition allowed viewers to trace Sugarman's career from his carved-wood works ofthe late 1950s to his polychrome, laminated-wood pieces of the 1960s to the painted-aluminum work that has occupied him since the early 1970s. While theshow did not cover Sugarman's extensive activity in the public-art realm--over the last 30 years he has created large-scale public sculptures throughout theU.S. as well as in Europe and Asia--it was an effective presentation of his "indoor" work. (Sugarman has drawn a useful distinction between what he callsthe "indoor eye," a museum- and gallery-oriented esthetic vision which perceives the work of art in isolation from its surroundings, and the "outdoor eye,"which allows us to view public art as part of a wider environment.) Thanks to the presence of major, rarely seen works such as Two in One (1966) and Ten(1968), the show was a welcome reminder of Sugarman's u...
