Born: |
- 1931, Kansas City, Missouri.
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Schooling: |
- 1948-50 -- University of Kansas City (Engineering) and Kansas City Art Institute.
- 1951 -- California School of Fine Arts (San Francisco).
- 1953-55 -- US Army Engineers (Reed College, Oregon).
- 1962-63 -- Hunter College, New York (Masters - Art History).
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History: |
- 1956-61 -- San Francisco - Improve, film, painting (work displayed at Dilexi Gallery).
- 1963-4 -- Shows several large works constructed out of plywood. He is categorized in "Pop & Mixed Media" and is considered a Minimalist.
- -- Shows works a variety of New York Galleries.
- 1967 -- became involved in politics and economic structure of art taking on the positions of Co-Chairman of the Art Strike Committee and an organizer of the Peripatetic Artists Guild.
- 1967-? -- Many large shows across the globe.
- 1970 -- Closed a large show as a protest against the American invasion of Cambodia.
- -- Designed his own mausoleum: a sealed aluminum tube three miles long housing an iron coffin suspended from pulley that is moved along the tube every three months.
- 1973 -- Started creating earthworks as pieces of art.
- 1977 -- Created best known work, Observatory, in Netherlands.
- 1979 -- No more available information.
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Philosophy: |
- Robert Morris, for the most part, is considered a minimalist. Especially in his earliest works, form were very abstract. He was mainly concerned with scale and the relationship between objects the are in the space and that create the space. Some of his grander works concentrate on exploring the combinations of relationships between forms and what experience they create. His sculptural works started with using gray cardboard. He then got into using felt, enjoy its texture and free flowing forms. He of coursed experimented with other media, but these are his two primary styles. But in the mid to late 70's, Morris started creating massive works of earth forms. These works include the Grand Rapids Project (Grand Rapids, MI 1974), Untitled (King County, WA 1979), and Observatory (Netherlands 1977). In a speech that he gave in 1979, he answers the question, "What is public art". He claims that art that sits out in front of a building or is created by certain constraints on a site is not "public art". Public art is, for example, a work three miles long that is created in desert with no site constrains. The artist is free of any site specific details. After this lecture, nothing of prominence has been published and little is know of this life today.
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Related Sources: |
- Earthwork and Beyond. Neardsley, 1984. - Display of Morris' earthwork projects.
- Earthworks: Land Reclamation as Sculpture. King County Arts Commission, 1979. - Contains the lecture on public art (1979) and displays his project for King County, Washington.
- Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960's. Berger, 1989. - Contains his works from the 60's and early 70's including some of his philosophies.
- Land Art. - Display of Morris' earthwork projects.
- Robert Morris. Compton & Sylvester, 1971 - Outlines his gallery work and includes a complete bio and an interview given in 1967.
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