The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 69, No. 19, Ed. 1 Friday, January 29, 1982 Page: 8 of 20
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Art
CAM shows off infiniteness of Morris' mirrored world
Robert Morris: Selected Works
1970-1980
Contemporary Arts Museum,
Upper Gallery
Through February 14
Contemporary art, or as it is
more infamously known, Modern
Art, is often not aesthetically
pleasing to most of us. It is
"statement art", or what the artist
feels about the world portrayed in
the medium which he finds the best
to express his ideas. Robert
Morris: Selected Works 1970-1980
is rather different than this. The
pieces in this collection are
concerned with saying something,
but are also enjoyable on a purely
aesthetic basis. They have great
beauty of balance and space, and
these artsy qualities are what
caught my attention long enough
to see the message.
The works shown fall into four
basic kinds. There are drawings,
mirror works, carpet pieces, and
then one work, described by the
artist as a cenotaph, which
combines all of these elements and
yet seems to be made of something
entirely different. The drawings
are pen, pencil, and ink on paper
and are mostly plans and
blueprints for three-dimensional
projects like Project for a War
Memorial or Designs for a
Labrynth. Some of his pencil
drawings (most notably a series
entitled Blind Time) are on the
other hand rather random,
simplistic impressions of the
process of creating. In each of
these sketches, Morris has penciled
in the corner what he was thinking
as he drew, and what the creative
process seemed to him as he
experienced it. These drawings
are much more interesting for the
descriptions than for the subject of
the sketch itself.
One drawing, entilted Copper
Table and Chair for Sydney Lewis
is a perfect transition between his
drawings and his mirror works,
not in terms or chronology but in
terms of conception. In Copper
Table and Chair for Sydney Lewis,
)
A meter! and wood lattice grows into the universe in reflections.
□
This ripple mirror projects both normal and splintered images.
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two sketches on the wall—one
precise, one impressionistic—
mirror a copper table and chair
which sit in front of them. This
mirroring of slightly different per-
spectives of a single object
becomes a blatant theme in his
huge mirror works which
dominate the exhibit. One
piece ' includes three concave
mirrors and a huge diamond built
of plywood on the floor. The
mirrors are angled so that the
wood is reflected into infinity.
However, the reflection of the
wood is not the reflection of a
diamond shape, but looks like a
series of passageways in a maze.
Another piece combines a
latticework of tin and metal before
another concave mirrorto produce
the effect of an endless distorted
web. The CAM has done an
excellent job of arranging these
pieces so that the mirrors of one
work capture fragments of each
neighboring work, increasing the
intended chaos and expansion of
Morris' art.
The most effective piece of
mirror art is a series of six iron
picture frames and three concave
mirrors. They are positioned so
that, if you look straight into a
miiror, you see infinite reflections
of frames. But, if you stand at the
corner of a mirror, in the center of
the closest frame, you can see
reflections of other people in the
other mirrors, although their
reflections become reversed ,or
turned into profile.
There are also several of his
carpet genre pieces. These consist
of pieces of grey, pink, black, and
red carpet cut and draped into odd
shapes, some of which, if one tries
very hard, can be made to look like
birds starting into flight. Morris
appears to be trying to capture the
same sense of expansion with these
sculptures as he is with the mirror
pieces, but he falls far short. The
material gives no sense of growth
it is heavy, industrial carpet in
heavy, dirty shades. These works
are certainly weighty, but only
that.
The last piece I want to talk
about is certainly the most
"statemented" work in the show. It
on the stone. The three graves, or
rather cenotaphs (a cenotaph is a
memorial to someone who is dead
that does not actually contain the
body), is titled: Roller Disco:
Cenotaph for a Public Figure, A
Tomb-Garden Outside the City, A
Cenotaph for Cancer. The
epitaphs are commentaries on
modern society. In the Tomb-
Garden, the artist suggests that
graveyards could be made into
productive parts of our society if
they could be combined with
vegetable gardens—a rather grim
Infinite reflections through empty frames.
takes up one whole wall in the
gallery. The wall is white with three
blaek crosses painted against the
white. In front of each of the
crosses is an onyx gravestone, with
a plastic skull balanced on top,
with writing silkscreened in black
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mockery of a victory garden—with
the gravestones supplying both
name and plant: "Jones, carrots".
The Cenotaph for Cancer reads in
part: "That pond with the mutant
swans was given by an asbestos
mining company...Nothing is
allowed to disturb the tranquility."
Robert Morris: Selected Works
is worth seeing. While some of the
pieces are odd and unwieldly,
Morris' vision of expansive space
which grows by infinite repetition
is mirrored in each successive work
into a statement made not at the
expense of beauty and line, but
through them.
— Deborah L. Knaff
Amity
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The Rice Thresher, January 29, 1982, page 8
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Grob, Jay. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 69, No. 19, Ed. 1 Friday, January 29, 1982, newspaper, January 29, 1982; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245491/m1/8/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.