The High Museum of Art Presents American Master Louis Morris

Written by Hugh Shires Wednesday, 10 November 2010 15:47

ATLANTA, GA − With an exceptional output of mature work that spanned little more than ten years, Morris Louis played an essential role in shaping post-war American art. Organized by the High Museum of Art, “Morris Louis Now: An American Master Revisited” is the first consideration of Louis’s work in the United States since 1986 and offers a critical re-examination of this influential painter’s legacy.  On view at the High from November 4, 2006, through January 21, 2007.

“Through our permanent collections and special exhibition programming, the High seeks to expose our visitors to a range of different movements, time periods and methods of artistic expression,” said Michael E. Shapiro, the Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director of the High Museum of Art.  “From the modern, stained canvases created by Morris Louis to the art of 18^th-century kings exhibited in ‘Louvre Atlanta,’ a visit to the High this fall offers a truly diverse and unique experience.”

Featuring approximately 30 canvases produced from 1951 through 1962, “Morris Louis Now” examines the work that defined Louis’ career and that contributed to a critical turning point in American art.  Louis worked in an innovative manner by “staining” the canvas with thinned acrylic pigments, using intense, rich washes of color to create unified compositions.  Although he worked in isolation from other artists, Louis’ work is often grouped together with that of Color Field painters from the early 1960s, who were part of a trend that developed alongside Abstract Expressionism.

“There has been a recent increase in critical discussion surrounding the art of the 1950s and 1960s, especially the work of Color Field painters, but no substantive research focused on Louis specifically,” said Jeffrey Grove, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum.  “This exhibition gives new life to the work of Morris Louis and reintroduces our visitors to a unique period in modern American art.”

The exhibition will include examples from three significant bodies of the artist’s work. The “Veils” (1954, 1958–59) are noted for their complex washes of color, which emerge principally as bands at the paintings’ edges and are often compared to natural phenomena such as light, air and water.  The “Unfurleds” (1960–61) have streams of intense, opaque pigment that flow inward from the sides over a white background.  The “Stripes” (1961–62) series features sequential strips of pure color that create a rainbow effect.

Morris Louis
Morris Louis Bernstein was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1912.  He studied at the Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts from 1928–1933 and left shortly before completing the program.  Although he lived in New York City from 1936 to 1940, Louis was never fully a part of the New York art scene.  He dropped his last name around this time.  From 1940 on, he worked alone in Maryland and Washington, D.C. American artist Kenneth Noland was one of his few close friends among other artists.

During a trip to New York City with Noland and art critic Clement Greenberg in the spring of 1953, Louis saw the work of Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock and was introduced to Helen Frankenthaler, whose painting “Mountains and Sea” (1952) had a profound effect on him.  In Louis’ words, Frankenthaler created “a bridge between Pollock and what was possible.”  After this experience, Louis began his first series of “Veil” paintings in 1954.

Exhibition Catalogue
The accompanying 126-page catalogue includes 28 plates and 45 color figures.  It also features new scholarship on Louis’ work that incorporates aspects of the critical debate on Color Field painting as well as an assessment of Louis’ influence on contemporary practice and subsequent generations of painters.

High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art, founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States.  With over 11,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High Museum of Art has an extensive anthology of 19^th- and 20^th-century American art; significant holdings of European paintings and decorative art; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography and African art.  The High is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the only major museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art...

Visit www.High.org