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Malcolm Morley b. 1931 Christoforo Colombo signed, titled and dated 1965 on a plaque attached to the stretcher oil on canvas 44 1/2 by 58 in. 113 by 147.3 cm. Provenance Jill and Leonard Kornblee, New York Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1973 Exhibited Champaign, Illinois, Krannert Art Museum, extended loan, 1969 Basel, Kunsthalle; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans van Beuningen; London, Whitechapel Art Gallery; Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art; New York, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Malcolm Morley: Paintings 1965-1982, January 1983 - April 1984, p. 19, illustrated in color Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou; Toulouse-Labege, Centre Regional d'Art Contemporain Midi-Pyrenees, Malcolm Morley, June - December 1993, p. 90, illustrated in color and p. 151, illustrated Literature Louis K. Meisel, Photorealism, New York, 1972, p. 476, pl. no. 1086, illustrated in color Jean-Claude Lebenszteijn, Malcolm Morley: Itineraries, London, 2001, no. 22, p. 29, illustrated in color Malcolm Morley's early, and most celebrated paintings, are his series of works depicting ships, liners and battleships, executed in the early-to-mid 1960s. These extraordinary canvases, so detailed that one feels as if one could step into the scene depicted, are a testament not only to the profound conceptual impulse running through them, but also to the actual craft of painting. The early 1960s saw Morley, like Gerhard Richter and Richard Artschwager, making, predominantly black and white paintings of black and white photographs. Just like Richter's 'photographs in paint', these works provided an image that loomed in and out of screens of chiaroscuro, like an object forming and reforming out of hazy newspaper print, or old, discarded snapshots. Crucially, and unlike Richter or Artschwager, Morley abandoned early on the dim tonality of his black and white paintings, and moved into the realm of color. This shift gave his own painting, and its intellectual thrust a whole new dimension. Gone were the nostalgic implications of the blurred image; replaced, now, by fresh, new, hard hues of color photography. Morley's work took on the challenge presented to him by this revolution in 'Technicolor reproduction' and his color Super-Realist paintings thus also became crisper, harder, more 'real', and, of course, secured Morley's place in the annals of twentieth-century painting. Morley's Christoforo Colombo is, of course, inspired by a postcard reproduction of this new liner. Morley has always been a keen sailor, and has a great love for the sea. It is natural, then, that he would turn to this subject matter. Furthermore, Morley's 'purpose' in creating this canvas is to bring to life in oil paint, as clearly as possible, that which was previously achieved in photography. The challenge of a huge liner, with all the small details that come with it and the necessity of clear perspective became a huge undertaking for the artist, but one, which he relished. This explains the dating of the present work (1965-66): the artist exclusively worked on it, probably, for over six months. The painstaking depth and attention to detail achieved is mesmerizing. Morley's technique is similar to the one adopted by Artschwager. He grids up the canvas in accordance with a grid already laid over a reproduction and then, laboriously and lovingly, recreates each 'square' of the grid as faithfully as hand and eye can allow. Morley would execute each square one at a time, often turning the canvas upside down or sideways, so that the literalness of the image would not interfere with the progress of tone for tone, or color for color relationships. For Morley, this technique is telling in terms of his ideas on painting. Previously, he had been an abstract artist, inspired by Picasso, so that he never actually knew what a painting would look like when finished. Moreover, the decision to finish a painting became increasingly subjective. Desiring a more objective response to his own craft and to the art of painting itself, he abandoned the abstract for the 'Super-Real'. The artist knows when the work is finished because the grid (an age old 'trick' of the Renaissance) would tell him so. As such, what is privileged here is not the actual image, albeit highly polished, slick and unbelievably realistic, but the process of its construction. In this sense, the 'abstract' and the 'Super-Real' coalesce together, if not visually, then certainly conceptually. Morley leaves the edges 'unfinished' because he is being faithful to the rendition of the postcard and not the ship itself. If Morley therefore abandoned 'invention' in terms of design, then he concentrates on the operation of painting. There is no gesture here: the artist dilutes all traces of his own brush with the most minuscule striations of paint, painting as if he were a Northern Renaissance master like Rogier van der Weyden or Jan van Eyck in egg tempera. What Morley satisfies here, above all else, is the need of a painter to make a reaction to the onslaught of photographic media; the need of the painter to use traditional tools in inventing new analogies in paint for the complex objects and spaces achieved in photography. Christoforo Colombo is a stunning example of this practice. A sunny, bright kaleidoscope of color prevails, making the hard edge illusionism one of clear light and resilient form. He is here able to achieve the most exacting of details through a technique not too dissimilar from that found in one of Canaletto's Venice paintings. Tiny, flat blobs of paint, from a distance perfectly describe the most minute of details. Upon close inspection, they dissolve into mere matter and surface. Just as a photograph, when seen under a magnifying glass, falls apart into dots of pure color. Color here is even and scrutinized; the brushwork is quiet and perfectly controlled. The picture plane is wonderfully restrained, flattened and condensed. The mechanics of the painted surface are married with the dynamics of the artist's concept: it serves one purpose only, to allow Morley the opportunity of creating a near perfect facsimile in paint. This majestic painting is one of the most important executed by Morley. The resolution is simply mesmerizing, drawing the viewer into a fake world that draws attention not only to the artistic issues of surface, trompe l'oeil and painterly execution, but, also, to the human need for facsimile and our desire to control our lives by reproducing that which surrounds us.