GENERAL DESCRIPTION
George L.K. Morris (1905-1975) was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) group, and an influential art critic for the Partisan Review. He wrote frequently of abstraction as the next logical development in the visual arts and believed that all art throughout history was abstract, but American art had a particularly strong tradition of abstract values reaching back to the colonial period. Morris was an important interwar artist whose contributions to Americanism Modernism—like those of his wife, Suzy Frelinghuysen (1911-1988)—have often been overshadowed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism.
Educated at Groton and Yale, Morris committed to an artistic career in 1925 after travel to Europe. After his graduation in 1928, he studied at the Art Students League with the Ashcan School painter John Sloan and then in France with Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozefant from 1929-30 at the Academie Moderne in Paris. As he later described a transformative moment: “One day our professeur [Léger] addressed his students collectively….Everyone was on the wrong track. We were rendering our figures as though they were resting on the ground. Spread them all over the canvas, spot them across the picture plane….As far as I was concerned, this did it. I suddenly began to understand—through a barrage of visual prejudices—the modern conception of the all over pattern. I longed to rush out and look again at Cubist paintings that had been more or less senseless to me heretofore.” [1]
The artist was also inspired by the influence of his distant cousin Albert Eugene Gallatin, an important American Modernist whose Gallery of Living Art in New York provided some of the first sustained exposure to abstraction in this country since the Armory Show of 1913. (Morris exhibited there in 1935.) Morris’s mature style wedded the European language of synthetic cubism with an American iconography derived from history, landscape, and popular culture.
Morris and art critic Clement Greenberg exchanged conflicting views about the importance of Cubism in Partisan Review 1948. Greenberg believed the style had played itself out, preferring instead to advocate the artists who would come to the fore in the movement eventually known as Abstract Expressionism. Morris vigorously disagreed.
[1] Debra Bricker Balken and Robert S. Lubar, The Park Avenue Cubists: Gallatin, Morris, Frelinghuysen and Shaw, exh. cat. (New York: Grey Art Gallery, 2002), 54.
Adapted from
- William Keyse Rudolph, DMA Acquisition proposal (2008.37), September 2008
- DMA label copy (1972.37), n.d.
NOTES
This note was routed and revised and Sue's changes were transfered to this note. I am tagging complete 2/23/2017 and have moved the GDoc to Queta's folders for review.
b. 1905 NYC
d. 1975, Stockbridge, MA; auto-accident
trained- NYC, attended Groton School
trained- (1924-1928) New Haven, Yale University
trained- NYC (1929) Art Students League, KH Miller and John Sloan
trained- Paris (1930?) Amedee Ozenfant and Fernand Leger, befriended Hans Arp
worked- NYC (1930s-1975?) Divided his time between Massachusetts and NYC; worked as a draftsman for a naval architect's firm during WWII (location unknown), editor of Miscellany (1929-31), Partisan Review (1937-43), and Plastique (1937·39), teacher at the Art Students League (1944-1945)
worked- Annapolis, MD (1961-62)- artist-in-residence at St. John's College
worked- Lenox, Massachusetts (1930-1975?)- Divided his time between Massachusetts and NYC; Frelinghuysen Morris House and Studio is now a museum, house was constructed 1930-1941.
1936- co-founder of American Abstract Artists
Editor of "The World of Abstract Art"
married to Suzy Frelinghuysen (married in 1935) (American painter, sculptor, and collagist, 1912-1988)
No location in TMS identified for archiving previously published biographical passages:
- Biography from Steven Nash, Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern: An Exhibition of Paintings from Private Collections in Dallas, page 144.
- Born in 1905 and one of the founding members of the American Abstract Artists, Morris made a special contribution to the development of abstraction in America. After graduating from Yale in 1928 he studied first at the Art Students League and then went to Paris where he worked with Leger and Ozenfant and met Arp, Helion, and Mondrian, artists whose influence on him was long-lasting. His early work reflected an absorption of Cubist principles in a representational mode but gradually the realistic elements receded, leaving a semi-geometric, semi-organic abstraction that served in this country as an important example of modernity. Also important was his advocacy of abstract art from his position as editor of Miscellany (1929-31), Partisan Review (1937-43), and Plastique (1937·39). His first one-man exhibition at the Valentine Gallery in 1933 was followed by numerous shows at The Downtown Gallery. He taught at the Art Students League in 1944-45 and was artist-in-residence at St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1961-62. Morris lived and continued to work in New York and Massachusetts until his death in 1975.
- Geometric Abstraction 1972 catalogue, unpaginated, author- Dallas Museum of Fine Arts
- While studying with Leger in Paris 1930 met Arp, Mondrian, Helion and others. First one-man exhibition, Valentine Gallery, New York, 1933; group exhibition "Five Contemporary American Concretionists: Biederman, Calder, Ferren, Morris, Shaw," presented by Gallatin's Museum of Living Art at Paul Reinhardt Galleries, New York, 1936. Founding member of American Abstract Artists, New York, 1936; President, 1948-50. Married to Susie Frelinghuysen, another early A.A.A. member. Editorial associate for review PLASTIQUE (Paris-New York), Sophie Taeuber-Arp, editor, 1937-39. Retrospectives at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965, and Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, 1971.
Fun Fact sources:
- "What Abstraction Means To Me" quote- (Reproduced in Hirschl & Adler Galleries, George L.K. Morris: Abstract Art of the 1930s (May 4-31, 1974), unpaginated.)
- Plastique- (Plastique no. 1, reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1969; Virginia Mecklenburg, The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930-1945, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 136.)
ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio~Check out the architecture and art collection of Morris's home in Lenox, Massachusetts.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
12712425: UMO -Geometric Abstraction
12712713: UMO -Dallas Collects American Paintings (Morris' biography appears on page 144)
FUN FACTS
- George Lovett Kingsland Morris was a descendant of General Lewis Morris, who signed the Declaration of Independence.
- In his statements on "What Abstract Art Means to Me," at the Museum of Modern At in 1951, Morris explained his stylistic approach as, "It has been my contention from the start that abstract art is no eccentric by-path, that it is limited or restricted only by the imaginative scope of its exponents; that there are countless and divergent ways through which the various problems can be hacked at, capable of infinite expressive possibilities."
- In a 1937 article in the journal Plastique, "On the Abstract Tradition," Morris expressed his belief that abstract qualities were apparent even in traditional, representational artworks, when "the veil of subject-matter had been pierced and discarded...the works of all periods began to speak through a universal abstract tongue."
- Contemporary critics referred to Morris as a "Park Avenue Cubist," because of his wealthy upbringing. The Grey Art Gallery at New York University organized a 2003 exhibition featuring Morris and others known by this moniker, The Park Avenue Cubists: Gallatin, Morris, Frelinghuysen, and Shaw.
- An early success in Morris' career came with his participation in A.E. Gallatin's group exhibition "Five Contemporary American Concretionists: Biederman, Calder, Ferren, Morris, Shaw," presented by Gallatin's Museum of Living Art at Paul Reinhardt Galleries, New York, 1936. Two additional works of art in the DMA collection, Charles Biederman's Work no. 3, 1939 (2007.23) and Alexandre Calder's Score for Ballet 0-100 (1951.112.8), represent the early careers of artists included in this important 1936 exhibition of abstract art.
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General Description
George L.K. Morris (1905-1975) was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) group, and an influential art critic for the Partisan Review. He wrote frequently of abstraction as the next logical development in the visual arts and believed that all art throughout history was abstract, but American art had a particularly strong tradition of abstract values reaching back to the colonial period. Morris was an important interwar artist whose contributions to Americanism Modernism—like those of his wife, Suzy Frelinghuysen (1911-1988)—have often been overshadowed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism.
Educated at Groton and Yale, Morris committed to an artistic career in 1925 after travel to Europe. After his graduation in 1928, he studied at the Art Students League with the Ashcan School painter John Sloan and then in France with Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozefant from 1929-30 at the Academie Moderne in Paris. As he later described a transformative moment: “One day our professeur [Léger] addressed his students collectively….Everyone was on the wrong track. We were rendering our figures as though they were resting on the ground. Spread them all over the canvas, spot them across the picture plane….As far as I was concerned, this did it. I suddenly began to understand—through a barrage of visual prejudices—the modern conception of the all over pattern. I longed to rush out and look again at Cubist paintings that had been more or less senseless to me heretofore.” [1]
The artist was also inspired by the influence of his distant cousin Albert Eugene Gallatin, an important American Modernist whose Gallery of Living Art in New York provided some of the first sustained exposure to abstraction in this country since the Armory Show of 1913. (Morris exhibited there in 1935.) Morris’s mature style wedded the European language of synthetic cubism with an American iconography derived from history, landscape, and popular culture.
Morris and art critic Clement Greenberg exchanged conflicting views about the importance of Cubism in Partisan Review 1948. Greenberg believed the style had played itself out, preferring instead to advocate the artists who would come to the fore in the movement eventually known as Abstract Expressionism. Morris vigorously disagreed.
[1] Debra Bricker Balken and Robert S. Lubar, The Park Avenue Cubists: Gallatin, Morris, Frelinghuysen and Shaw, exh. cat. (New York: Grey Art Gallery, 2002), 54.
Adapted from
- William Keyse Rudolph, DMA Acquisition proposal (2008.37), September 2008
- DMA label copy (1972.37), n.d.
Fun Facts
- George Lovett Kingsland Morris was a descendant of General Lewis Morris, who signed the Declaration of Independence.
- In his statements on "What Abstract Art Means to Me," at the Museum of Modern At in 1951, Morris explained his stylistic approach as, "It has been my contention from the start that abstract art is no eccentric by-path, that it is limited or restricted only by the imaginative scope of its exponents; that there are countless and divergent ways through which the various problems can be hacked at, capable of infinite expressive possibilities."
- In a 1937 article in the journal Plastique, "On the Abstract Tradition," Morris expressed his belief that abstract qualities were apparent even in traditional, representational artworks, when "the veil of subject-matter had been pierced and discarded...the works of all periods began to speak through a universal abstract tongue."
- Contemporary critics referred to Morris as a "Park Avenue Cubist," because of his wealthy upbringing. The Grey Art Gallery at New York University organized a 2003 exhibition featuring Morris and others known by this moniker, The Park Avenue Cubists: Gallatin, Morris, Frelinghuysen, and Shaw.
- An early success in Morris' career came with his participation in A.E. Gallatin's group exhibition "Five Contemporary American Concretionists: Biederman, Calder, Ferren, Morris, Shaw," presented by Gallatin's Museum of Living Art at Paul Reinhardt Galleries, New York, 1936. Two additional works of art in the DMA collection, Charles Biederman's Work no. 3, 1939 (2007.23) and Alexandre Calder's Score for Ballet 0-100 (1951.112.8), represent the early careers of artists included in this important 1936 exhibition of abstract art.
Archival Resources
12712425: UMO -Geometric Abstraction
12712713: UMO -Dallas Collects American Paintings (Morris' biography appears on page 144)
Web Resources
Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio~Check out the architecture and art collection of Morris's home in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Notes
This note was routed and revised and Sue's changes were transfered to this note. I am tagging complete 2/23/2017 and have moved the GDoc to Queta's folders for review.
b. 1905 NYC
d. 1975, Stockbridge, MA; auto-accident
trained- NYC, attended Groton School
trained- (1924-1928) New Haven, Yale University
trained- NYC (1929) Art Students League, KH Miller and John Sloan
trained- Paris (1930?) Amedee Ozenfant and Fernand Leger, befriended Hans Arp
worked- NYC (1930s-1975?) Divided his time between Massachusetts and NYC; worked as a draftsman for a naval architect's firm during WWII (location unknown), editor of Miscellany (1929-31), Partisan Review (1937-43), and Plastique (1937·39), teacher at the Art Students League (1944-1945)
worked- Annapolis, MD (1961-62)- artist-in-residence at St. John's College
worked- Lenox, Massachusetts (1930-1975?)- Divided his time between Massachusetts and NYC; Frelinghuysen Morris House and Studio is now a museum, house was constructed 1930-1941.
1936- co-founder of American Abstract Artists
Editor of "The World of Abstract Art"
married to Suzy Frelinghuysen (married in 1935) (American painter, sculptor, and collagist, 1912-1988)
No location in TMS identified for archiving previously published biographical passages:
- Biography from Steven Nash, Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern: An Exhibition of Paintings from Private Collections in Dallas, page 144.
- Born in 1905 and one of the founding members of the American Abstract Artists, Morris made a special contribution to the development of abstraction in America. After graduating from Yale in 1928 he studied first at the Art Students League and then went to Paris where he worked with Leger and Ozenfant and met Arp, Helion, and Mondrian, artists whose influence on him was long-lasting. His early work reflected an absorption of Cubist principles in a representational mode but gradually the realistic elements receded, leaving a semi-geometric, semi-organic abstraction that served in this country as an important example of modernity. Also important was his advocacy of abstract art from his position as editor of Miscellany (1929-31), Partisan Review (1937-43), and Plastique (1937·39). His first one-man exhibition at the Valentine Gallery in 1933 was followed by numerous shows at The Downtown Gallery. He taught at the Art Students League in 1944-45 and was artist-in-residence at St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1961-62. Morris lived and continued to work in New York and Massachusetts until his death in 1975.
- Geometric Abstraction 1972 catalogue, unpaginated, author- Dallas Museum of Fine Arts
- While studying with Leger in Paris 1930 met Arp, Mondrian, Helion and others. First one-man exhibition, Valentine Gallery, New York, 1933; group exhibition "Five Contemporary American Concretionists: Biederman, Calder, Ferren, Morris, Shaw," presented by Gallatin's Museum of Living Art at Paul Reinhardt Galleries, New York, 1936. Founding member of American Abstract Artists, New York, 1936; President, 1948-50. Married to Susie Frelinghuysen, another early A.A.A. member. Editorial associate for review PLASTIQUE (Paris-New York), Sophie Taeuber-Arp, editor, 1937-39. Retrospectives at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965, and Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, 1971.
Fun Fact sources:
- "What Abstraction Means To Me" quote- (Reproduced in Hirschl & Adler Galleries, George L.K. Morris: Abstract Art of the 1930s (May 4-31, 1974), unpaginated.)
- Plastique- (Plastique no. 1, reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1969; Virginia Mecklenburg, The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930-1945, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 136.)
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