Robert Morris

Robert Morris began his career as a painter in the late 1950s but turned to sculpture in 1961 and emerged as a central figure in the burgeoning movement of Minimal art. Relying on reductive geometric forms and industrially fabricated objects, Morris’s work from the 1960s explores the perceptual and experiential effects of three-dimensionality. Untitled (3 Ls) consists of three large L-shaped stainless steel beams, each placed in one of three possible configurations: upright, flat on its side, or balanced to form an inverted “V.” These units have identical dimensions, but Morris allows them to be reconfigured for each location in which they are displayed and viewers can move around and between the three elements. The varied orientations and configurations of the components can have dramatically different effects on viewers. As Morris once explained, “Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience.” The sculpture prompts spectators to consider how they share space with the work and what it means to perceive objects, both optically and physically.

By the late 1960s Morris had begun to move away from Minimalism’s rigid, industrial forms and was experimenting with rope, rags, and felt to create sculptures whose shapes were largely determined by chance and gravity. In Felt Morris created a regular pattern of incisions in a large rectangular sheet of felt. When hung from the wall, however, this precise geometry dissolves as the pliable material settles into a tangle of strips.

Each time it is installed, the work’s configuration relies on the wall from which it hangs, the floor on which it rests, and the physical manipulations of the installers. Through such sculptures, and through writings such as his influential 1968 essay “Anti-Form,” Morris signaled the beginnings of Postminimal art.