Sarah Morris

Sarah Morris
Born	20 June 1967 Sevenoaks, Kent, England
Nationality	American[1][2][3][4]
Education	Brown University Cambridge University
Known for	painting, film
Awards	Berlin Prize Fellow (1999-2000) Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2001)

Sarah Morris (born 20 June 1967) is an American artist.^{[1][2][3][4][lower-alpha 1]} Since the mid-1990s she has exhibited internationally. She lives in New York City, in the United States.^[5]

Personal life and education

Morris was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, in south-east England, on 20 June 1967.^[3] She attended Cambridge University,^[6] Brown University from 1985 to 1989, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in 1989–90.^[3] In 1999–2000, she was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin; in 2001, she received a Joan Mitchell Foundation painting award.^[7] Morris was married to artist Liam Gillick.^[6]

Work

Chimera, 2009. Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main

Morris is both a painter and filmmaker, seeing the two media as interconnected. She describes the dual processes as “two sides of the same coin”, creating the paintings and films (which reference one another visually and thematically) simultaneously.^[8]

She is best known for her abstract paintings that feature bright color fields and graphic line work, often referencing elements of architecture and taking titles from bureaucratic institutions.^[4]

Morris' films have been characterized as portraits that focus on the psychology of individuals or cities. Her films about cities, like Midtown, Chicago, "Los Angeles", and Rio depict urban scenes, capturing the architecture, politics, industry and leisure which define a specific place.^[9] Other films describe a place through the viewpoint of an individual, like psychologist Dr. George Sieber describing the terrorist event at the Olympic Stadium in Munich in the film 1972 or the industry politics of Hollywood from the viewpoint of screenwriter and producer in the eponymous film Robert Towne.^[9][10]

Exhibitions

Morris has shown internationally, with solo exhibitions at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2001),^[11] Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2005),^[12] Fondation Beyeler in Basel (2008),^[13] Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt (2009),^[14] Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2009),^[15] and Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot (2012).^[16]

She has created site-specific works for various institutions including the Lever House,^[17] Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany ^[18] and the Gloucester Road tube station in London.^[19]

Robert Towne, 2006. Lever House, Manhattan

Morris' films have been featured at the following:

• Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (Strange Magic),^[20]
• Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (Chicago),^[21]
• Sotheby's in New York (Points on a Line),^[22]
• Barbican Centre in London (Beijing, Midtown),^[23]
• Guggenheim in New York (Midtown, AM/PM, Capital, Miami, Los Angeles) ^[24]
• Centre Pompidou (Midtown, AM/PM, Capital, Miami, Los Angeles).^[25]

Origami

In 2011 Morris was sued by a group of six origami artists, including Robert J. Lang. They alleged that in 24 works in her "Origami" series of paintings Morris had without permission or credit copied their original crease patterns, coloured them, and sold them as "found" or "traditional" designs.^[26] Morris acknowledged that she used the crease patterns as a "launch pad" for her paintings but sees her paintings as "completely and utterly different" from the work of the origami artists.^[27]

Julie A. Ahrens, Director of Copyright and Fair Use at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, who supported Morris' defense argued, "Under the Second Circuit's reasoning in the Cariou v. Prince case, Morris had every right to use origami crease patterns to create the "Origami" series without requesting permission or paying a licence fee as her expression and composition, presentation, scale, colour palette, and media are new and fundamentally different from the original materials. And, like Prince, her transformative works had no effect on the market for the originals."^[28]

The case was settled out of court early in 2013.^{[29] [30]}

Filmography

• Midtown (1998)^[31]
• AM/PM (1999)^[31]
• Capital (2000)^[31]
• Miami (2002)^[31]
• Los Angeles (2004)^[31]
• Robert Towne (2006)^[31]
• 1972 (2008)^[31]
• Beijing (2008)^[32]
• Points on a Line (2010)^[33]
• Chicago (2011)^[34]
• Rio (2012)^[35]
• Strange Magic (2014)^[36]

Publications

• Sarah Morris: Mechanical Ballet, 2014 ISBN 978-2-36380-065-7
• Sarah Morris: Bye Bye Brazil, 2013 ISBN 978-1-906072-82-7
• An Open System Meets an Open System: Sarah Morris and Hans Ulrich Obrist in Conversation, 2013 ISBN 978-3-7091-1031-7
• You Cannot Trust A Surface, 2011 ISBN 978-3-86984-054-3
• Sarah Morris: Clips, Knots, and 1972, 2010 ISBN 978-89-92819-55-8
• Beijing, 2009 ISBN 978-3-86560-646-4
• Sarah Morris: Lesser Panda, 2008 ISBN 978-1-906072-16-2
• 1972, 2008 ISBN 978-3-86560-460-6
• Los Angeles, 2005 ISBN 3-00-016363-8
• Sarah Morris: Bar Nothing, 2004 ISBN 0-9546501-1-5
• Capital, 2001 ISBN 3-89611-098-5
• Modern Worlds, 1999 ISBN 1-901-352-05-6
• Morris, Sarah (2015). Crease Folds. Sarah Morris (ed.). Ivorypress LiberArs. ISBN 978-84-942820-7-2. 
• Frédéric Paul, Sarah Morris: Capital Letters Rear Better for Initials. S.l.: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig. 5 November 2015. ISBN 978-3-941360-46-4. 

Public collections

• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo^[37]
• Berardo Collection, Sintra, Portugal^[38]
• British Council, London^[39]
• Centre d’Art Contemporain, Le Consortium, Dijon^[40]
• Centre Pompidou, Paris^[41]
• Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York^[42]
• Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas^[43]
• Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris^[44]
• F.R.A.C. Bourgogne, Dijon^[45]
• F.R.A.C. Poitou-Charentes^[46]
• Government Art Collection, London^[47]
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York^[48]
• Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen^[49]
• Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg^[50]
• Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich^[51]
• Miami Art Museum^[52]
• Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris^[53]
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles^[54]
• Museum of Modern Art, New York^[55]
• Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt^[56]
• Sammlung DaimlerChrysler, Berlin^[57]
• Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam^[58]
• Tate Modern, London^[59]
• UBS Art Collection, New York^[60]
• Yale Center for British Art, New Haven^[61]
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London^[62]

Notes

References

Further reading

• Michael Archer. "Sarah Morris", Artforum, May 2009, p. 170
• Nick Haymes, "Sarah Morris", Art Review, May 2009, pp. 70–7
• Hans Ulrich Obrist, "Sarah Morris", Adam & Eve, March/April/May 2009, pp. 78–91
• Eric Banks, "Seeing Red", Men's Vogue, August 2008, pp. 114–119
• Adrian Searle, "Dazzled by the Rings", The Guardian, 30 July 2008
• Christopher Turner, "Beijing City Symphony", Modern Painters, July/August 2008, pp. 56–59
• Marcus Verhagen, "Nomadism", Art Monthly October 2006
• Tanja Widmann, "To Offer You Something", Texte Zur Kunst, September 2006, pp. 248–251
• Ezra Petronio and Stephanie Moisdon, "Bar Nothing by Sarah Morris", Self Service, Issue No.21, Fall/Winter 2004, pp. 302–315
• Art Now (25th Anniversary Edition), edited by Uta Grosenick, Burkhard Riemschneider, Taschen, pp. 196–199, 2005