Taking the train with Robert Morris

Artist Robert Morris spoke last night at the New School as part of the Sculpture Center's "Subjective Histories of Scultpure" series.

I have a soft spot for Morris' sculptures.

In 1991, I saw a small collection of his work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It was like a miniature retrospective of his work. I was just in high school, and growing up in a Richmond suburb, I hadn't been exposed to minimalism or any of the more radical artistic developments from the last 50 years.

Entering the gallery, I saw one of Morris' felt sculptures. I looked at the tag on the wall. It said the artist's name was "Robert Morris."

It was a big, thick piece of felt, slashed horizontally and attached to the walls at the corners, so the middle formed a slow arc. Interesting. I didn't know if I liked it or not. Was it really art? Did it mean anything?

I kind of liked the thick, gray texture of this heavy material. I liked the way gravity worked to pull it down, and the elegant lines it made. But still -- wasn't it just a bunch of felt, cut and nailed to a wall? I wanted proof that there was purpose here.

I moved on in the gallery -- and at this point I was unaware that I was in the middle of just one artist's works.

I looked a a very large work in bronze. In the middle, it was colorful but apocalyptic. On the edges, skeletons and other dark forms emerged from the flatness. I didn't know what to think of this work, either, although this time it was a formal problem: the dark imagery seemed too controlled. It seemed kind of cheesy. I looked at the artist card beside the work and it said "Robert Morris." I didn't understand how these two works could be from the same person.

(These images aren't of the exact works I saw, but close enough)

(Image from Angel Flores Jr.)

(Felt scultpure images from Turi McKinley)

The thing that twisted my young mind with the Robert Morris retrospective is that one person could create this cool, seemingly impersonal work that seemed so mysterious, and also this extravagant and explicit figurative piece. It was as if McDonalds made automobiles. That's how crazy this was at first.

I took another look at the felt sculpture. I thought to myself, "Wow. The guy who put all that work into molding skeletons for that crazy nuclear holocaust 3-D painting also took his hands and made this smooth, suggestive sculpture that's just one piece of felt. What's the connection?"

On a simple level, it allowed me to like the felt sculpture. After all, this guy could really do traditional art if he wanted to. But sometimes he chose not to. It was interesting. I started thinking about the connections between different work, and how an artist can develop. How different forms might be good for some things and not others.

I knew what I liked about the felt sculpture. And I tried to justify it at first, in very stupid ways. Like maybe the felt symbolizes something? No. That would be ridiculous. Even then I felt it was ridiculous to have explanations for artwork go very far away from the materials and work itself.

So later I went to the library. I looked up Robert Morris, and from there learned about minimalism. It got high-falutin very fast. But in my introduction I realized that I was free to like it for what I liked it for. An artist had taken materials and realized their possibilities.

My affection for Morris remains. I like his independence. I realize now how rare it is for artist to alter their signature styles. It takes guts and a real interest in creating things, regardless of how they come out and whether the results will remain in signature. After all -- Robert Morris can only be Robert Morris.

Which returns me to last night's lecture.

He was born in 1931. He is not a young man, but certainly does not seem as old as he is. He still has a great spirit, although is midwestern to the core. All the stories he told in a flat affect, in a husky voice that never went up or down. He would hit the punchline of a story and tell it in the same way he told the beginning and middle.

Morris spent the evening talking about trains, mostly telling stories about his time as a teenager in Kansas City, and as a young man who bluffed his way into becoming a train switcher.

He began by evoking the longings he felt in his childhood home, hearing the trains whistle as they came and went. Laying pennies on train tracks with his sister and coming up with a flattened bit of copper.

He told stories about accompanying a horse to Los Angeles as a 15-year-old. Working in an office in the switching yards and having to make up what was in certain cargo trains. Almost getting killed working the night shift because he refused to check the express train schedule.

When he thinks about those days, he says, it's nostalgia mixed with a chill. Railroad days were 'blind time,' he says (also the name of a series of drawings he did while blindfolded). His memories are fading and almost dream-like, says Morris, but one image haunts him.

It's a blurred silhouete. A shadow across the body that 'presses against fragile flesh.'

Listening to his stories of 100-yard trains, working by lantern at night, trains crashing and opening like tin cans, you can see this physicality echoed in his work. It's dark and brooding and solitary stuff.

When someone from the audience asked about a Tocqueville quote about the artist, Morris replied 'It used to be said art is long, life is short. Now it's different. Life is long, art is short.'

Others asked questions, but Morris preferred to answer by pulling quotes out of a hat. They were from W.G Sebald and David Hume.

Finally, someone asked what the Goethe quote was in one of Morris' essays. He smiled ever so slightly and said "I could have misquoted."

With that he said good night.