The landmark exhibition The Magical Metropolis: George Morrison’s New York on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork expands frequent notions of who had been the foremost figures in Summary Expressionism. In Morrison (Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa), it additionally introduces the museum-going public to an artist who has lengthy been sequestered due to his ethnicity. Born in Chippewa Metropolis, Minnesota, in 1919, one among 12 kids, he started drawing as a baby when a number of surgical procedures left him confined for months to a full physique forged.
After receiving the Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Touring Scholarship within the early Forties, he moved to New York to check on the Artwork College students League from 1943 to ’46 — a fertile interval for creativity within the metropolis, which was stuffed with dislocated and emigrant artists — and entered into the group referred to as the Summary Expressionists. He left New York in 1947, first to show in Massachusetts after which, in 1952, to check artwork in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship, earlier than relocating briefly to Duluth, Minnesota. He returned to New York in 1954, the place he renewed his relationship with lots of the Summary Expressionists who had welcomed him within the ’40s, and met Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. By this time, his work had matured and he had discovered his inventive voice, which shared some qualities with these of Clyfford Nonetheless and Philip Guston, however was not indebted to them.
George Morrison, standing alongside a chair he made, together with his instructor and fellow college students in Handbook Coaching Class at Grand Marais Excessive Faculty (c. 1937); Morrison household assortment
The Magical Metropolis, curated by Patricia Marroquin Norby (P’urhépecha), affiliate curator of Native American Artwork in The Met’s American Wing, contains work, works on paper, and ephemera. Among the many latter is an announcement for a 1954–55 group present on the Tanager Gallery, an necessary artist-run co-op based by Lois Dodd, Charles Cajori, Angelo Ippolito, William King, and Fred Mitchell, in addition to copies of the 1947 and 1956 Whitney Annual catalog — all of which verify that he was lively within the burgeoning downtown New York artwork scene. I used to be fascinated to find how a lot Morrison was a part of this combine. I acknowledged simply why his work from the ’50s was held in excessive regard by his contemporaries, and I used to be dismayed by how rapidly it was uncared for by the New York artwork world after the rise of Pop Artwork and Minimalism, and the vital narratives supporting the overarching perception that artwork should progress.
Whereas Morrison was one among many casualties misplaced within the transition from one development to the following, his elision in canonical histories left me with a bitter style. He was not the one artist of shade related to Summary Expressionism who’s recurrently omitted of most accounts. A museum survey bringing collectively the work of Norman Lewis, Matsumi “Mike” Kanemitsu, Ed Clark, and plenty of others related to Summary Expressionism would assist to appropriate these omissions.
George Morrison (Grand Portage Chippewa), “Structural Landscape (Highway)” (1952), oil on canvas; Joslyn Artwork Museum, Omaha
Specifically, six work in The Magical Metropolis, relationship from 1953 by means of ’58, stood out to me. Made when Summary Expressionism was supposedly on the wane, in accordance with the influential artwork critic Clement Greenberg, and Coloration Subject portray, which Greenberg championed, was on the rise, all six have a closely labored impasto floor. This alone units Morrison aside from his New York contemporaries, a lot of whom had been exploring paint as a liquid medium to be poured (Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler) or utilized in skinny washes so the hand shouldn’t be evident (Advert Reinhardt and Mark Rothko).
The titles of two of those items, “The Red Sky” (1955) and “Aureate Vertical” (1958), underscore Morrison’s curiosity within the Minnesota panorama of his youth, whereas their variegated surfaces, shifts in tone, and the interlocking geometric motifs of “The Red Sky” appear to be they may have been impressed by Ojibwe crafts. Simply as Lewis opened the vocabulary of Summary Expressionism to allude to a Black expertise, Morrison evoked Indigenous expertise.
George Morrison (Grand Portage Chippewa), “Aureate Vertical” (1958), oil on canvas; Chrysler Museum of Artwork
In “Aureate Vertical,” the refined tonal shifts pull viewers nearer and sluggish them down. Whereas we might get misplaced within the wanting, nonetheless, our reveries are interrupted by streaks of pink and bits of blue peeking by means of a floor dominated by yellows and tans. In “The Red Sky” the interlocking grey, soiled white, and reddish-orange types is likely to be holding up the sky’s thick slab. Or is the sky pushing down, compressing the types? The stress is palpable.
I used to be struck by the truth that Morrison’s work of the Fifties had been recognizable as his, and, in that regard, maintain their very own when in comparison with Summary Expressionists with signature kinds, from Adolph Gottlieb to Barnett Newman, though he by no means developed one. Via his artwork, he comes throughout as each assured and stressed, all the time trying to find the following mixture of shade and kind moderately than a motif. As many discoveries and insights as I gained from this compact, fantastically put in exhibition, a deepening curiosity concerning the artist arose. That is what a museum exhibition ought to do: go away us hungry for extra.
George Morrison (Grand Portage Chippewa), “Untitled (Cap d’Antibes)” (1953), oil on paper; Minnesota Museum of American Artwork
George Morrison (Grand Portage Chippewa), “Duluth Corner” (1942), pen and ink on paper; Minnesota Historic Society
George Morrison (Grand Portage Chippewa), “The Antagonist” (1956), oil on canvas; Whitney Museum of American Artwork (© George Morrison Property. Picture © Whitney Museum of American Artwork / Licensed by Scala / Artwork Useful resource, NY)
George Morrison (Grand Portage Chippewa), “Abstract Composition” (1950), watercolor on paper; Minnesota Historic Society
George Morrison (Grand Portage Chippewa), “Whalebone” (1948), oil on canvas; Assortment of Kevin and Kathy Kirvida
The Magical Metropolis: George Morrison’s New York continues on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork (1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan) by means of Could 31, 2026. The exhibition was curated by Patricia Marroquin Norby.
