Composition - Times Square (Composition de Broadway)

Inscriptions

Signed, lower right: Morris; signed, dated, and inscribed on reverse: Top / George L. K. Morris / Composition--Times Square / 1945 / Composition de Broadway. Label on reverse from Downtown Gallery, New York #9

Label

The subject matter of this almost totally nonrepresentational painting is indicated only by the title and the few words incorporated into its design— “42nd ST,” “N.Y.T.” (New York Times), “CAPITOL,” “RIVOLI” (both movie palaces), and “ASTOR” (a grand hotel in the Times Square district). First used as a device by Cubist painters to emphasize the two dimensionality of the painted surface, the inclusion of such words also reflects the ubiquitous presence of advertising and signage in the modern city. With his Cubist composition and the text denoting the modern city, George L. K. Morris expressed what he believed to be the fundamental characteristics of contemporary life in New York: dynamism, movement, and a place where many forces converge.

Morris, an influential art critic and writer as well, was a major American proponent of abstraction from the 1930s onward. Like his wife, the painter and musician Suzy Frelinghuysen, he was a well-known champion of close ties with European modernism. Even as many other artists and collectors searched for artistic approaches that were distinctly reflective the American experience in the twentieth century, Morris and Frelinghuysen remained steadfast in their enthusiasm for trans-Atlantic exchange.

From the 2019 exhibition Cubism and Its Aftershocks, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Course History

FILM 48, SART 17, The Map, Mary Flanagan, Summer 2013

ARTH 16.2, Picasso: The Vollard Suite, Michael R. Taylor, Fall 2013

THEA 90, Contemporary Practices in U.S. Theater, Laurie Cherba Kohn, Fall 2013

WRIT 5, The Waste Land, Before and After, Melissa Zeiger, Fall 2013

ANTH 50.33, Cartographic Encounters, Kenneth Bauer, Spring 2020

Exhibition History

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Paintings from the Dartmouth Collection, 1910-1960, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 17-April 12, 1998.

American Viewpoints: Painting and Sculpture from the Hood Museum of Art, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, California, May 5-August 31, 2003.

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 5-June 29, 2001.

Cubism and Its Aftershocks, Citrin Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-February 16, 2020.

Cubism and Its Legacy, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 17-December 20, 2013.

Picturing New York: Images of the City, 1890-1955, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 31-June 21, 1992.

Signspotting: Twentieth-Century Photographs, Prints, and Paintings from the Collection, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 30-August 26, 2001.

Strauss Gallery, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 3-March 5, 1978.

Publication History

Barbara MacAdam, "Picturing New York: Images of the City,1890-1955", Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1992, no.45.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 105, no. 80.

Provenance

Julius (Jay) Rosenthal Wolf (1929-1976), Class of 1951, New York, New York; bequeathed to present collection, 1976.

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Subjects