Went to the color-field show at the Frist today, and came away with an enormous new appreciation for Morris Louis. After having to take the Ab-Ex and color field stuff like castor oil in school, it’s been a slow and spotty journey back to it, but lo-and-behold...enough time has passed and it seems exciting again...
Louis was a typical art world figure, lionized, marginalised, died, commodified, sanctified.
Dead of lung cancer at 49, quite possibly as a result of some of the crazy-hazardous synthetic polymers he used to make some of his best paintings. Three really fine ones in this show are well worth the ticket.
If you find yourself in Nashville before this show closes in Late September, see it!
(this one, Floral V, from 1959, is the one I would have taken home, although it would be a tough toss-up between it and one of the two from his Veil series, both magnificently subtle)
