Robert morris artist biography

American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer (1931 - 2018)

Robert Morris (February 9, 1931 – November 28, 2018) was an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He was regarded as having been one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd, but also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement, and installation art. Morris lived and worked in New York. In 2013 as part of the October Files, MIT Press published a volume on Morris, examining his work and influence, edited by Julia Bryan-Wilson.

Early life and education

Born in Kansas City, Missouri to Robert O. Morris and Lora "Pearl" Schrock Morris. Between 1948 and 1950, Morris studied engineering at the University of Kansas. He then studied art at both the University of Kansas and at Kansas City Art Institute as well as philosophy at Reed College[1]. He interrupted his studies in 1951-52 to serve with the United States Army Corps of Engineers in Arizona and Korea. He married dancer Simone Forti in 1955 and later divorced in 1962. After moving to New York City in 1959 to study sculpture, he received a master's degree in art history in 1963 from Hunter College.

Work

Initially a painter, Morris’ work of the 1950s was influenced by Abstract Expressionism and particularly Jackson Pollock. While living in C

Summary of Robert Morris

Robert Morris was one of the central figures of Minimalism. Through both his own sculptures of the 1960s and theoretical writings, Morris set forth a vision of art pared down to simple geometric shapes stripped of metaphorical associations, and focused on the artwork's interaction with the viewer. However, in contrast to fellow Minimalists Donald Judd and Carl Andre, Morris had a strikingly diverse range that extended well beyond the Minimalist ethos and was at the forefront of other contemporary American art movements as well, most notably, Process art and Land art. Through both his artwork and his critical writings, Morris explored new notions of chance, temporality, and ephemerality.

Accomplishments

• In the mid-1960s, Morris created some of the key exemplars of Minimalist sculpture: enormous, repeated geometric forms, such as cubes and rectangular beams devoid of figuration, surface texture, or expressive content. These works forced the viewer to consider the arrangement and scale of the forms themselves, and how perception shifted as one moved around them, which was a central preoccupation of Minimalism.
• Morris's 1966 essay "Notes on Sculpture" was among the first to articulate the experiential basis of Minimalist artwork. It called for the use of simple forms, such as polyhedrons, which could be grasped intuitively by the viewer. and also described Minimalist sculptures as dependent on the context and conditions in which they were perceived, essentially upending the notion of the artwork as independent in and of itself.
• In the late 1960s, Morris began introducing indeterminacy and temporality into the artistic process, referred to as Process art or Anti-Form. By cutting, dropping, or stacking everyday materials such as felt or rags, Morris emphasized the ephemeral nature of the artwork, which would ultimately change every time it was installed in a new space. This replaced what Morris posited as the fixed, static nature of Min

(AMERICAN, 1931-2018)

Untitled, 1968–69
aluminum I-beams
24 x 288 x 288 inches
Laumeier Sculpture Park Collection, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ronald K. Greenberg

Robert Morris' Untitled,1968–69, makes reference to society’s technological advances using a series of ten hefty aluminum I-beams. The piece employs the simple, primitive construction process of stacking, arranged in two layers of five evenly spaced beams placed at right angles to create a grid pattern. Its positive and negative shapes are uniformly constructed, expressing a unitary form. The pattern is rigid and static, with a sense of precision and control, exemplifying the basic and unadorned forms characteristic of the Minimalist principles. Morris believes that the single most important sculptural element is shape and feels that his artwork is referential to (rather than imitative of) manufactured objects. The mystery of method has been eliminated; its construction is blatant as its bold, architectural scale emphasizes a paradox of elements.

Sculpture Interaction Guideline: Look, But Do Not Touch

Multi-disciplinary artist, art theorist, and writer Robert Morris was born in Kansas City, Missouri on February 9, 1931. He studied engineering at the University of Kansas City from 1948 - '50, overlapping with art studies at the Kansas City Art Institute. He then moved west to California, where he enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, in 1951. This was short lived as he put his education on hold to serve in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1951 to 1952. Following his discharge he relocated to Portland, Oregon to study philospohy at Reed College from 1953-'55, and then returned to San Francisco where he immersed himself in improvisatory theatre, film and painting and had his first one-man exhibition of paintings at the Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, in 1957.

In the 1950s Morris was primarily a painter, influenced by the new wave of Abstract Expressionists, particularly Jackson Pollock. Collaborations with Warner Jepson and Morris' first wife, dancer Simone Forti, led to Morris' interest in the physicality of large-scale painting - especially with regard to Hans Namuth's films of Pollock at work on his canvases - and they collaborated on multi-disciplenary works, inspiring Morris to delve into new mediums. He moved to New York City in 1961 and continued his work in performance art, and turned his fine art lens on sculpture and conceptual works while studying art history at Hunter College (MFA, 1963). His early sculptures were mainly Neo-Dada, small-scale lead reliefs and mixed media works concerned with process, information and paradox, followed by completely abstract, geometric Mijnimal sculptures in painted plywood and later in fibreglass or metal. He published a series of articles on sculpture in Artforum from 1966. In 1967 he began to make soft hanging sculptures in felt and from 1968 to produce process works by the lateral spreading, scattering or stacking of different materials. Morris organise