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malcolm morley b.1931
Christmas Tree
(The Lonely Ranger Lost in the Jungle of Desires)
Oil on canvas
72 by 108 in. 182.9 by 274.3 cm.
Painted in 1979.
Provenance: Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York; Acquired from the above in January 1980
Exhibited: London, Royal Academy of Art, A New Spirit in Painting, 1981; 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, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Malcolm Morley, A Retrospective Exhibition, 1983-84; Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Malcolm Morley, 1993
Literature: Flash Art, Milan, no. 114, November 1983, illustrated p. 70; Malcolm Morley, (exhibition catalogue), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1993, illustrated in a photograph showing the 1983 installation at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, p. 198; Vision, 50 Years of British Creativity, London, 1999, illustrated p. 138
Christmas Tree (The Lone Ranger Lost in the Jungle of Erotic Desires) is one of Morley's most complex images, richly decked with psychological and painterly incident. Painted in Florida during an 18-month long stay, this seminal composition presents the world as a densely packed jungle, luxuriant with correspondences, in which highly personal but easily recognizable symbols stalk the viewer. Acting as a mirror for the desires, anxieties and frustrations of the mind and body, this canvas marries different impulses and values - the ancient and the modern, the destructive and the constructive, the primitive and the sophisticated, the infantile and the intellectual, the exotic and the commonplace.
Morley's paintings, drawings and watercolors of the late 1970s and early 80s markedly differ in feel and execution to his previous work. Whilst he never abandoned his primary concerns with the canvas' surface and the actual technique of painting, by the time this work was executed he was increasingly fascinated by content. Moving from the sharp-focus 'super realist' paintings of the 60s, the product of a painstaking transfer of a ready-made printed image onto a two dimensional surface, Morley's paintings of the 70s and 80s took on a colorful, textural brush work, which the artist combined with a vibrant and expressionistic use of oil paint and highly personal subject matter. Layered with imagery, the surfaces of these works appear to have been impacted with objects, postcards, elements from other paintings or preparatory works on paper. Morley would comment: "I build my paintings from disconnected parts. They are put together and create their own architecture of images - like a de Chirico. The painting assembles itself around a specific set of objects." (ArtNews, New York, March 1983, p. 90). The present work bristles with tension, as if the very energy of the act of painting was about to burst out in small chromatic explosions.
In the catalogue of the 1983 Morley retrospective, Michael Compton wrote of this picture: "An obviously still more complex painting is Christmas Tree (The Lone Ranger Lost in the Jungle of Erotic Desires). The title derives from the comment of a neighbour in Florida who said the picture looked like a Christmas tree. The theme is very plainly psychological. The picture centres on a cowboy, symbol of genitally-dominated male sensuality, armed only with a dildo. His arm is 'accidentally' separated from his shoulder by a parrot's tail so that he/you can disown it. Around him are various phallic emblems (the cobra and the train) and filling the rest of the picture, an image of (partly domesticated) primitive sensuality - the parrots in the forest. Above are the dancing legs of a shop window dummy cut off at the crotch. You find also magical signs, the red sun and the white moon, the Buddah-given mark and the head of the cobra. Once more there are traditional devices of painting that structure the sense of beauty or harmony. These are colour complements (red and green, blue and yellow) and, very difficult to find, the proportions of the Golden Section. Morley has used the latter to generate a diagonal comprising the head of the parrot, upper left, of the cowboy and of the cobra. They are no more or less than tactical devices that show the artist's determination to be and to succeed as a painter. A painter can be defined as one who by practicing the physical act of painting may change his own, and other people's perception of the world." (Malcolm Morley, Paintings 1965-82, (exhibition catalogue), Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1983, p. 15).
The present work is set in motion by the quickness of the brushstroke and the surreal collision of the juxtaposed subjects. In its flood of emotions and fascination with the exotic, this image is akin to those painted in a more romantic age, but it is definitely contemporary in its strong and personal interpretation of the familiar and the commonplace. This painting is immediate, invigorating and sensuous, illustrating Morley's appetite for everything that surrounds him.
Please note that this painting has been requested for the Malcolm Morley exhibition being organized by the Hayward Gallery, London, from June 15, 2001 to August 27, 2001.