One of the contemporary sculptors included in the recent “‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art” show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Martin Puryear is unique in his ability to transcend merely morphological primitivism and to achieve the power of those works that beckon to us from beyond the boundaries of Modernism and our ethnocentrism. For Puryear natural materials, natural forms, and abstraction still have meaning which he explores, invents, and endlessly embellishes. Without relying on anthropological appropriations, his objects, which connote ritual function but of course have none,