MALCOLM MORLEY (American, born England, 1931) Painter’s Floor, 1999 oil on linen with diamond chips, 95 x 95" Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Sarah Norton Goodyear Fund, 1999.

An American painter born in England in 1931, Malcolm Morley’s initial notoriety came in the 1960s when he was painting realistically rendered ocean-liners that were meticulously copied from photographs. Since that time his artistic career has been a succession of changing styles, demonstrating that for him, style is never an end in itself.

This painting is also based on a photograph – an overhead view of the studio floor of the famed abstract expressionist, Jackson Pollock. The photograph was taken at Pollock’s studio in Springs, New York, which is preserved today as a kind of artist’s shrine. In this painting, Morley has produced a precise copy of Pollock’s expressionist paint trails left by the artist years ago. One can also make out details of the grain of the floorboards, knots, nails, and other particulars of the wood floor. The first impression of this painting is that it is an abstraction. When, in fact, it is a realistically rendered image. As such, it can be seen as an homage to Pollock’s expressionist angst and at the same time, a subversion of the expressionist impulse. By rendering these traces of Pollock’s artistic energy with the cool detachment of a photo realist painter, Morley asks us to consider the act of painting as springing from both creative impulse and painterly intelligence.

- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects