Sublime Seduction
"Paintings should produce a delicious pain in the eye—make the viewer gasp—knock him down and seduce him."
—Morris Louis We are accustomed to considering canvas as a support on which color is laid in various patterns and combinations. … Abstract Expressionist Morris Louis used the canvas to achieve a very different effect.
Louis worked directly on unprimed cotton duck. The material soaked up the acrylic paints that he dripped or flooded over it such that canvas and pigment became one. He developed the potential of this technique in what he called his "Veil" paintings.
Staining his color directly into the canvas rather than painting it on with a brush, Louis achieved sublime, breathtaking results.
Pictured top: Morris Louis, 1912–62, Beta Upsilon, 1960, acrylic on canvas, 102 1/2 x 243 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Vincent Melzac Collection through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program.
Source: Morris Louis, quoted in Helen Jacobson, "As I Remember Morris Louis," Ten Washington Artists: 1950-1970, exh. cat. Edmonton Art Gallery, Canada, 1970, p. 9, quoted in the museum's publication National Museum of American Art, 1995. and William Kloss. Treasures from the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).
Pictured bottom: Morris Louis, 1912–62, Faces, 1959, acrylic on canvas, 91 1/4 x 136 in., Museum purchase from the Vincent Melzac Collection through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program.