Aureate Vertical
Artist
George Morrison
(American (Ojibwe), 1919 - 2000)
CultureAmerican
Date1958
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 48 x 80 in. (121.9 x 203.2 cm)
Credit LineGift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Object number71.3018
Collections
Not on view
Label TextGeorge Morrison American, 1919–2000 Aureate Vertical, 1958 Oil on canvas Chrysler was an ambitious collector of paintings by students and teachers from the Arts Students League in 1958, assembling a representative group of works by abstract expressionists of New York, where he spent most of his time. George Morrison’s densely faceted surface and resplendent reds and yellows make this painting seem one with nature, like a sheer granite cliff glowing hot in the desert sun. “Aureate” in the work’s title means “encrusted with gold,” another reference to the intense color palette. Morrison, a Chippewa artist from Minnesota, embraced the complex abstract aesthetic of the New York School but never lost sight of the Midwest’s basic forms and textures of nature: rocks, trees, water, and the horizon line separating earth and sky. Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.3018Exhibition History"Remix Redux: A Fresh Mix For Our Modern And Contemporary Galleries," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, August 15 - December 30, 2012.Published ReferencesGeorge Morrison, as told to Margo Fortunato Galt, _Turning the Feather Around, My Life in Art_ (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998), 100. Gerald Vizenor, _George Morrison: The Story of a Distinguished Anishaabe Expressionist Painter_, 58 min., Santa Fe, NM, School of American Research (Lecture series/Membership Events), January 29, 2004, DVD.
