Neil Goodman

[10][34] 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;[6][9][35] he cites Giacometti and Brâncuși as important touchstones.

[33][3][36] 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.

[36][1][42][6] 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.

"[29] 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.

"[37] 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.

[29][36][37][15] Critics highlight the series' complex interrelationships and compositional variety, which ranges from near-screens of hieroglyphic-like screens (Triptych, 1988)[37] to delicate, shadow-box-like balances of fluid, multi-dimensional space (Cyclades, 1986; Cage #4, 1988).

[36][1][42][7] 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.

[15][46] 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.

[3][49][39][17] 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.

[47][50] 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).

[53][54][48][33] 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).