Emma Murphy
The Transfiguration is one of the miracles performed by Jesus. He becomes metamorphosed on top of the Mount of Transfiguration. According to interpretation, this is the culminating point of His public life. Irish artist Stephen Morris took this moment from Jesus’s life as the inspiration for the magnificent Transfiguration, 2013. Morris’s practice is based precariously between the representation of abstraction and figuration. He creates not just a way of seeing the world, but a way to formulate and conceive what we understanding through two and three dimensional explorations. Just as a child builds, paints and creates objects in attempt to understand their surroundings, Morris compiles worlds of brutality mixed with elegance, a method he employs to formulate and represent his paintings and sculptures.
The Transfiguration by Morris is derived from High Renaissance Art in both form and content. The arched structure that frames the painting, assembled from scraps of paper, and the religious symbolism are appropriated from images such as Lorenzo Lotto’s c.1511, The Transfiguration of Christ. In the 21st Century version, Christ is far from monumentality or reverence; he is in fact quite the opposite, a beastly hybrid of man and monster. According to Matthew 17 of the New Testament, “There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” We bear witness to nothing so heroic or mysterious in this contemporary version. Christ is transmuting alone inside his cave,
not surrounded by his fellow apostles atop Mount Tabor, as Lotto’s image dictates, here he is resoundingly and obstinately alone. The floor of his cave is not made of earth or stone; the soft, opulent lines indicate he is perched atop a bed, a sumptuous, welcoming bed. The painting becomes a recontextualisation of a once very public miracle in the life of Christ into an intimate, lonely tale. Alone in his cave, this figure is mutating as his hands dissolve before his eyes. This is no longer the culmination of a public life as the Bible indicates; this painting is a very personal and intimate transformation of a very private kind.
The Transfiguration by Morris is derived from High Renaissance Art in both form and content. The arched structure that frames the painting, assembled from scraps of paper, and the religious symbolism are appropriated from images such as Lorenzo Lotto’s c.1511, The Transfiguration of Christ. In the 21st Century version, Christ is far from monumentality or reverence; he is in fact quite the opposite, a beastly hybrid of man and monster. According to Matthew 17 of the New Testament, “There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” We bear witness to nothing so heroic or mysterious in this contemporary version. Christ is transmuting alone inside his cave,
not surrounded by his fellow apostles atop Mount Tabor, as Lotto’s image dictates, here he is resoundingly and obstinately alone. The floor of his cave is not made of earth or stone; the soft, opulent lines indicate he is perched atop a bed, a sumptuous, welcoming bed. The painting becomes a recontextualisation of a once very public miracle in the life of Christ into an intimate, lonely tale. Alone in his cave, this figure is mutating as his hands dissolve before his eyes. This is no longer the culmination of a public life as the Bible indicates; this painting is a very personal and intimate transformation of a very private kind.
Diptych Playthings 1&2, toys with the notion of gender roles and stereotyping as something acted out preformatively. Just as The Transfiguration signifies a transition in a very private environment, Playthings queries a more subverted transformation of normalised, accepted gendered roles. The blue lion, Playthings 1, signifies the masculine stereotype; his featureless head is directed entirely towards the viewer. He is constructed with strong, harsh lines which are deliberately rigid and severe. The pronounced format of their structure signifies the stereotypical masculine features of strength and power. His gendered counterpart, Playthings 2, epitomises a more feminine role. The pink elephant consists of soft lines signifying a more gentle and passive character. While the lion stands tall and proud, her gaze is averted, her wooden panel is beaten and damaged. Although seeming to conform to the very rigid sexist gendered roles of society, what Morris is in fact doing is creating a pastiche of gendered constructions, undermining their suspected naturalisation through the parody of such absurdities. The artist is aware of the significance of colour in relation to gender construction – it is accepted as a norm that pink symbolises girls and blue represents boys Colour has in fact only been used as a gender signifier since just before World War I; it is relatively new phenomena of social construction and gendered manufacturing. As Judith Butler notes in her seminal 1990 book, Gender Troubles, “The anticipation of an authoritative disclosure of meaning is the means by which that authority is attributed and installed: the anticipation conjures its object. I wonder whether we do not labor under similar expectation concerning gender, that it operates as an interior essence that might be disclosed, an expectation that ends up producing the very phenomenon it anticipates.”[1] In other words, to distress and anticipate oppression and marginalisation creates and gives power to the very thing which is feared. Bearing this in mind, these two images signify the given social norms which have become normalised namely, that gender is naturally and biologically determined. By acknowledging their given parts, Morris is not giving power through fear; he is highlighting the absurdity of the passive/dominant expectations of gender. The lion does not even need a face to exert his power. Just as a beautifully worn suit is a given signifier of authority, his rigid stance expose his dominance. She is too meek to even glance at her audience. By highlighting these socially constructed norms, Morris is attempting to subvert the given cultural positions of gender and undermine the concept of normalisation of oppression and assertion.
Described by the artist as drawings in space, these sculptural assemblages represent the physical manifestation of a prolonged investigation into the picture plane. Awkwardly constructed, these hobbled together masses exude an unsettling indeterminacy. Just as The Transfiguration was a moment of private change, these sculptures seem to be caught in a state of flux, frozen at the point of their mutation from one being to another. This prevents the viewer from forming a definitive association with reality, evading any precise affiliations with the real world.
These abstracted sculptures represent an example of an interdisciplinary practise which both enrich and inform. Painting and sculpture have a truly symbiotic relationship in Morris’s practise. The paintings enlighten these morphing structures, as is true of the opposite. This type of artistic approach is evident throughout history and can be very much likened to the practise of Cy Twombly who in the 1940s began constructing rudimentary structures, which remained largely unknown until after the artists death in 2011. These sculptures, like Morris’s, are made from everyday materials such as wood, cloth and wire, objects that are easily located within the debris of a working studio. They function both as a 3-D exploration into the space of the paintings as well as establishing an autonomy all of their own. These brutish clumps play with and investigate this notion of a flat picture plane and how construction is formed within the picture frame.
My Missing Moments, 2014, is one such example of this investigation into the function of space or more precisely into the function of negative space. The painting is a flattened, layered image, assembled much like a jigsaw, but a defunct jigsaw that cannot be completed. What looks to be a purple billboard advertisement in the foreground, sits above a sports playing field, late into the night. The two dark blue pieces of the puzzle at the top of the image, set against the night sky, swing on their precarious wires. Each piece, without much consideration, fits into its respective slots below. The yellow moon however, the third piece to the puzzle, has no place to go. It cannot be squeezed into the tiny remaining slot. What does this inability to fit within the respective moulds represent? Titled My Missing Moments, the artist may see himself as perpetually fragmented, always attempting to fit all the pieces together. He almost gets there, but ultimately fails. As the scene is set atop a sports ground, perhaps it is an ironic nod to the popular notion of artists being bad at sports, good at art. We never seem to quite get it all together.
Another representation of this failed logic can be seen in Paired Back As Was Instructed, 2013. This failure is not a personal failure however; it is the failure of painting itself. Always existing in the shadows of its vast histories, painting we have been told, has been on deaths door for over fifty years. Working within a media which is apparently perpetually doomed to fail, this painting is an attempt to do precisely as it say, to be Paired Back As Was Instructed. Who exactly is it doing this instructing? It is Clement Greenberg of course. In his seminal ‘Modernist Painting’ essay of 1960, Greenberg describes Immanuel Kant as the first Modernists, who, in the 18th Century used the “characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself.”[2] Kant, a Prussian philosopher “used logic to establish the limits of logic, and while he withdrew much from its jurisdiction, logic was left all the more secure in what there remained to it.”[3] Painting then, for Greenberg was only successful if it looked in on itself, an introverted critique of the medium. Greenberg continues “…realistic, naturalistic art has dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art.”[4] Old Masters, he elaborates, saw limitations within the flattened picture plane, whereas Modernists painters embraced these idiosyncrasies of the medium. Greenberg’s insensate need for the autonomy and self-criticality of painting is almost exclusively dismissed, quite rightly, by a contemporary audience as antiquated and outmoded in a homogenous art world. It is useful however to think of this self-aware demonstration of the medium and dismissal of representation in relation to Paired Back As Was Instructed. Here we are presented with a 21st Century playful engagement with the Greenbergian notions of reflexivity and introspective analysis. Morris, entirely aware of the failure of Modernist notions of painting to a contemporary audience, takes the image away. The painted surface has been scraped, leaving the minimum of marks. The image we imagine once appeared on the surface sits as a heavy reminder at the bottom of the painted panel. Morris has taken Greenberg’s expulsion of the represented form to heart, as per instruction, as he light-heartedly notes in the title, the rigid schoolmaster approach Greenberg employed to painting during his reign of power in the 50s has been obeyed.
Stephen Morris’s paintings and sculptures are in a constant state of turmoil and flux. His characters are never quite comfortable in their own skin, constantly attempt to shift, ever so slightly, to become something else. This hybridity represents a postmodern notion of artistic practise as heterogeneous combinations from unexpected sources. Morris playfully, but astutely, questions gendered stereotypes and by extension the roles we are all expected to play as a society. He explores personal interpretations of what he sees as missing from his life, but does this without becoming narcissist or self-referential. The artist is thoroughly aware of the weight of the history bearing down upon all contemporary painting today. He responds to this burden through a re-engagement with paintings Modernist past, while remaining quite firmly, in its contemporary present.
Emma Murphy
[1] Judith Butler, Gender Troubles, (New York, 1990) p. xv
[2] Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’, Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism Volume 4 Modernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969. Ed. John O’Brian (Chicago, 1993) p85
[3] Ibid. p85
[4] Ibid. p86
Described by the artist as drawings in space, these sculptural assemblages represent the physical manifestation of a prolonged investigation into the picture plane. Awkwardly constructed, these hobbled together masses exude an unsettling indeterminacy. Just as The Transfiguration was a moment of private change, these sculptures seem to be caught in a state of flux, frozen at the point of their mutation from one being to another. This prevents the viewer from forming a definitive association with reality, evading any precise affiliations with the real world.
These abstracted sculptures represent an example of an interdisciplinary practise which both enrich and inform. Painting and sculpture have a truly symbiotic relationship in Morris’s practise. The paintings enlighten these morphing structures, as is true of the opposite. This type of artistic approach is evident throughout history and can be very much likened to the practise of Cy Twombly who in the 1940s began constructing rudimentary structures, which remained largely unknown until after the artists death in 2011. These sculptures, like Morris’s, are made from everyday materials such as wood, cloth and wire, objects that are easily located within the debris of a working studio. They function both as a 3-D exploration into the space of the paintings as well as establishing an autonomy all of their own. These brutish clumps play with and investigate this notion of a flat picture plane and how construction is formed within the picture frame.
My Missing Moments, 2014, is one such example of this investigation into the function of space or more precisely into the function of negative space. The painting is a flattened, layered image, assembled much like a jigsaw, but a defunct jigsaw that cannot be completed. What looks to be a purple billboard advertisement in the foreground, sits above a sports playing field, late into the night. The two dark blue pieces of the puzzle at the top of the image, set against the night sky, swing on their precarious wires. Each piece, without much consideration, fits into its respective slots below. The yellow moon however, the third piece to the puzzle, has no place to go. It cannot be squeezed into the tiny remaining slot. What does this inability to fit within the respective moulds represent? Titled My Missing Moments, the artist may see himself as perpetually fragmented, always attempting to fit all the pieces together. He almost gets there, but ultimately fails. As the scene is set atop a sports ground, perhaps it is an ironic nod to the popular notion of artists being bad at sports, good at art. We never seem to quite get it all together.
Another representation of this failed logic can be seen in Paired Back As Was Instructed, 2013. This failure is not a personal failure however; it is the failure of painting itself. Always existing in the shadows of its vast histories, painting we have been told, has been on deaths door for over fifty years. Working within a media which is apparently perpetually doomed to fail, this painting is an attempt to do precisely as it say, to be Paired Back As Was Instructed. Who exactly is it doing this instructing? It is Clement Greenberg of course. In his seminal ‘Modernist Painting’ essay of 1960, Greenberg describes Immanuel Kant as the first Modernists, who, in the 18th Century used the “characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself.”[2] Kant, a Prussian philosopher “used logic to establish the limits of logic, and while he withdrew much from its jurisdiction, logic was left all the more secure in what there remained to it.”[3] Painting then, for Greenberg was only successful if it looked in on itself, an introverted critique of the medium. Greenberg continues “…realistic, naturalistic art has dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art.”[4] Old Masters, he elaborates, saw limitations within the flattened picture plane, whereas Modernists painters embraced these idiosyncrasies of the medium. Greenberg’s insensate need for the autonomy and self-criticality of painting is almost exclusively dismissed, quite rightly, by a contemporary audience as antiquated and outmoded in a homogenous art world. It is useful however to think of this self-aware demonstration of the medium and dismissal of representation in relation to Paired Back As Was Instructed. Here we are presented with a 21st Century playful engagement with the Greenbergian notions of reflexivity and introspective analysis. Morris, entirely aware of the failure of Modernist notions of painting to a contemporary audience, takes the image away. The painted surface has been scraped, leaving the minimum of marks. The image we imagine once appeared on the surface sits as a heavy reminder at the bottom of the painted panel. Morris has taken Greenberg’s expulsion of the represented form to heart, as per instruction, as he light-heartedly notes in the title, the rigid schoolmaster approach Greenberg employed to painting during his reign of power in the 50s has been obeyed.
Stephen Morris’s paintings and sculptures are in a constant state of turmoil and flux. His characters are never quite comfortable in their own skin, constantly attempt to shift, ever so slightly, to become something else. This hybridity represents a postmodern notion of artistic practise as heterogeneous combinations from unexpected sources. Morris playfully, but astutely, questions gendered stereotypes and by extension the roles we are all expected to play as a society. He explores personal interpretations of what he sees as missing from his life, but does this without becoming narcissist or self-referential. The artist is thoroughly aware of the weight of the history bearing down upon all contemporary painting today. He responds to this burden through a re-engagement with paintings Modernist past, while remaining quite firmly, in its contemporary present.
Emma Murphy
[1] Judith Butler, Gender Troubles, (New York, 1990) p. xv
[2] Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’, Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism Volume 4 Modernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969. Ed. John O’Brian (Chicago, 1993) p85
[3] Ibid. p85
[4] Ibid. p86