Robert Morris

Biography

Robert Morris studies with the Université of Kansas, the Kansas City Art Institute and with the Reed College before becoming painter. In the Years 1950, its work shows the influence of the abstract Expressionnisme, in particular that of Jackson Pollock. In California, Morris becomes also familiar of the work of the type-setters Assembles It Young and John Cage. The idea that the artistic production is only the recording of a performance of the artist, resulting from the photographs of Hans Namuth showing Pollock with work, leads it to be interested in the Danse and the Chorégraphie.

It settles with New York in 1960 and presents a performance based on the exploration of body in a space where crumbles a square column. It develops the same idea in its first sculptures minimalists, Two Columns (1961) and L Beams (1965).

In New York, Morris starts to study the work of Marcel Duchamp, carrying out in echo of the parts like Box with the Sound off its Own Making ( Boîte with the sound of its own manufacture, 1961), Fountain ( Fontaine , 1963). In 1963, its sculptures minimalists are exposed to the Green Gallery of New York and are commented on by Donald Judd. In 1964, Morris conceives and carries out two famous performances 21.3 , coordinated with the reading, deciphered on the lips of the reader, of a test of Erwin Panofsky, and Site , with Carolee Schneeman. Morris is registered with the Hunter College of New York, carrying out his report of control on the work of Brancusi and publishes in 1966 in Artforum a series of noticed articles: Notes one Sculpture ( Notes on the sculpture ).

In 1967, Morris creates Steam ( Vapeur ), early example of Land Art. As of the end of the Years 1960, its work is presented in many American museums, but is made the object of criticism in particular of Clement Greenberg. It increases the scale of its work, filling of the whole galleries with series of units modular or felt and ground heaps. In 1971, it imagines an installation with the Tate Gallery London which fills the unit of the central gallery of sculptures of tilted plans and cubes.

Towards the end of the Years 1970, Morris evolves to the Figuration, surprising many its partisans. Its works with the dramatic accents and baroques are frequently inspired by the fear of the nuclear apocalypse.

In the Years 1990, it is interested again in work of its beginnings, supervising the rebuilding and the installation of lost parts. He lives and works in New York.

Work

“The work of Robert Morris is basically theatrical his theater is a theater of negation: negation of the concept avant-gardist of originality, negation of logic and rational, negation of the desire to assign uniform cultural significances with different phenomena, negation of a vision of the world which is wary of what is not-familiar or not-conventional. ”

Felt works open a reflection on the “antiforme”. For example, Wall Hanging ( Hanging , 1969 - 1970, Paris, National museum of Modern art), is composed of a piece of felt rectangular, split several parallel horizontal notches, and suspended by the higher corners: gravity deforms then the felt and determines the final shape of work.

The interventions in the landscape mark during the Années 1970, the will to exceed the narrow field of the sculpture.

References

Sources

Biography of Robert Morris of the Foundation Guggenheim

External bonds

“Morris: Labyrinth or maze? ”, the Magazine of Exporevue , 1999
Ghislain Calf-Viéville, “Robert Morris: Some notes on its '' Open center sculptures ''”, Without Title , February 1998

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