Author Description

"This is a systematic catalogue of work by Robert Morris from the crucial early period of his career. It concerns some one-hundred "object sculptures" that dating between 1960 and 1965: plaques, containers, and assisted or simulated readymades of wood, Sculpmetal, and lead. These objects were produced concurrently with a series of large, blank constructed forms in gray-painted plywood - canonical works of Minimal art. Here, the smaller sculptures are addressed for the first time as an overall body of work. The present study departs from past literature, where scholarly attention is repeatedly paid to the same handful of selected objects. The catalogue and text seek to map the internal logic of the object sculptures: to acknowledge that they represent part of a complex, integral practice. Without displacing the foundational significance of certain sculptures to the emergence of Conceptualism, this treatment directs new attention to the material fabrication of the works. By extension, it examines the significance of "process" as it pertains both to the making of the sculptures themselves and, through iconography, to the body. The factor of process is one with which the artist specifically identified the significance of the object sculptures - which he referred to as "process type objects". Fabrication and medium thus join more established elements, such as language, systems of measurement, and time, as the work's chief concerns. The key significance to Morris of the work of Marcel Duchamp is also recast in this context. Produced with the cooperation of the artist, this catalogue contains much new information, and includes a substantial interview in which Morris reflects on the circumstances and significance of the work from the vantage of the present"--