Neil Goodman

Goodman was born in 1953 in Hammond, Indiana, a steel-mill city outside of Chicago, whose industrial rust-belt landscape remains a key influence.Hersh, Lela. "Neil Goodman," [https://www.amazon.com/Art-Chicago-1945-1995-Jeff-Abell/dp/050023728X Art in Chicago 1945-1995], Museum of Contemporary Art, ed. Lynne Warren, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996, page 255. Retrieved March 12, 2020.Perry, Rachel Berenson. Passages and Portals: Sculpture by Neil Goodman, Indianapolis, Indiane: Indiana State Museum, 2006. His college studies began in philosophy and religion, before he turned to pottery and then sculpture at Indiana University Bloomington (BA, Fine Arts and Religious Studies, 1976).Berry, S.L. "Artist left books behind, took philosophy into sculpture," Indianapolis Star, May 24, 2002. In the late 1970s, he was drawn to working in metal and completed postgraduate studies in sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute (1977) and Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia (MFA, Sculpture and Ceramics, 1979).Smith, Colleen. "Void as Form: An Interview with Neil Goodman," Close Proximity: A retrospective of Sculpture by Neil Goodman, Englewood, Colorado: Museum of Outdoor Arts, 2018, page 38–45. He secured a teaching position at Indiana University Northwest (IUN) in Gary in 1979 as a founding member of the Fine Arts department.Goodman, Neil and Richard Rezac. [http://www.newartexaminer.org/assets/vol-33-no-2-electronic-version.pdf "Two Top Sculptors Recall their Time in Chi-Town,"] New Art Examiner, November/December 2018, pages 13–5, 19. Retrieved March 19, 2020. In 1991, he purchased a two-story residential loft building on Chicago's south side that served as his studio and a home for him, his wife, JoEllyn Codespoti Goodman, and their children, Maurice and Hana Goodman, Jenna Wright and Stephen Stults.Kaplan, Kathy. [https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1998-09-20-9809200475-story.html "All in the Family,"] Chicago Tribune, September 20, 1998. Retrieved March 12, 2020.

Goodman emerged in the Chicago art scene with a two-person exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center in 1980,Forwalter, John. "Sculpture at Library is top-notch," Post-Tribune, October 1980. group shows at the Illinois State Museum and Dart, Struve, Roy Boyd and Randolph Street galleries,Artner, Alan G. "Dart Gallery offers contemporary view of still life’s, human form," Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1982.MacNamara, Peggy. "Goodman, Neri, Silverman," New Art Examiner, May 1983.Palmer, Lori. "Struve Gallery Exhibition," New Art Examiner, May 1986.Smallwood, Lyn. "National Sculpture Review," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 10, 1987. and solo shows at Frumkin & Struve Gallery (his first in Chicago) and the Indianapolis Center alumni for Contemporary Art, among others.Holg, Garrett. "Neil Goodman at the Struve Gallery," New Art Examiner, November 1988, page 40.Indianapolis Center for Contemporary Art. Julia Fish | Neil Goodman, Indianapolis, Indiana: Indianapolis Center for Contemporary Art, 1989. His later exhibitions include a mid-career surveys at the Chicago Cultural Center (1997) and Indiana State Museum (2006),Holg, Garrett. "Neil Goodman Perimeter Gallery/Chicago Cultural Center," ARTnews, February 1998.Sculpture magazine. "Portals & Passages, Indiana State Museum," Sculpture, July-August 2006. a retrospective at the Museum of Outdoor Arts (2018), and solos at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (1994), Brauer Museum of Art (2016), and Perimeter, Klein and Carl Hammer galleries in Chicago.MacMillan, Kyle. "Summer accompanied by a variety of shows," Sunday World Herald (Omaha), July 3, 1994.Yood, James. "Neil Goodman at the Perimeter Gallery," Art Ltd, November/December 2014.Thorn, Bruce. [http://www.newartexaminer.org/assets/vol-32-no.-3-electronic-version-final.pdf "Neil Goodman: 'Twists & Turns,'"] New Art Examiner, January-February 2018. Retrieved March 12, 2020.

Since 2017, Goodman has been an Emeritus Professor of Fine Arts at IUN, after nearly four decades there teaching and serving as department chair (1998–2001, 2007–11).Kullerstrand, Marge. "IUN’s New Jewel," The Times, June 23, 2006, page A1, A11.

File:Neil_Goodman_Triptych_1988.jpg

Goodman's career is noted for its consistent modernist formal vocabulary, which has evolved through nuanced but significant experimentation from representation and narrative toward abstraction and minimalism;Paglia, Michael. [https://www.westword.com/arts/neil-goodman-sculpture-retrospective-at-moa-stands-tall-both-inside-and-outdoors-10838409 "Neil Goodman Retrospective Gets Back to Basics,"] Westword, September 27, 2018. Retrieved March 12, 2020. he cites Giacometti and Brâncuși as important touchstones.Artner, Alan G. [https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1988-09-29-8802030309-story.html "At the Galleries: Neil Goodman,"] Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1988, Section 5, page 9. Retrieved March 12, 2020. His work—primarily in bronze—is unified by: a visual grammar that emphasizes balance and strong lines; a workmanlike mastery of technique and craft, including casting and painstaking hand-finished surfaces; an emphasis on presentation and the relationship of sculpture to various spaces (pedestals, walls, floors, galleries, outdoors); and contrasts between industrial, architectural and geometric forms and natural-organic elements and textures.Yood, James. Julia Fish | Neil Goodman, Indianapolis, Indiana: Indianapolis Center for Contemporary Art, 1989.Artner, Alan G. "Neil Goodman at Perimeter Gallery," Chicago Tribune, November 25, 2005, Section 7, page 19. James Yood and Alan Artner, among others, note his sensitivity to bronze—its patina, luster, and malleability—which follows in the tradition of masters such as Henry Moore, Marini, Maillol and Giacometti.Berger, Phillip. "Neil Goodman: 'Portals & Passages'," Time Out, December 15, 2005.

===Early work (1979–1993)===

Goodman's early sculpture combines representation and abstraction, oblique narrative, and an almost archaeological concern with objects and the passage of time.Scarborough, James. "Neil Goodman, Subjects-Objects and the Devaluation of the Constructivist Imperative," Neil Goodman, Subjects-Objects, Norman, Oklahoma: Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 1994.Luecking, Steve. "Extensions: Neil Goodman and the Patterns of Space," Neil Goodman | Sculpture, Elgin, Illinois: Elgin Community College/Indiana University/Perimeter Gallery, 2005. Formally, it defies sculptural convention, interpreting painterly strategies, such as the still life and frontal, single-plane presentation, in bronze.Artner, Alan G. "Skill, precision of detail energize Goodman’s work," Chicago Tribune, April 26, 1991, page 41. Critics identify painters Pierre Chardin and Giorgio Morandi as key influences, while also relating the bio-abstraction of Arp, Brancusi, Isamu Noguchi and Yves Tanguy and the vitalist sculpture of Moore and Barbara Hepworth.Artner, Alan G. "Small bronzes a step forward for Goodman," Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1990, pages 46–7.

Goodman first gained attention for intimate, low-lying still lifes that bring together disparate artifacts and architectural elements in elegant familiar tableaux suggesting dinner settings or shelf arrangements (e.g., Still Life with Catfish, 1979; Still Life #1, 1988).Haydon Harold. "Still life cast in bronze at Frumkin-Struve show," Chicago Sun-Times, February 12, 1982. ARTnews critic Garrett Holg writes that the combinations of common, man-made objects (rods, bowls, glasses, forks) and droll castings of temporal organic forms (vegetables, fish) formed "a profoundly eloquent discourse on the still life." James Yood wrote that Goodman's "isolated and huddled" objects and pitted and scumbled surfaces convey hard-won existence and anonymous heroism with a "majesty and quality of restraint reminiscent of Chardin."

Goodman's imposing, freestanding "Cage" works have been likened to open-backed reliefs resembling altarpieces, which use thin, vertical architectonic frameworks to define and section interior spaces into platforms and compartments for the display of abstract and representational (bowls, fish, implements) forms. Critics highlight the series' complex interrelationships and compositional variety, which ranges from near-screens of hieroglyphic-like screens (Triptych, 1988) to delicate, shadow-box-like balances of fluid, multi-dimensional space (Cyclades, 1986; Cage #4, 1988). Goodman's "Bellingham Series" (1990) offers "mini-assemblages" of reinvented nautical tools and other forms, whose significance rely less on symbolism than on sensitive, asymmetrical compositions (e.g., Ledge and Prop) that hint at Cubist-like fragmentation.

File:Neil_Goodman_Biography_2011.jpg

===Wall and floor groupings (1994– )===

Goodman made a dramatic shift with his site-specific installation Subjects/Objects (1994), which fully realized the frontality of earlier work and broke with traditional in-the-round sculptural presentation. It consisted of forty-seven free-floating, hand-wrought bronze wall-objects in a modular arrangement that emphasized dynamic rhythms achieved through contrasts between horizontal and vertical lines, organic and geometric shapes, and activated negative space; critics likened the groupings of seemingly natural, ceremonial and utilitarian artifacts to a museum archaeological display or tools organized on a pegboard.Tolin, Roseanne. "Making it big," The Times (Indiana), June 8, 1997, pages E1, E10. Noting the objects' intimacy and detailed textures, Kathryn Hixson wrote that Goodman "dismantles the hype of monumental Modernism in favor of a hand-held, more useful version." In later installations at IUN (Subjects-Objects, 1996) and the Chicago Cultural Center (1998), Goodman explored arrangements that migrated across floors rather than walls.

Goodman's free-floating separation of elements without containing or shared supports also detached his work from the self-referential traditions of formalism and the art-object, transforming it into something open-ended and interior like language, which viewers are left to complete. Margaret Hawkins links this aspect formally and symbolically to Goodman's traditional Jewish youth reading Hebrew, which shares a sense of heightened meaning derived from code-like forms; the connection is most evident in two subsequent public wall commissions: Temple Jeremiah (1995, Northbrook, Illinois) and Jewish Heritage Museum (1998, Danville, California).The Reutlinger Community/Jewish Heritage Museum. [http://www.rcjl.org/jewish-heritage-museum-reopens/ "Jewish Heritage Museum Reopens,"] September 30, 2016. Retrieved March 12, 2020.

In 1997, Goodman created Passage for Chicago's McCormick Place South Pavilion, a 90' x 15' permanent wall installation that features an "alphabet" of more than 130 forms, many nautical, reflecting its lakeside locale; a triangular-shaped, stairwell wall-piece, Subject-Object (2000), resides in the Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Illinois.McQuiston, Julie Pratt. "Four-sided story," Nuvo, June 2002. With the later works Biography (2011) and Eclipse (2014), Goodman returned to monumental wall-works, in this case linking bronze elements in the manner of chain mail; ARTnews likened the former to a giant pendant of blade forms evocative of symbolic code, tribal ornamentation and "mod, space-age forms."Lopez, Ruth. "Neil Goodman, Perimeter Gallery," ARTnews, September 2012, page 117.

===Outdoor public sculpture and gallery work (2000– )===

After winning a competition in 2000 to create an outdoor work for the Dow Centennial Sculpture Garden in Midland, Michigan (Centennial Passage), Goodman began conceiving sculptures in terms of site-specificity and multiple vantage points, encouraging viewers to move around and look at and through sculptures to notice shifting forms, voids and relationships to architecture, space, and landscape. More inclusive, participatory and conversational—as suits the social dimension of public art—this work was also, in formal terms, emphatically linear and more minimal, open and three-dimensional.Hawkins, Margaret. "Gallery Glance," Chicago Sun-Times, December 26, 2003. This approach extended to Goodman's gallery exhibitions, which often presented motifs and works later adapted for monumental outdoor pieces and recreated the ensemble sense of a sculpture park, with great attention to placement, scale, lighting and interrelationships.

File:Neil_Goodman_Night_and_Day_2019.jpg

Between 2000–6, Goodman developed his "Shadows and Echoes" works, which redefine and re-contextualize their environments through linear windows, frames and passages.Skiba, Walter. "Shadows & Echoes," Northwest Indiana Times, June 23, 2006. The series—formally unified by repetitions of line, module and motif (loops, arcs, arches, pyramids, wedges)—was inspired by disparate sources connected by inherent design structures: abstracted nature (e.g., Slither, Reach), geometry (Four Corners), industrial leftovers (Crank, Mirror), the arabesques of the Moorish Alhambra (Andalusia). Curator Geoffrey Bates describes them as sculpted with a "beautifully controlled" fine line rather than mass, "creating sculptural presence from empty space";Bates, Geoffrey. Neil Goodman in the Park, University Park, Illinois: Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park, 2010. Margaret Hawkins describes them as "light as paper" and airy, like music or mathematical equations, despite their heft.Hawkins, Margaret. "Time Pieces: Goodman’s Abstract Shapes Intriguing to Infinity," Chicago Sun-Times, December 1, 2005. The series culminated in a sculpture garden at the center of the IUN campus that features ten monumental bronze outdoor sculptures interacting with a native landscape designed by Cynthia Owen-Bergland. In 2010, Goodman installed five "Shadows and Echoes" works cast in fiberglass in an outdoor exhibition at the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park in University Park, Illinois.

In his exhibitions of the 2010s, Goodman continued to pare down motifs inspired by industrial, geometric, and natural forms in freestanding, floor and wall pieces that retain their varied, organic surfaces.Hawkins, Margaret. "Neil Goodman at Perimeter," ARTnews, May 2009.Dluzen, Robin. [http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2010/04/elana-gutmann-at-perimeter-gallery/ Review, Perimeter Gallery], Chicago Art Magazine, May 2010. Retrieved March 12, 2020. His vertical, roughly human-sized, freestanding "Columns" (2015–7) repeat, invert, and conjoin basic "U" shapes with blade-like forms in bronze, creating a linear, rhythmic interplay that implies both anthropomorphic and anthropological references (e.g., Cabal and Twist). Robin Dluzen suggests that the light networks of intersecting lines in pieces such as Turn reflect the rowed vineyards of California, Goodman's new home.Dluzen, Robin. "Neil Goodman: Twists and Turns," Chicago: Perimeter Gallery, 2017.

A second, horizontal series employs shard-like, trapezoidal forms of greater mass with rectangular "windows" or openings that maximize the synergy of positive and negative spaces, and like earlier work, offer shifting perspectives on their surroundings (e.g., Twilight I and Twilight II). Presented as pedestal pieces in gallery shows, these works doubled as studies for the monumental outdoor bronze sculptures Night and Day (2019, commissioned by the Brauer Museum for Valparaiso University) and Rudder (2017, Museum of Outdoor Arts).Vector. [http://www.vectortheartoffabricating.com/2019-night-and-day-by-neil-goodman/ "Night and Day by Neil Goodman."] Retrieved March 19, 2020.Brauer Museum of Art. [https://www.valpo.edu/brauer-museum-of-art/ Night and Day], Valparaiso, Indiana: Brauer Museum of Art, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020. Margaret Hawkins and other writers describe these later outdoor works as less about substance than about their voids—"yawning, crooked windows" that frame views and allude to spiritual questions, such as the relationship between being and non-being.

In his exhibition "Through a Different Lens" (2022), Goodman presented two bronze sculpture series that continued to bear the influence of the California landscape: small "window" or "lens" works designed to be looked through and a series he described as "gateways."Memoli, Rebecca. [http://www.newartexaminer.org/neil-goodwin.html "Through a Different Lens: Neil Goodman at Carl Hammer Gallery,"] New Art Examiner, 2022. Retrieved February 20, 2025. These taller, elongated works (e.g., Crown, 2018–21), suggested both anthropomorphic forms and topographic views of the coast when viewed frontally.

In his later career, Goodman has also turned to art writing, contributing reviews, essays and interviews to the New Art Examiner. His subjects have included the Confederate Mound at Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery,Goodman, Neil. [http://www.newartexaminer.org/oakwood-memorial.html "'Twists & Turns': The Confederate Mound at Oak Woods Cemetery,"] New Art Examiner, October 2020. Retrieved January 21, 2021. artists including John Henry,Goodman, Neil. "John Raymond Henry: A Steel Driving Man," New Art Examiner, February 2023. Richard Hunt,Goodman, Neil. "Fire and Ice: Remembering Richard Hunt," New Art Examiner, April 2024. Martin Puryear,Goodman, Neil. "Past and Present: Looking Out—Looking In, Martin Puryear at Storm King Art Center," New Art Examiner, March 2024. Rembrandt,Goodman, Neil. [http://www.newartexaminer.org/legacy-of-decency.html "Legacy of Decency: Rembrandt, the Jews, and the Danes,"] New Art Examiner, March 2020. Retrieved January 21, 2021. Richard Rezac, Richard Serra,Goodman, Neil. "The Razor's Edge: A memorial to Richard Serra (1938-2024)," New Art Examiner, July 2024. Peter Shelton,Goodman, Neil. "Eyehand: The Sculpture of Peter Shelton," New Art Examiner, February 2023. Adam SilvermanGoodman, Neil. "Adam Silverman at Cherry & Martin Gallery," New Art Examiner, March/April 2018. and Kehinde Wiley,Goodman, Neil. "Kehinde Wiley, Skirball Cultural Center," New Art Examiner, 2018. and a memorial to the late Chicago art dealer, Paul Klein.Goodman, Neil. [http://www.newartexaminer.org/remembering-paul-klein.html "Nine Lives: Remembering Paul Klein,"] New Art Examiner, 2021. Retrieved January 21, 2021. He also wrote the introductory essay for the book, Contemporary Sculptors of Chicago (2020),Goodman, Neil. "Makers & Doers" (introductory essay), in [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1199334609 Contemporary Sculptors of Chicago: Artists behind the Sculptural Heritage of the City] by Jyoti Srivastava, 2020. Retrieved January 21, 2021. and an essay for the catalog Night and Day, for his commission at Valparaiso University (2020).Goodman, Neil. [https://www.valpo.edu/brauer-museum-of-art/ Night and Day], Valparaiso, Indiana: Brauer Museum of Art, 2020. Retrieved January 21, 2021.

In addition to aforementioned works, Goodman has been awarded public commissions by the City of Chicago (Chicago Public Library, 1995; Martin Luther King Gateway Renovation, 1996; Geography Earth, 2002, Burnham Park Children's Garden), UBS Warburg Tower (2002),Cassidy, Victor. [http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/cassidy/cassidy4-24-03.asp "Prairie Smoke,"] Artnet, April 24 2003. Retrieved March 19, 2020. Greater Hartford Arts Council/Lincoln Financial (Frontier Life, 2009, Hartford, Connecticut),Riverfront Recapture. [http://www.riverfront.org/parks/art-in-parks "Art in the Parks,"] Retrieved March 19, 2020. the Munster (Indiana) Public Art Committee (Prairie Passage, 2009, with Terry Karpowicz),Franklin, LuAnn. [https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/centennial-park-s-prairie-passage-to-be-illuminated-in-spring/article_7734df08-29de-572c-8e89-360e326c411d.html "Lighting the Way” Centennial Park’s 'Prairie Passage' to be illuminated this Spring,"] Northwest Indiana Times, December 1, 2009. Retrieved March 19, 2020. and Indiana University Northwest (Tapestry, 2011).Lazerus, Christin Nance. "Tapestry honors former Chancellor," Post Tribune, June 17, 2011.Elgin Community College, Indiana University and Perimeter Gallery. Neil Goodman | Sculpture, Elgin, Illinois: Elgin Community College/Indiana University/Perimeter Gallery, 2005.

His work belongs to the public art collections of the Brauer Museum of Art, Illinois State Museum,Illinois State Museum. [http://www.illinoisstatemuseum.org/content/just-good-art-chuck-thurow-gift "Just Good Art: The Chuck Thurow Gift,"] Collections. Retrieved March 25, 2020. Indiana State Museum, Madden Museum of Art, Museum of Outdoor Arts, Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park (Governors State University),Thomas, Marilyn. [https://www.hfchronicle.com/2023/08/02/the-nate-monumental-sculpture-in-the-prairie/ "The Nate: Monumental sculpture in the prairie,"] Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle, August 2, 2023. Retrieved February 20, 2025. Racine Art Museum and Rockford Museum of Art, as well as many corporate and private collections.

{{Reflist}}

• [http://neilgoodmansculpture.com/index.html Neil Goodman Sculpture] official website
• [https://neilgoodmansculpture.com/video-and-media/ Neil Goodman] video and media
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDyQ1Xo1n2M&list=PLOqi-Bi7wqTUeQiDz8JTd63JsRMkidgRc&index=8 Neil Goodman – Night and Day], Lakeshore PBS Eye On The Arts
• [https://vimeo.com/290321417 Close Proximity: A Retrospective of Sculpture by Neil Goodman]
• [http://www.newartexaminer.org/assets/vol-33-no-2-electronic-version.pdf "Two Top Sculptors Recall their Time in Chi-Town,"] Conversation with Neil Goodman and Richard Rezac
• [https://www.zollaliebermangallery.com/neil-goodman.html Neil Goodman], Zolla/Lieberman Gallery

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