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Home , Keith Sonnier, Leo Castelli

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2/"%24 -/22)3 4(% /2$%2 /& $)3/2$%2 Decades after its debutÑand disappearanceÑan early work is re-created by Robert Morris for the gallery that first sponsored it. "9 2)#(!2$ +!,).!

This page and next, Robert Morris: Untitled (Scatter ROBERT MORRIS HAS re-created one Morris retrospective, but was not Piece), 1968-69, felt, steel, of the key works of Post-, sent to the exhibition’s next venue, lead, zinc, copper, aluminum, Untitled (Scatter Piece), 1968-69, at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Instead, it brass, dimensions variable; at Leo Castelli Gallery, . Leo Castelli Gallery on 77th Street. was returned to storage, and subse- Photo Genevieve Hanson. First exhibited along with Continuous quently disappeared—curious, since All works this article © 2010 Project Altered Daily at the Castelli it consisted of 100 hefty pieces of Robert Morris/Artists Rights Warehouse on West 108th Street in metal and 100 pieces of heavy-duty Society (ARS), New York. March 1969, Untitled (Scatter Piece) felt, and weighed about 2 tons. traveled to the Corcoran Gallery of Re-creation, with its implication of exact Art in Washington, D.C., the follow- reproduction, is perhaps an imprecise ing November as part of an early word for the 2010 project. The ele- exist in a perfectly valid iteration while ments in the new work are indeed the in storage—presumably neatly stacked same type as in the original, but rather than strewn about. their disposition (not rule-bound The rectilinear metal pieces are CURRENTLY ON VIEW “Robert Morris: Untitled (Scatter Piece), but arrived at intuitively) responds to made of copper, aluminum, zinc, 1968-69” at Leo Castelli Gallery, New the work’s location: Morris maintains brass, lead or steel, and arrived at York, through May 15. that Untitled (Scatter Piece) would their forms by chance operations

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(coin tosses and numbers randomly not, that she could ask a couple of ). )43 -!4%2)!, taken from the phone book), which eight-year-olds to take on the task. &2%%$/- !##%04!.#% determined each element’s length, This attitude, insouciant as it /& ).$%4%2-).!#9 width and thickness, and whether it might seem, speaks directly to the was to be left flat or bent at a right Duchampian roots of Morris’s enter- !.$ 2%30/.3)6%.%33 angle, either once or twice. The dark prise. Morris has always been an 4/ 3)4% -/22)3¦3 gray felt pieces, equal in number to intellectually formidable and radical 7/2+ 02%&)'52%3 4(!4 the metal ones, corresponded to the provocateur with a foundation in phi- /& ! 7)$% 2!.'% /& shape of each metal piece before losophy (his writings are dense but ,!4%2 3#5,04/23 bending. Morris developed and dia- persuasive) as well as in theater and grammed his fabrication instructions dance. Even his ostensibly Minimalist on sheets of graph paper (nine are of the mid-’60s relate to included in this show), and he fol- performance and movement. Morris’s and Morris Louis’s pouring as the new lowed them for the work’s re-creation. early task-oriented dance work with ’s immediate antecedents. In the current exhibition, Morris has Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee The lessons of Pollock and Louis, heaped the felt pieces in the room’s Schneemann and others shows when applied to sculpture, would yield work that was open-ended and non- estheticized. Morris writes:

The focus on matter and gravity as means results in forms that were not projected in advance. Considerations of ordering are neces- sarily casual and imprecise and unemphasized. Random piling, loose stacking, hanging, give passing form to the material. Chance is accepted and indeterminacy is implied, as replacing will result in another configuration. Disengagement with preconceived enduring forms is a positive assertion. It is part of the work’s refusal to continue estheticizing the form by dealing with it as a prescribed end.2 Untitled (Scatter Piece) and Continuous Project Altered Daily, showing at the warehouse, were paired with two untitled antiform pieces by Morris exhibited at the same time at Castelli’s 77th Street gallery. These works, one now in the collection of New York’s , the other destroyed, were composed of thread waste— commonly found bundled on the streets of pre-gentrified SoHo—and other miscellaneous industrial detri- tus. The four sculptures, which were rooted in Duchamp, John Cage and Fluxus (although Morris disassoci- ated himself from that movement corners and distributed the clean, itself in many of his sculptures, but early on), exemplified the new con- beautifully crafted metal parts over the especially in Post-Minimalist works ceptual, loosely sprung performative polished dark wood floor. A number such as Untitled (Scatter Piece) and sensibility taking hold in New York of the metal pieces also lean against Continuous Project Altered Daily. In and Europe, a sensibility shared by the walls and radiator. In the 1969 both sculptures, workmanlike activ- contemporaries like , installation, the felt and metal mingled ity—at the points of inception and Keith Sonnier, and together in the rougher brick and con- installation in the former, and on a other Post-Minimalists, as well as crete warehouse space, both on the daily basis in the latter—took prece- by the Italian Arte Povera artists. floor and against the walls. Although dence over final form. Importantly, in its material and spatial the artist directed the arrangement These sculptures were produced at freedom, its acceptance of excess of the elements of Untitled (Scatter approximately the same time as one and indeterminacy, as well as in Piece) in all its incarnations, he says of Morris’s most influential and con- its responsiveness to site, Morris’s that his hand is not necessary: in fact tested essays, “Anti Form.”1 Published work prefigured that of a wide range he told the gallery director, Barbara in Artforum in April 1968, the article of later sculptors, from Judy Pfaff Castelli, that she could do it herself, argued for an art based on a fore- and Felix Gonzalez-Torres to Jason and when she demurred, he suggest- grounding of process and material, Rhoades, Cady Noland, Jessica ed, perhaps humorously, or perhaps and took ’s dripping Stockholder and Karen Kilimnik.

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View of the original Untitled (Scatter Piece), 1968-69, at the Castelli Warehouse, New York. Photo Rudolph Burckhardt.

-/22)3 -!).4!).3 4(!4 the years, not just for its manifest “It doesn’t matter.” And evidently it qualities, but also for something that didn’t, since Bob came in later to 5.4)4,%$ 3#!44%2 happened midway through its run. As do his daily labor, and didn’t notice 0)%#% 7/5,$ %8)34 ). I was reading a book, an imposingly Serra’s alterations, or if he did, kindly ! 0%2&%#4,9 6!,)$ scowling figure came into the empty didn’t mention them. When the show )4%2!4)/. 7(),% ). gallery. I recognized him immediately ended, he gave me the mud-splat- 34/2!'%¢02%35-!",9 as Richard Serra, who had partici- tered sign by the door—one of the .%!4,9 34!#+%$ 2!4(%2 pated that past December in the few artifacts, I believe, of the long- 4(!. 342%7. !"/54 much talked about group show (orga- destroyed piece—and inscribed it to nized by Morris) at the Warehouse, me. I was, and I am, very grateful. “9 at Leo Castelli,” and whose work I admired immensely. He walked On a personal note, I was delighted directly to the room that housed to see this work again. As a young Continuous Project Altered Daily—an 1 , for example, took artist, I was the person seated at the agglomeration of earth, water, paper, Morris to task in an article in the desk (more like a card table), keep- grease, wood, plastic and seemingly Summer 1968 issue of Artforum, “The Shape of the Art Environment: ing a watch on things at this lightly whatever unartful material had been How Anti Form is Anti-Form?”. attended northern outpost of the at hand—lifted the rope and strode 2 Robert Morris, “Anti Form,” New York avant-garde. The Castelli in. My mild state of alarm ratcheted Artforum, April 1968, reprinted in Continuous Project Altered Daily: Warehouse was an exhibition space up when he began kicking things The Writings of Robert Morris, that showed some of the most excit- around, very much like a child does Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, ing work around, and it was also a to a tempting pile of leaves. I said, 1993, p. 46. treasure trove, with racks and aisles in what I am afraid was not a very “Robert Morris: Untitled (Scatter full of Rauschenbergs, Rosenquists, authoritative voice, “Excuse me, but Piece), 1968-69” is at Leo Castelli Chamberlains and Warhols, which I don’t think you are supposed to do Gallery in New York Feb. 26-May 15. I got to look at carefully during my that.” Serra turned to me and said in RICHARD KALINA is a painter not very strenuous days. That Morris a tone of withering scorn, each word who writes about art. exhibition has stayed with me over equally and forcefully emphasized,

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