Art of Ree Morton – Analects & Recitations
Morton’s work is as unusual as her biography. Born in upstate New York, in 1936, Morton, who was a trained nurse, only started making art in her thirties and received her MFA at the age of 34, already a mother of three.
Her entire body of work was created between 1968 and 1977, when she died prematurely in a car accident at the age of 41. But her vision seems to have erupted almost fully formed and, in just a few years, she managed to deliver more than many artists cobble together in a lifetime.
Ree Morton
NYtimes Ree Morton -Artist/Mother
Present in the selection of pieces are many of Morton’s sentimental, décor-oriented, performatively feminine motifs — bows; ruffles; wallpaper; flowers; fairy-tale-looking flags; loopy, girlish cursive lettering — which collectively one critic would later refer to as “Emily Dickinson in love with Raymond Roussel.” When she prepared the application, Morton had been making artwork for less than a decade, and a few months later, she would be dead.
In the 41 years since, Morton — who once described her own artistic ambitions as “light and ironic on serious subjects without frivolity” — has become something of an obsession within the art world.
(photo from pages of Individuals:Post-Movement Art in America Edited by Alan Sondheim)
RECITATIONS
Mean Business
mean
mean ing
mean ing ful
mean
mean er
de mean ing
me an you, babe.
Text by Ree Morgan