April 20–27, 2000

art

Laughter is the Best Inspiration

Ree Morton, The Plant that Heals may also Poison (1974), celastic, glitter and paint on wood.

by Robin Rice

Ree Morton: The Mating Habits of Lines

Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, 320 S. Broad St., closed, 215-717-6480

"She was really hot for seven years and then she died," says Sid Sachs, director of the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery where Ree Morton’s (1936-1977) solo retrospective just closed. Most of the items in the show were works on paper displayed in vitrines. This first exhibition of Morton’s personal journals and sketchbooks was organized by sculptor Barbara Zucker and curator Janie Cohen for the Robert Hull Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont.

However, Sachs effectively expanded and shaped the show for its Philadelphia venue by adding substantial three-dimensional works including two dramatic sculptures recently included in the Whitney Museum’s "The American Century: Art and Culture, Part Two: 1951-2000" and by locating images and additional work with special relevance to Philadelphia. Morton attended Tyler and a few years later taught at Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts. She often refers to local artists and issues in her writings and sketches.

In these personal notations, which are more fully accessible in the catalogue than they were in the show, recipes for cooking snapper in Pernod rub elbows with quotations from the likes of James Ensor or Brancusi. Plans for works Morton made and others you wish she had are interleaved with sketches of renaissance portraits or a page of "Silly Stellas," parodies of Frank Stella’s shaped paintings. It’s a provocative mixture of the humorous and profound.

The character of Morton’s thinking is aptly summarized on the opening page of the catalogue. On a small pad of lined paper she wrote in mixed caps and script, "Light and ironic on serious subjects without frivolity." The phrase, a concise description of Morton’s own oeuvre, is doodle-framed in a sinuous rectangle, a line which culminates in a tight, almost awkward, looping flourish. That line with all its freedom wound down to a sharp twist is similarly characteristic of the expansiveness and discipline which govern her process.

In the bottom half of the page, she added in a less urgent, but still dashing cursive hand, "The point in all cases is that the deities must be made to laugh."

This artist, whose techniques and concepts seem to belong to a future she did not experience, studied nursing, married when she was 20 and had three children — all before she came to art. She was included in a Whitney sculpture annual (the series has been discontinued) in 1970, the year she received her MFA from Tyler. She was in three more Whitney shows, including a solo show in the Whitney Project Room (1974) before her death following an automobile accident in 1977.

Morton rode the wave of feminist art and incorporated aspects of the process art of the ’60s into her work. Catalogue essayist Allan Schwartzman, who co-organized a retrospective of her work in 1980 and who has written extensively about Morton, credits feminism as the source of central issues in art today: identity, the self, and the body. That’s why, he says, Morton’s work looks "prescient." In 1975, Morton wrote in a letter to Marcia Tucker describing a slide lecture she planned, "Most of the work that I’ll deal with falls into an area that can be considered eccentric and/or personal. This is an area that I feel women have opened up for all artists, male and female."

Morton’s own art is associated with both installation and with the Pattern and Decoration movement. Ribbons and bows were among her favorite motifs. "Paint the bows like butterflies" a drawing of a sign self-advises the artist. And she does — in her sketchbook. She also describes bows as having personality. They certainly appealed to her because of their particular blend of femininity and uniqueness. Bows must be tied by hand. It’s a female accomplishment, a simple, popular craft. Rocker and Beaux (1975), though not my favorite work in the show, combines the bow as a three dimensional entity with painted bows on a surface functioning as the seat of a backless rocking chair. Flowers and a peculiar pinkish triangle complete the pastel composition.

A more satisfying cut-out sculpture from 1974 is the wall piece The Plant That Heals May Also Poison, in which ribbon shapes dangle from rosettes centered with electric light bulbs. The whole has something of the look of a carnival decoration. Plants named on the "ribbons" include cyclamen and nightshade. Three framed works from Morton’s "Weeds of the Northeast" series each contain recognizable but crude linear representations of plants like wild parsley and common duckweed in big irregular cells floating on a field of small overlapping circles, colored individually. Each grouping of plants is framed in woodgrain paper accented with glitter.

Another painted wood sculpture places electric lights in flower shapes made from fabric-like celastic. Its title, Terminal Clusters, is painted on a "fabric" banner. Like artists who would come after her, Morton frequently incorporated text in her work.

To simulate the fluttery effect of fabric, Morton used celastic, a material popular in the construction of theatrical props. It can be manipulated like a fabric but solidifies into a lightweight but permanent fiberglass-like substance when dampened and allowed to dry. A celastic prop she made for a Mabou Mines production of JoAnne Akalaitis’ Dressed Like An Egg was surprisingly detailed. The front half of a free-standing Edwardian-style dress, painted a neutral brown uncharacteristic of Morton’s more exuberant palette, is open in the back so that an actor can step into it. Only one arm of the dress is complete. The other is missing, permitting the actor "wearing" the dress to gesture with one hand. Photographs on the wall showed the prop in use on stage.

A series of appliqued and painted nylon flags, each dedicated to a friend, was actually hung on a ship for three weeks. Morton later gave several to the individuals they celebrated, but a string of the banners was hung in the gallerny.

The Rosenwald-Wolf show was the largest gathering of this important artist’s work since 1980. The gallery’s supply of catalogues sold out, but Sachs plans to order more. As a documentation of the creative life of an artist at the peak of her powers, as well as a record of a pivotal era in the past century, it should be in the library of every artist or art lover.