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Lot Essay
Spanning a striking twelve feet in width, Delta Omicron, 1960, is one of Morris Louis’ earliest iterations of his famed Unfurled series of paintings, considered by the artist to be his greatest and most ambitious works. Twin banks of vibrant streams of coral, canary yellow, tangerine, and smoky grey cascade down the length of the unprimed canvas on opposite sides, colliding and intersecting as they fall. The present lot has notably remained in the collection of the artist’s family since its inception, acquired by descent to the present owner, underscoring its importance within the artist’s career and the Unfurled paintings in specific.
Executed between 1960 and 1961, the Unfurled works take their place alongside the Veils (1954), Veils II (1958-1959) and the Stripes (1961-1962) that defined Louis’ approach to painting. A colorist at his core with a palette rooted in his studies of Post-Impressionism, Louis’ work is also noted for his rigorous commentary on the materiality of the painted canvas. Staining unprimed cotton with thinned acrylic in feathered forms, the artist creates an inextricable fusion between surface and support. The Unfurled works are among the most sophisticated examples of this technical and conceptual innovation: by relegating his paint to the bookends of the picture plane, Louis powerfully spotlights his untouched canvas at the center, drawing attention to its physicality.
Titled with Greek letters, in the order of their being stretched, the works invoke a return to the origins of humanity – a concept rife among the artists of Louis’ generation. Created at a time of profound reflection upon the meaning and function of painting, the Unfurled works have been deemed to embody what Walter Darby Bannard called “the seeming simplicity and obviousness of all great inventions” (W. D. Bannard, “Morris Louis and the Restructured Picture,” Studio International, no. 188, July 1974, pp. 18-20). Other examples from the Unfurled series are housed in major international collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Originally coming to prominence within the throes of Abstract Expressionism, Louis was strongly influenced by the painter Helen Frankenthaler, whom he first visited in 1953 with his colleague Kenneth Noland. Her large-scale stained canvases, in particular the 1953 work Mountains and the Sea, were to change the course of his oeuvre. Like Frankenthaler, Louis began to use unprimed canvas, applying deliberately thinned pigment that absorbed directly into the fabric like a dye. Louis worked without a brush, leaning his canvas against the wall and spilling his paint down the length of the picture plane. Color and form were thus infused with a new autonomy, divorced from Abstract Expressionism’s emphasis on the artist’s gesture and psyche. “Many examples of twentieth-century art reveal a new expressive ability or a new direction based on the use of a novel technique or material,” writes the art historian and museum director E. A. Carmean, Jr. “We can cite pasted newspaper in Braque and Picasso collages, painted paper in a Matisse découpage, the painterly poured line of Pollock’s classic abstractions … For Morris Louis the staining technique was such a breakthrough” (E. A. Carmean, Jr., Morris Louis: Major Themes & Variations, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1976, n.p.).
The rivulets of the Unfurled paintings represented a new configuration in Louis’ work. Caught somewhere between line and shape, and blurring the distinction between painting and drawing, they recall Jackson Pollock’s pouring technique, as well as the automatist practices of Surrealism. These works instigate a new kind of artistic handwriting, exalting the primacy of mark making. “In the unfurleds Louis made major art out of what might be called the firstness of marking as such – a firstness prior to any act of marking, prior to individuation as a particular type of mark … One’s experience of the unfurleds can be vertiginous. The banked rivulets – here again their vibrant, biting color is crucial – open up the picture plane more radically than ever before, as though seeing the first marking we are for the first time shown the void. The dazzling blankness of the untouched canvas at once repulses and engulfs the eye, like an infinite abyss, the abyss that opens up behind the least mark we make on a plane surface” (M. Fried, Morris Louis, New York 1970, pp. 32-33). As one of the earliest examples of this lauded series executed at the peak of Louis’ career, Delta Omicron rightfully takes its place as a chief example of the artist’s distinct and groundbreaking style.
Executed between 1960 and 1961, the Unfurled works take their place alongside the Veils (1954), Veils II (1958-1959) and the Stripes (1961-1962) that defined Louis’ approach to painting. A colorist at his core with a palette rooted in his studies of Post-Impressionism, Louis’ work is also noted for his rigorous commentary on the materiality of the painted canvas. Staining unprimed cotton with thinned acrylic in feathered forms, the artist creates an inextricable fusion between surface and support. The Unfurled works are among the most sophisticated examples of this technical and conceptual innovation: by relegating his paint to the bookends of the picture plane, Louis powerfully spotlights his untouched canvas at the center, drawing attention to its physicality.
Titled with Greek letters, in the order of their being stretched, the works invoke a return to the origins of humanity – a concept rife among the artists of Louis’ generation. Created at a time of profound reflection upon the meaning and function of painting, the Unfurled works have been deemed to embody what Walter Darby Bannard called “the seeming simplicity and obviousness of all great inventions” (W. D. Bannard, “Morris Louis and the Restructured Picture,” Studio International, no. 188, July 1974, pp. 18-20). Other examples from the Unfurled series are housed in major international collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Originally coming to prominence within the throes of Abstract Expressionism, Louis was strongly influenced by the painter Helen Frankenthaler, whom he first visited in 1953 with his colleague Kenneth Noland. Her large-scale stained canvases, in particular the 1953 work Mountains and the Sea, were to change the course of his oeuvre. Like Frankenthaler, Louis began to use unprimed canvas, applying deliberately thinned pigment that absorbed directly into the fabric like a dye. Louis worked without a brush, leaning his canvas against the wall and spilling his paint down the length of the picture plane. Color and form were thus infused with a new autonomy, divorced from Abstract Expressionism’s emphasis on the artist’s gesture and psyche. “Many examples of twentieth-century art reveal a new expressive ability or a new direction based on the use of a novel technique or material,” writes the art historian and museum director E. A. Carmean, Jr. “We can cite pasted newspaper in Braque and Picasso collages, painted paper in a Matisse découpage, the painterly poured line of Pollock’s classic abstractions … For Morris Louis the staining technique was such a breakthrough” (E. A. Carmean, Jr., Morris Louis: Major Themes & Variations, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1976, n.p.).
The rivulets of the Unfurled paintings represented a new configuration in Louis’ work. Caught somewhere between line and shape, and blurring the distinction between painting and drawing, they recall Jackson Pollock’s pouring technique, as well as the automatist practices of Surrealism. These works instigate a new kind of artistic handwriting, exalting the primacy of mark making. “In the unfurleds Louis made major art out of what might be called the firstness of marking as such – a firstness prior to any act of marking, prior to individuation as a particular type of mark … One’s experience of the unfurleds can be vertiginous. The banked rivulets – here again their vibrant, biting color is crucial – open up the picture plane more radically than ever before, as though seeing the first marking we are for the first time shown the void. The dazzling blankness of the untouched canvas at once repulses and engulfs the eye, like an infinite abyss, the abyss that opens up behind the least mark we make on a plane surface” (M. Fried, Morris Louis, New York 1970, pp. 32-33). As one of the earliest examples of this lauded series executed at the peak of Louis’ career, Delta Omicron rightfully takes its place as a chief example of the artist’s distinct and groundbreaking style.