Robert Morris At The New School

I went to the new school tonight to hear Robert Morris speak as part of Sculpture Center's "Subjective Histories of Sculpture" series...where artists talk about their own histories. For an hour and a half Morris, who is 77 years old, talked about his youthful employment in train yards around Kansas City, where he grew up. The various positions he held, the risks and dangers of each job, the sounds and smells associated with train work, along with stories about the guy who lost his arm under a train wheel, the wrestling coach who had a heart attack on the way to a meet. All the while images of his sculpture and choreography were projected on a screen behind him. The stories were vivid and descriptive down to the last detail and when it was question time, I asked if he had only recently written these recollections down. He reached into his hat and pulled out a quotation from Nietzsche and read. I loved that this heard edged proto-minimalism was born from trains on the missouri plains. The hanging piece , above, is called "cloud".