Robert Morris, «The Box with the Sound of its Own Making»
© Robert Morris
Robert Morris (1931) is an American artist and art theorist. Morris articulated his ideas of Minimalism in “Notes in Sculpture” an essay published in Art Forum in 1966. Morris's style and media have changed many times during his career, his works imply that art can be made of anything, interested in the relationship between viewer and object. With pre war avant gardists Kasimir Malevich and Marcel Duchamp as his guideposts (Rose, 132). He made contributions to conceptualism, minimalism, performance art, land-art, process art, installation art. His later work is described as neo-Gothic, maximalist and symbolist (web, medienkunstnetz)
In part III, Notes and Nonsequiturs, Morris argues painting as such has become antique. “Specifically, what is antique about it is the divisiveness of experience which marks on a flat surface elicit”. Antique not because of its inescapable illusionism but its ability to imply which causes subjectivity and divisiveness. The mode of painting is in default; most paintings have not been shaped to emphasize actuality or literalness. For a long time the duality of thing and allusion sustained itself, but it has worn thin and its ability to satisfy on a flat surface has come to exhaustion (Morris, 833).
In this essay Morris describes the taking of reductive aspects of late modernism to react against abstract expressionism by stressing the importance of ‘the new three dimensional’ work’s ability to encompass his ideal of the work as a ‘whole’ (Gestalt effect) and by doing so forming a bridge to Post Modern art practices.
I was curious to find out what motivated Morris to reject the two dimensional surface for his ideals. In his view the new work differs not through the use of new materials, and not in the non compositional structuring of the work. The difference lies in the kind of ordering of the work, that lies not in previous art orders, but in an order based in the culture. The cultural infrastructure of forming itself, which comes together and becomes palpable in the technology of industrial production (Morris, 833).
To me it sounds almost like pop-art but Morris claims it connects to a different level of the culture. This new three dimensional art refers to manufactured objects, even the set parameters are the same as common elements in industrial production: “Symmetry, lack of traces of process, abstractness, non-hierarchic distribution of parts, non anthromorphic orientations, general wholeness” (Morris, 835).
These industrial processes lead to a somewhat reductive style with simple lines and forms. Resulting into the removal of the traces of the maker, the work is self referential and therefore referring to the culture instead of the artist (relinquishing authorship).
Morris continues these clear decisions form lots of positives i.e. the work is literal, has openness and is accessible. Most probably boring for those who seek exclusiveness, but this is art for everyone and not only for the happy few who are seeking specialness, “the experience of which reassures their superior perception” (Morris, 835).
Rose writes that in the late 1950s in the US, there was an emergence of a new generation called “the silent generation”. Artist like Morris, Donald Judd, Sol le Witt and Carl Andre refused to express what they were thinking. Not only because they found gesture and expression of emotional state was no longer viable, but also because they were unimpressed with the political repression at the time. Having to serve the Korean War they chose not to express any ideology and they became active members of the anti-war resistance during the Vietnam war (Rose, 59). Morris focuses in his art, on the decline of industrial society in time of late capitalism, examining the dynamics of the industrial social order, re-creating instability to provoke the viewers’ sense of unpredictability and hostility. (Berger, 15)
I wonder if Michael Fried was simply provoked by Morris’s ‘new three dimensional work’ when he referred to it as being “a new genre of theater” (Fried, 153)? Maurice Berger also refers to theatre when writing about Morris and Minimalism: "Robert Morris's art is fundamentally theatrical. Yet, as 21.3 demonstrates, his theater is one of negation: negation of the avant-gardist concept of originality, negation of logic and reason, negation of the desire to assign uniform cultural meanings to diverse phenomena; negation of a worldview that distrusts the unfamiliar and the unconventional" (Berger, 3).
I think the difference with Fried’s observation is that Berger is hereby referring to Morris’s oeuvre, and to a performance work (21.3) of him in particular, justifiably illustrating Morris’s independency, unconventionality, and his sensitivity to greater social issues (Berger, 5). Morris’s writings and work have stimulated interest in the ‘new art’ because of similarities in surface and reductive style but on a deeper philosophical level he would not fit in with the Minimalist. Berger’s comments about theatricality make much more sense to me then Fried’s. Lastly I would like to state that the new three dimensional work is not only to be defined as art, but is even more relevant as art for me because of it’s innovative reflection of the culture at the time.
Bibliography
Berger, Maurice. Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s” Introduction: Robert Morris outside art history, New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Print
Fried, Michael. “Art and Objecthood” Art and Objecthood(1967). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. 148-179. Print.
Rose, Barbara. “Monochromes From Malevich to the Present”. University of California Press, 2006. Print.
www.medienkunstnetz.de/.../biography/
I like how you have articulated Morri's work as the cultural reference at the time. I also think that Morris work is self referential that it referes to the culture instead of the artist.
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