© 2013 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Currently not on view
Blind Time L,
1973
Blind Time L is a record of its own making. It documents the act that brought it into being: a straightforward task, described in the artist’s handwritten text on the drawing, that was determined beforehand and executed in a rather perfunctory manner. These sorts of acts, sometimes referred to as task-based performances, proliferated in the 1960s and ’70s, as ways of separating both expression and deliberation from the act of creation, making each work’s composition the result of a predetermined formula and shifting its emphasis from its final form to an exposition of its process. A prolific and influential artist, Morris was a pioneer of this practice; by executing his Blind Time drawings with his eyes closed, he introduced the element of chance and further distanced his control as the artist of the final composition.
More Context
Handbook Entry
A prolific and influential artist associated with some of the most important artistic developments in the 1960s and 1970s, Robert Morris created work in a variety of media, including sculpture, performance, and Conceptual art. Like many of his colleagues, his practice was highly self-reflexive, and it placed a premium on art that addressed the activities of making and looking at art. In addition to a drawing, <em>Blind Time L</em> is also a record of its own making insofar as it documents and acknowledges the act that brought it into being. This act is itself of a very specific type: instead of an exercise in virtuosity or an outburst of creative imagination, it consists of a straightforward task determined beforehand and executed in a rather perfunctory manner. These sorts of acts, sometimes referred to as task-based performances, proliferated in the 1960s and 1970s, their goal being to hinder both expression and deliberation. Morris raised the stakes by executing his <em>Blind Time</em> drawings with his eyes closed, thereby opening the door to chance.
Information
1973
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1974", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 34, no. 1 (1975): p. 22-30., p. 29
- Thomas Krens, The drawings of Robert Morris, (Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, 1982)., cat. no. 72
- Cornelia H. Butler, Afterimage: drawing through process, (Los Angeles, CA: Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 87, fig. 1; pp. 301–302, checklist no. 140; p. 302 (left half of verso, rotated illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), pg. 308
