Morris Louis

review of
Morris Louis's Bronze Veils
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 30, 2018


I call Morris Louis a "Color Field" painter. I don't know whether that's a critical consensus or not. The only other Color Field painter I can think of is Mark Rothco. I like both of their paintings but I'm not truly excited by them. I'm not going to look up Louis or Color Field online, I'm not going to turn this little review into a treatise. Really, I'm not.

This is the catalog to a "First exhibition of a series of paintings from 1958" that was held at the Andre Emmerich Gallery on 41 East 57th Street in NYC from February 22 to March 13, 1969. 10 paintings are shown. They're all large acrylics following basically the same pattern: curtain like vertical washes that curve. 5 are black & white, 5 are color. I don't know whether the black & white reproductions are of black & white paintings or if the color's been removed to save money in the printing. Given that the B&Ws are on the same pieces of paper as the colors the latter seems unlikely but the B&Ws seem unlikely too.

The paintings are all very similar. If I were a painter it would bore me to paint approximately the same painting over & over again. But most people aren't like me. Louis might've felt like he was on to something & he might have stuck w/ it for as long as he could sell the paintings. Maybe this was just a series & he did other things dramatically different at other times. I don't know. I associated this style of painting w/ him so if I were to see another painting like this I'd think: 'That's probably Morris Louis.'

There's something about the sensuality of Color Field painting that I like. I'm not really concerned w/ the theory, if there is one, I just like looking at the colors & their relations. They're soft. They're also big (big sells), almost all exactly the same size: between 7'2&1/4" to 7'8" tall (gotta get them thru the doorways) & 10'8&1/2" to 12' wide.

6 of the 10 paintings have the word "BETH" as the 1st word of a 2 word name. At 1st I thought: 'Woman's name' but I quickly realized: No, it's probably something Hebrew so that I looked up.

"In Hebrew letter beth (meaning "house") is associated with the following Biblical locations
• Bethel, "house of God (cf. El)" – (see Genesis 28:19)
• Bethlehem, "house of bread." Ironically, in the book of Ruth, there was a famine in Bethlehem, the "house of bread", which led Naomi's family to Moab, where she met Ruth. Bethlehem is best known as the birthplace of Jesus but was also known as the "city of David".
• Bethany, "house of dates" or "house of misery"
• Bethphage, "house of unripe figs"
• Bethesda, "house of grace" – the name of a pool in Jerusalem (see John 5:2)
• Bethsaida, "house of fish"
• Beth-shemesh, "house of the sun"" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_(Hebrew)

The 6 paintings are:

"BETH AYIN"
"BETH KUF"
"BETH FEH"
"BETH NUN"
"BETH SAMACH"
& "BETH PEH".

This leads me to wonder if there's religious significance here. I think of Mark Rothko's Chapel. I think of Barnett Newman's "Stations of the Cross". I don't know whther I spelled Newman's name right or if he's associated w/ Color Field painting. I do know that I hate his "Stations of the Cross" paintings wch are mostly white & are owned by a museum in Washington DC. They're classic Emperor's New Clothes to me.

The paintings that aren't BETH paintings are called "FACES", "EARTH", "CURTAIN", & "SPARK". They look pretty much the same as the BETH paintings.

I have a friend who has a dress that looks vaguely similar to a Morris Louis BRONZE VEIL. I like the dress better. If she tried to wear a Morris Louis painting it wd be too big for her. It'd be hard to get around.… (plus d'informations)