Robert Morris (artist)
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[1] along with Donald Judd, but also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement, and installation art.[2] 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.[3]
Robert Morris
February 9, 1931
November 28, 2018 (aged 87)
Simone Forti (1935-1962)
Priscilla Johnson
Lucile Michels
Early life and education[edit]
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.[4] 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[5] in Arizona and Korea.[4] He married dancer Simone Forti in 1955[2] 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.[4]
Death[edit]
Morris died on November 28, 2018, in Kingston, New York, from pneumonia at the age of 87.[13] He had married Lucile Michels in 1984. He is survived by his wife Lucile and a daughter Laura Morris.[14]
Exhibitions[edit]
Morris' first exhibition of paintings was held in 1958 at the Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco.[4] Numerous museums have hosted solo exhibitions of his work, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1970),[18] the Art Institute of Chicago (1980), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Newport Harbor Art Museum (1986),[4] and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1990). In 1994, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, organized Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem,[19] a major retrospective of the artist’s work, which traveled to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.[6]
Art market[edit]
As a conceptual artist, Morris at times contractually removed work from circulation. When a collector, the architect Philip Johnson, did not pay Morris for a work he had ostensibly purchased, the artist drew up a certificate of deauthorization that officially withdrew all aesthetic content from his piece, making it nonexistent as art.[21]