Richard Morris

After almost five decades of painting in the relative wilderness of San Diego, Richard Allen Morris has suddenly become a deserved art-world darling. Long admired by fellow West Coast artists like John Baldessari and East Coasters like David Reed, Morris has displayed a restless engagement with Abstract Expressionism over his long career, from early, large, blown-up-to-abstraction riffs on Giotto and Toulouse-Lautrec to his more recent, typing-paper-size works that show him to be a virtuoso colorist. One recurring motif has been guns, altered or colored or even “disarmed” of representation and often made comic by this distortion. This comprehensive collection includes essays by Baldessari and the novelist and poet Siri Hustvedt, who curated Morris's first-ever New York show in April 2004.