George L. K. Morris

The Downtown Gallery, New York

Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm G. Chace Jr., Providence (acquired from the above in March 1969)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Two dynamic scenes juxtaposed in dramatically different lights, George L. K. Morris’ Water Skiing Noon and Water Skiing Midnight beautifully capture how the artist merges abstraction and realism to produce innovative and engaging compositions. In Water Skiing Noon, a speedboat pulls two skiers across a deconstructed landscape that spirals inward towards a lighthouse at the center of the composition. Though the structure of Water Skiing Night mimics that of Water Skiing Noon, the sky has darkened and the speedboat and water-skiers glow against the dim landscape. White beams of light emanate from the lighthouse and streak across the canvas, illuminating the surrounding hills and water. 

In both canvases, the combination of representative and abstract forms is made seamless by fracturing the composition into smaller geometric sections, reminiscent of cubist facettes, that appear to spiral backwards. In Water Skiing Noon, however, the yellow and red stripes disrupt the illusion of recession produced by the layered sections. Morris intensifies the same effect in Water Skiing Midnight by strengthening the contrast between the lighthouse and the surrounding landscape to make the structure pop forward. Like the red and yellow striped sections in Water Skiing Noon, the added beams of light seem to lie flat against the surface of the canvas. 

Both Water Skiing Noon and Water Skiing Midnight wane slightly away from the heavier abstraction of Morris’ early work. The artist’s compositions straddle both representational and conceptual subjects, striking a balance between the two. As described in a 1969 issue of Art Now: New York, Morris is “able to incorporate realistic emblems without losing his sense of abstract structure” ("George L.K. Morris," Art Now: New York, June 1969, vol. 1, no. 6). The push and pull between abstraction and realism within Morris’ oeuvre finds resolve in combining the two in a style that destabilizes common notions of perspective and demonstrates the artist’s modernist creativity.