Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 3, December 2009
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Morris, Robert, Have I Reasons, edited and with an introduction by Nena Tsouti-Schillinger, Durham, Duke University Press, 2008. 288 pages, ISBN 978-0-8223-4292-2, Hardback $84.95, Softcover $23.95.
Reviewed by
Saint Vincent College
Robert Morris has had a tremendous impact on the continuous development of avant-garde art and criticism since the 1960’s. His work has received international attention, is included in art historical surveys and his written statements that discuss his work as well as art in general are paradigmatic of a point of view that is worthy of study. As Nena Tsouti-Schillinger describes in the introduction to “Robert Morris Have I Reasons,” “…Morris is known for his contributions to virtually every postwar art movement since abstract expressionism…”
Indeed his career is most remarkable. And this book provides perhaps the largest reason why; he successfully navigated his way from art making to art theory with the development of a new genre of writing. Part artist statement, part general theory, his writing, starting in the 1960’s straddled the line between descriptive and proscriptive prose. As both explanation of an artist’s work, often his own, and critique of that work, the essays avoid some of the pitfalls that artists often face when writing, namely the impulse to vainly write about oneself. This is the stigma against artist statements outside of exhibition catalogs and gallery literature. Morris, however, is able to include meaningful self-reflection and broader speculation that fuels readers’ interest. Throughout the book, Morris presents skepticism not as a form of doubting, but as an active questioning. Morris would argue that this constant questioning is that which gives him permission to constantly change his style, a criticism often leveled against him. As much as he supports this argument in the book, some of his later essays transform the reader’s doubt and questioning into suspicion.
For example, when describing his “Blind Time” drawings he writes,
If working blind carries with it a certain pathos, there may also be in it a kind of Beckett-like humor that can only hone the weaponry of its ever-diminishing but ever-serviceable edge behind a mask with no eyeholes. Perhaps these [blind-time drawings] ceaseless and sightless repetitions echo a kind of laughter not permitted in the light. Not every dark itch can be scratched in the daylight. It would not be inconsistent to ascribe a certain bravado to the method (“I can do it better with my eyes closed”), not to mention a contempt for that ironclad primacy of the visual, that reification of the seen promoted to a self-serving ontology that the “visual arts” never tires of asserting.
Characteristically he decided upon a strategy, blindfolding oneself, to challenge the assumptions about art making and the “primacy of the visual.” But ultimately these drawings are visual. If we were blind, all we could do is to grope about with charcoal in our hands scratching at the paper. Moreover, it is by seeing the pawing blinded artist that we imagine for ourselves pity, admiration or being blind. But Morris characteristically defuses the nobility of these musings by stating for us the bravado associated with this activity, namely that he is so proficient that he can make art with his “eyes closed.”
But at the same time, other essays in the book demonstrate Morris’ affinity for philosophical thought. In a long discussion of the philosopher Donald Davidson, Morris discusses his argument against relativism. Quoting Davidson, Morris shares the experience of comparing notes with someone after having read the same text. One can “establish a broad basis of agreement.” Though we may disagree about some details or conclusions drawn from a text, we are nevertheless able to have a discussion centering on a shared idea.
Morris concludes, “If Davidson’s system, defending as it does against relativism and skepticism, stakes out a position opposed to postmodernist assumptions, his confrontation with issues of the irrational contrasted to the rational leave much open ground to be explored… Art and literature inhabit this broad space of the nonrational, where not truth but metaphor reigns and cast ambiguous shadows.” Post-modernism’s open interpretation is reigned in; he ends by saying that interpretation “stops short of hysterical claims for the ‘death of the author’ as Roland Barthes has famously said.”
The essays in “Have I Reasons” that analyze art forge connections between philosophy and art that are very useful both in their content and in the approach modeled by their author.
But as the essays become more recent, particularly after the events of 9/11, Morris attempts to alloy his political views with art criticism. And it is here that Nena Tsouti-Schillinger, who wished to maintain the integrity of each essay by not changing them or introducing their themes, should have intervened. Though it is clear from her introduction that she applauds Morris’ remarks and political position, she could have either placed his words in contexts to strengthen them, or written a different book that made clear Morris’ varied skills. Political argument is not among them.
“From a Chompskian Couch: The Imperialistic Unconscious” presents a seminar conducted at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. It reads as a psychoanalytical session between Morris and Noam Chompsky. During the session, Morris describes that artists had only intended to find the power imbedded in “big, bold, clean sweeping you off your feet” images. That is what the audience wants. Art is for entertainment, not violence. As he says, “And we [artists] can’t be accused of ever being a violent group.” This line is followed by a footnote that provides a list of American “military adventurism.” It is clear from this note that he is condemning the American government over a broad period of time.
In response, “Dr. C” responds that the U.S. is trying to look “vindictive” in order to frighten Europe. For Morris’ ‘character,’ “That’s going too far. American art, with certain exceptions, is distanced and distinguished from this by an aesthetic of immediacy and the aggressively invasive and occupying impulse. These are not merely formal categories.” The categories, or descriptions of American Art that Morris lists are characteristic of monumental painting in the United States starting in the 1950’s. For Morris, the size of the paintings was part of their effect. This effect was not only visual but “aggressively invasive.” Morris attempts to forge a connection between painting’s monumentality and American foreign and cultural policy, one that is not imbedded in the images themselves.
But Morris then quotes Karlheinz Stockhausen who called 9/11 one big spectacle. As if to justify, or soften such a misapprehension of history, Morris allows it by saying, “Well, a German said it, not one of us.” According to a New York Times article on September 8, 2009:
Mr. Stockhausen, who emerged in the 1950's as one of a reigning trio of avant-garde composers that included Pierre Boulez and Luigi Nono, was taking questions before a four-day festival of his works in Hamburg. In disjointed comments that were taped by a German radio station and reported internationally, Mr. Stockhausen, 73, called the attack on the World Trade Center ''the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.'' Extending the analogy, he spoke of human minds achieving ''something in one act'' that ''we couldn't even dream of in music,'' in which ''people practice like crazy for 10 years, totally fanatically, for a concert, and then die.'' Just imagine, he added: ''You have people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5,000 people are dispatched into eternity, in a single moment. I couldn't do that. In comparison with that, we're nothing as composers.''
I present this extended quotation to inform the reader regarding Morris’ citation in a similar manner as has been done throughout this book via the footnotes. Even if Morris had not been familiar with Stockhausen’s further remarks, to introduce the ideas without refutation is to condone them. His flippant remark allowing a German to say such things is not enough to show that he disagrees with the statements. Moreover, one can not argue that since this is a fictitious dialogue, he did not mean what was said. Dialogue can be used as a foil, but Morris repeats his views without commentary several times throughout these late essays.
In the same essay, Morris describes the temporary memorial dedicated to the memory not only of the towers but to those who lost their lives. As I read, “A temporary monument in the form of a ‘theater of lights’ marked the site of the two most monstrous and egregious…” I thought Morris was about to condemn the attacks, but he finishes his thought with “…pieces of architecture to have ever burdened the island of Manhattan.” The attacks on 9/11 were not performance and to view them with aesthetic distance destroys our ability to understand and learn from history. Given his ability to articulate and explain philosophical and aesthetic concepts such misapprehension of ‘terrorism as art’ cripples his arguments in support of Davidson’s ideas by subjecting history to exactly the post-modernist view that is limited by that earlier essay. Ultimately Morris’ poorly argued political views make suspect the contribution the other essays in the book strive to contribute.