Published by Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. Edited by Kate Kraczon. Foreword by Amy Sadao. Text by Nayland Blake, Roksana Filipowska, Abi Shapiro.
This volume accompanies the first major United States exhibition of artist Ree Morton (1936–77) in nearly four decades.
During a brief but incredibly prolific career, Morton produced installations, sculptures and drawings rich in emotion and philosophically complex, that celebrated tropes of love, friendship and motherhood, radically asserting sentiment as a legitimate subject of artmaking. Her inclusion of personal narrative—through literary, theoretical and autobiographical references—and use of bold color and theatrical imagery infused her objects with sly humor and decorative energy, generating a feminist legacy increasingly appreciated in retrospect.
Long celebrated by peers and younger generations, Morton’s influence on contemporary art remains considerable yet widely under-recognized.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. Edited by Sabine Folie. Text by Sabine Folie, Diana Baldon, Helen Molesworth, Susanne Neubauer.
Casting aside the orthodoxies of 1970s Minimalism in favor of a wittier, decorative, more "impure" art, Ree Morton (1936-1977) synthesized a vast repertoire of materials and erudition to produce sculptures, drawings and installations that have delighted an ever-swelling army of fans. Between 1971 and 1977, Morton made signature use of celastic, a material that resembles fabric when sculpted, and which enabled her to devise bizarre takes on domestic crafts of the "bless this house" variety. Yet none of her work is kitsch or folksy, and an Eva Hesse-style biomorphism and relish of surface and mass always prevails (Hesse was a crucial touchstone for Morton). Works 1971-1977, which accompanies a survey at the Generali Foundation, Vienna (the first since the New Museum's 1980 exhibit) is the first thorough monograph on Morton. Alongside the work itself, it reproduces the artist's numerous notebooks and sketchbooks, and an immense number of her own documentary photographs, which reconstruct the genesis of both existing works and works that have either been destroyed or can no longer be located. Essays by Diana Baldon, Sabine Folie, Susanne Neubauer and Helen Molesworth address Morton in context, against the backdrop of 1970s installation art, and Ilse Lafer provides an extensive chronological biographical and bibliographical survey.
Ree Morton: Works 1971-1977