ArtFebruary 2007 Morris Louis reconsidered by Karen Wilkin On "Morris Louis Now: An American Master Revisited" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. In a mature career of eight feverishly productive years, Morris Louis made an astonishing number of the most ravishing, mysterious, unyieldingly abstract paintings of the twentieth century. Between 1954 and his death, aged fifty, in 1962, Louis produced about six hundred large paintings composing the series known as Veils, Unfurleds, and Stripes, among others. These works are so authoritatively present that they compel our attention, and so disembodied that they appear to be pure essence. The confrontational Veils with their implacable “curtains” of layered hues, the tense Unfurleds with their wide-spaced cascades of clear chroma and empty centers, and the economical Stripes with their disciplined ranks of exuberant color, all seem based on a desire to reduce painting to its essentials without sacrificing its ability to stir us. Louis’s pictures test both the a ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 25 February 2007, on page 45 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/morris-louis-reconsidered-2587
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by Karen Wilkin On “Rembrandt and Degas: Two Young Artists” at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA. by Karen Wilkin On "Stieglitz & His Artists" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Marioni's liquid light at the Phillips by Karen Wilkin On “Eye to Eye: Joseph Marioni at the Phillips” at the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. On "New Formations: Czech Avant-Garde Art & Modern Glass from the Roy and Mary Cullen Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. On “Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn, Ceramic Work 5000 B.C.–A.D. 2010” at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London & “The Flamboyant Mr. Chinnery: An English Artist in India and China” at Asia House, London. On "Johann Zoffany RA: Society Observed” at the Yale Center for British Art.
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