© 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
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. 345, checklist no. 946
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 56
