From a Fragment of
The Race Track,
1895-1910 by
Albert Pinkham Ryder
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racing forms
by p.c. smith
a gallery tip sheet
Robert Morris
at Leo Castelli
Jan. 11-Feb. 8, 1997
In four massive paintings, Robert Morris
struggles to reconcile his baroque
romanticism of the `80s with his Minimalist
procedures of the `60s. Each work is a
rectangular grid of one-foot-square panels,
measuring seven tall by 18 long; each panel
is painted separately, using encaustic to
create congealed liquid textures. The color
tends to glaring extremes of somber browns
and bleached pastels. Mounted on heavy
welded steel racks, the abstract panels
form into crude landscape images, most of
threatening storms, derived, their titles
indicate, from fragments of paintings by
Ryder, Inness, Church and Cezanne.
The procedure of painting separate panels
in grids, reminiscent of Jennifer Bartlett,
seems to have no systemic or additive point
here, except to allow Morris to build up
huge compositions without being over-
committed to any one section. Instead, the
insistent grid frames the paint in the sort
of crisp, machined architecture favored by
corporate buyers. Morris' overwrought
vision of apocalypse, which in the past
took the form of an all-consuming
firestorm, is subdued here to the
foreboding of an oncoming thunderstorm, but
his vision is still escapist. Rather than a
sudden storm, the destruction of Earth's
humanity, I fear, is an irritatingly slow
and banal process, needing keener
observations to be noticed.
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