Morris, Robert
Morris, Robert
(Robert Eugene Morris), 1931–2018, American artist, b. Kansas City, Mo., studied Kansas City Art Institute, California School of Fine Arts, Reed College. He settled in New York City in 1959. He was allied in his early work with the simple, impersonal forms of minimalismminimalism,schools of contemporary art and music, with their origins in the 1960s, that have emphasized simplicity and objectivity. Minimalism in the Visual Arts
..... Click the link for more information. , e.g., an untitled 1965 sculpture consisting of four blocks of gray fiberglass; he often used mirrored surfaces in his sculpture. Implicit in his work is the idea that art can be made of anything. Morris's style and media changed many times during his career. He used nonrigid materials such as cut, folded or draped felt and even steam—precluding reproducible forms and emphasizing the process of art—and was also involved in conceptual artconceptual art,
art movement that began in the 1960s and stresses the artist's concept rather than the art object itself. Growing out of minimalism, conceptual art turned the artist's thoughts and ideas themselves into the primary artistic medium, appealing to the spectator's
..... Click the link for more information. and land artland art
or earthworks,
art form developed in the late 1960s and early 70s by Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Michael Heizer, and others, in which the artist employs the elements of nature in situ or rearranges the landscape with earthmoving equipment.
..... Click the link for more information. . He is known for his enormous multipart sculptures of the 1980s, which include a wide variety of materials, notably casts of body parts and skeletons suggestive of nuclear destruction. Morris also experimented in performance artperformance art,
multimedia art form originating in the 1970s in which performance is the dominant mode of expression. Perfomance art may incorporate such elements as instrumental or electronic music, song, dance, television, film, sculpture, spoken dialogue, and storytelling.
..... Click the link for more information. , incorporating dance, theater, and the plastic arts. He was a rigorous theorist of art and an influential teacher.
Morris, Robert,
1734–1806, American merchant, known as the "financier of the American Revolution," and signer of the Declaration of Independence, b. Liverpool, England. Morris emigrated to America in 1747 and was soon apprenticed to the merchant Charles Willing in Philadelphia. He showed an unusual aptitude for business and by 1754 became a partner in the firm with the son, Thomas Willing, after the elder Willing's death. He opposed British restrictions prior to the Revolution and served (1775–78) as a member of the Continental Congress. Morris voted against the original motion for independence in July, 1776, as premature, but signed the declaration in August. A member of various committees in Congress, Morris was particularly important in obtaining munitions and other supplies and in borrowing money to finance George Washington's army. Although Morris's vast mercantile interests profited greatly from his congressional activities, both he and his firm were acquitted by Congress of charges of fraud. After leaving Congress, Morris expanded his mercantile and investment operations independently of Willing and by 1781 was almost universally acknowledged as the most prominent merchant in America. The collapse of public credit led to his being appointed superintendent of finance (1781–84) by Congress. Morris labored hard and well in this office; he pressed the states for contributions, retrenched expenditures, took steps toward the establishment of a national mint, guided the organization of a national bank, and extensively used his personal credit to raise funds for the government. He framed, but failed to get Congress to approve, a fiscal program including funding at par of the national debt and the assumption of state debts; it paralleled Alexander Hamilton's program of 1790. Morris was later a member of the U.S. Constitutional Convention (1787) and served (1789–95) as U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. His private business, continued in his terms of office, ultimately ended in bankruptcy as a result of the collapse of extensive land speculation. Morris was in debtors' prison from 1798 to 1801 and never recovered his fortune.Bibliography
See biographies by E. P. Oberholtzer (1903, repr. 1968) and C. Rappleye (2010); W. G. Sumner, The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution (1891, repr. 1968); C. L. Ver Steeg, Robert Morris, Revolutionary Financier (1954, repr. 1972).