Morris Louis

For more information on Morris Louis, visit Britannica.com.

(b Baltimore, MD, 28 Nov 1912; d Washington, DC, 7 Sept 1962). American painter. Born Morris Louis Bernstein, he changed his name by legal deed in 1938. He studied at Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts, Baltimore (1927-32), and assisted in painting a Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural for a public school in Baltimore. From 1936 to 1940 he lived in New York, where he attended the workshops of David Alfaro Siqueiros and became acquainted with the use of commercial enamel paints. A number of his WPA murals and paintings of work and workers show the influence of Max Beckmann, for example Untitled (Two Workers) (1939; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). In New York he frequently visited MOMA. He returned to Baltimore in 1940 and in 1952 moved to Washington, DC.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The American painter Morris Louis (Bernstein; 1912-1962) explored new realms of pictorial space with his series the "Veils", the "Unfurleds", and the "Stripes". By exploiting the anonymous "stain" method, he formed a bridge between the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s and the Minimalists of the 1960s.

Morris Louis Bernstein was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1912. Unlike the more practical trades chosen by his three brothers, he applied for and won a four-year scholarship to the Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts at the early age of 15. Although described by his friends as a loner, Louis was active in the local art community. In 1934 he participated in the creation of a mural in Baltimore entitled The History of the Written Word for the federal Public Works of Art Project and, in 1935, was elected president of the Baltimore Artists' Union.

The following year Louis moved to New York City where he contributed to David Alfaro Siqueiros' workshops. These workshops, so important to the future Abstract Expressionists, promoted the experimental use of modern tools such as spray guns, air-brush, and synthetic paints to express subjective ideas. It was also while in New York, in 1938, that he legally changed his name to Morris Louis. Although there are few paintings from this period, what is extant suggests an influence from the Mexican muralists Siqueiros and Diego Rivera and the German Expressionist Max Beckmann, whose work he is reported to have admired in the Museum of Modern Art.

Louis returned to Baltimore in the early 1940s and in 1947 married Marcella Siegel. Participating in the Maryland Artists' exhibitions in 1948, 1949, and 1950, he began to gather a small following of local artists who in 1951 convinced him to be their instructor. His work between 1947 and 1953 displays many divergent influences, from the Cubist forms of Picasso to Futurist lines representing movement. In the Tranquilities series Louis showed an admiration for the solid forms of Robert Motherwell's Elegies to the Spanish Republic. Most accomplished from this period is the Charred Journal series which represents his earlier interest in the amorphous forms of Joan Miro and also acknowledges the gestural painting of Jackson Pollock, with dripped paint placed spontaneously on a streaked background.

In 1952, a pivotal year in his artistic career, Louis and his wife moved from the suburbs into Washington, DC, and Louis began to teach at the Washington Workshop Center of the Arts. It was here that he met and became fast friends with a colleague, Kenneth Noland. Noland, an artist who had studied in Paris and at Black Mountain College, was more conscious of the international art scene and broadened Louis' awareness of contemporary artists. In April of 1953 the two artists traveled to New York City, where Noland introduced Louis to the influential critic Clement Greenberg, who henceforth would play a crucial role as supporter and guiding source of Louis' career. Also of critical importance was Louis' introduction to Helen Frankenthaler (by Greenberg) and his viewing of her painting Mountains and Sea (1952) in which she had explored the possibilities of staining thinned colors into bare canvas. Frankenthaler's painting inspired Noland and Louis to monumental changes in their art.

Upon their return to Washington Noland and Louis worked closely together, often on the same canvas, in an attempt to eliminate old habits of painting - they called this joint venture "jam painting." Louis' work at this time reveals an interest in combining the gestural forms of the Abstract Expressionists with the newly discovered staining technique of Frankenthaler.

The outcome of these experiments was Louis' first set of masterpieces - the Veils. In this group, apparently begun in early 1954, Louis reconciled the conflict between his new found feeling for color and the importance he had always associated with drawing. By pouring acrylic paint (magna) over a canvas he created a brilliant stained color. The brilliance of the acrylic colors was diluted by thinning the paint or by covering the stained image with a "veil" of diluted black paint. Within this stained field of color Louis placed nonrepresentational linear arrangements, created by folding and manipulating the canvas.

Between 1954 and 1957, after this first Veil series, Louis returned to more gestural paintings where color and line appear to attack the canvas in a manner opposed to the serene use of color associated with the Veils. Unhappy with his results, Louis destroyed nearly three hundred paintings from these years (leaving less than ten) and in 1957 returned to the technique established with the 1954 Veils. He completed five distinct series of Veils during 1958 and the first part of 1959. In each series Louis took his earlier interest in the staining of the canvas and developed it more consistently with his concern for line. Contrary to the 1954 Veils, most of these canvases are unprimed, causing the color to thoroughly saturate the canvas and create an illusion of inner space. Louis drew attention back to the reality of the canvas as an object by referring to the surface of the color field with a distinct linear pattern.

In the summer of 1960 Louis began his next great series of paintings, the Unfurleds. Here he continued to show a stronger interest in line by using individual stripes of color that run down the unprimed horizontal canvas from the upper right corner toward the bottom center, leaving a large inverted triangular expanse of white in the center. The viewer is called upon to see both the pure color on either end and the white triangle in the middle. The result is a remarkably coherent composition. In these canvases Louis took advantage of an improved magna with a smoother consistency, allowing him to use his paints directly from the can. The undiluted paint produced purer hues and took on a new luminance.

The final series created by Louis before his untimely death were the Stripes. Concentrating once again on the purity of color, Louis both poured and used a swab to move the paint down the canvas. Slightly overlapping stripes of colors, sometimes not at all, run vertically down the canvas, creating images of pure color, which in many ways prefigure the more static and controlled "hardedged" colors of Kenneth Noland and Ellsworth Kelly.

In July of 1962 Louis was diagnosed as having lung cancer, and as a result his left lung was removed. The following months he continued to plan for an exhibition in New York City, but he was unable to paint again. He died on September 7. By the time of his death in 1962, Louis had had several one-man shows in both Washington and New York and had also exhibited in London, Paris, Milan, and Rome. His place in the history of modern painting was well established. His paintings can be seen in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Australian National Gallery in Canberra; and the Tate Gallery in London, as well as in many collections in the United States and throughout the world.

Further Reading

Aside from the numerous exhibition catalogues which have explored Louis' painting, there have been three major works on the artist. Diane Upright's Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings (1985) is a catalogue raisonné which, along with a full color catalogue, provides an interesting commentary on chronology and technique. Diane Headley (Upright) has also published The Drawings of Morris Louis (1979), an exhibition catalogue. Morris Louis by Michael Fried (1970) places more emphasis on Louis' work within the context of the Abstract Expressionists. Since Louis' death there have been many articles which address different aspects of his work. Among the most informative is a series by E. A. Carmean in Arts Magazine (September through December 1976).

Early twentieth-century British inspirational medium through whom an entity who chose the name "Power" delivered religious and philosophical teachings from the platform in a manner analogous to modern channeling. Some signs of Morris's psychic gifts were noticeable at an early age, but they were stifled by an orthodox education. However, she began to develop rapidly after a first séance with a direct voice medium in Newton Abbot in 1922. Within six weeks she went under control. "Sunshine," the spirit of a child, spoke through her, and "Sister Magdalene," the spirit of a French nun, assumed charge as principal trance control. The prediction came through that Morris would be trained for the delivery of teaching by a spirit called "Power."

Under the control of "Power," the medium's soprano voice changed to a ringing baritone, her mannerisms became masculine and priestly, and the teachings disclosed an erudition and sophisticated philosophy that was far above the intellectual capacities of the medium.

In 1929, Laurence Cowen, well-known author and playwright, came in contact with Morris. "Power" convinced him of the truth of survival and filled him with a missionary spirit. Hitherto an agnostic, Cowen became a convert to Spiritualism, associated himself with Morris, and arranged a long series of Sunday meetings in the Fortune Theatre in London for the general public. Wide publicity accompanied the sermons for some time in the press. Public attention was further aroused by the provincial tours Cowen arranged at great personal sacrifice.

Morris's rise into the forefront of inspired orators was punctuated with two publicly attested supernormal occurrences. First, an attempt was made by the Columbia Gramophone Company to make a phonograph record of "Power's" voice. According to the publicly rendered account of company spokesperson C. W. Nixon, at the very commencement of the experiment an incident occurred that by all the rules should have spoiled the first side of the record.

Ernest Oaten, president of the International Federation of Spiritualists, was in the chair, and, being unaware that the start was to be made without the appearance of the usual red light, he whispered loudly to Morris as she stood up: "Wait for the signal." These words were picked up by the microphone and heard by the engineers in the recording room after the apparatus had been started, and it was believed they must be on the record. Later, when the second side of the record was to be made, there was confusion in starting, and towards the end, as if to make technical failure a certainty, Morris turned and walked several paces away from the microphone.

A week before the record was ready for reproduction, Cowen telephoned Nixon and told him that "Power" had asserted that notwithstanding the technical mistakes the record would be a success, that Oaten's whispered words would not be reproduced, and that the timing and volume of the voice would not be spoiled by the later accidents.

This statement was so extraordinary and appeared to be so preposterous in view of technical expectations, that Nixon had it taken down word by word, and sent it in a sealed envelope to Oaten in Manchester with the request that he would keep it unopened until the record was ready, and the truth or otherwise of the prediction could be tested. The record was played in the Fortune Theatre on April 25, 1931. It was found perfect. The letter was opened and read. The prediction was true in every detail.

The second strange incident occurred in the studios of the British Movietone Company where a talking film was made of "Power's" oratory. Seventy people saw the microphones high in the air, held up by new half-inch ropes. The rope suddenly snapped (it was found cut as with a sharp knife) and a terrific crash startled all present. Within half an inch of Morris's face, the microphone swept across the space and went swaying to and fro. A foreman rushed up and dragged the rope aside to keep it out of sight of the camera. The cameraman never stopped filming. Nor did Morris falter. In spite of the obvious danger to her life she never stirred and went on undisturbed with her trance speech.

According to expert opinion the voice registering must have been a failure. Yet it was found that the accident had not the least influence. The record was perfect. According to "Power's" later revelation, everything was planned. The ropes were supernormally severed so as to prove, by the medium's demeanor, that she was indeed in trance (which a newspaper questioned) as no human being could have consciously exhibited such self-possession as she did when the accident occurred.

Sir Oliver Lodge, in his book Past Years (1931), refers to Morris: "When the medium's own vocal organs are obviously being used—as in most cases of trance utterances—the proof of supernormality rests mainly on the substance of what is being said; but, occasionally the manner is surprising. I have spoken above of a characteristically cultured mode of expression, when a scholar is speaking, not easily imitated by an uncultured person; but, in addition to that a loud male voice may emanate from a female larynx and may occasionally attain oratorical proportions. Moreover, the orator may deal with great themes in a style which we cannot associate with the fragile little woman who has gone into trance and is now under control. This is a phenomenon which undoubtedly calls attention to the existence of something supernormal, and can be appealed to as testifying to the reality and activity of a spiritual world. It is, indeed, being used for purposes of such demonstration, and seems well calculated to attract more and more attention from serious and religious people; who would be discouraged and offended by the trivial and barely intelligible abnormalities associated with what are called physical (or physiological) phenomena and would not be encouraged by what is called clairvoyance."

In April 1932, Morris sued the Daily Mail for a poster reading "Trance Medium Found Out," and also for statements made in the article to which the poster referred. The action lasted for 11 days. The summary of Justice McCardie was dramatically interrupted by the sudden entrancement of Morris and an address of "Power" to the judge. The jury found for the newspaper on the plea of fair comment but added that no allegations of fraud or dishonesty against Morris had been proved. Morris's appeal, after a hearing of four days before Lord Justices Scrutton, Lawrence, and Greer, was dismissed. The House of Lords, to which the case was afterward carried, agreed with the Court of Appeal.