A Conversation with surrealist artist and author Desmond Morris
Join us in this very special event for an informal presentation by British surrealist Desmond Morris.
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Desmond Morris, b. 1928
Desmond Morris is a zoologist, ethnologist, and painter. He is the bestselling author of "The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal," "The Human Zoo: A Zoologist’s Classic Study of the Urban Animal," :Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior," "Bodytalk: A World Guide to Gestures," "The Artistic Ape: Three Million Years of Art," "The Lives of the Surrealists," and "The British Surrealists."
Morris has had an unusual double career as an artist and a zoologist specialising in animal and human behaviour, in which field he has published some fifty books. In each sphere he has also acted as an institutional director, in the case of the arts being director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1967-8. In the 1970s he was also a research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He was trained as a scientist, and began painting in the mid 1940s. While working at Birmingham University he met the painter Conroy Maddox (born 1912), who organised in Birmingham the last group of Surrealist artists in Britain, which Morris joined. He had earlier admired Surrealist writing, and in Paris in 1948 saw an exhibition of Roberto Matta (born 1911). After the success of his book 'The Naked Ape' in 1967 he was able to give more time to painting, and exhibited frequently in the 1970s. Morris wrote in 1974 of his spheres of activity:
an objective scientist who paints pictures in a highly subjective manner can find himself, mentally, in an attractive position. By giving his subjective fantasies full expression in paint, he can then be unrestrainedly and remorselessly objective in his scientific work� It is true that my paintings are very biomorphic, very preoccupied with biological shapes, and that my biological writings are largely concerned with visual patterns of behaviour (quoted in Levy, p.204-5).
Further reading:
Silvano Levy, Desmond Morris, "50 Years of Surrealism," London 1997 (reproduced p. 147)
Michel Remy, "Surrealism in Britain", London 1999, p.321
Interview with Morris:
https://artuk.org/discover/stories/desmond-morris-on-meeting-miro-and-surreal-life-in-lockdown
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Featured painting, Desmond Morris, "The Arena," 1976, Collection of the Tate Modern
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For books by and about Desmond Morris, see:
https://www.thesurrealistartgallery.com/books
https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-lives-of-the-surrealists-hardcover
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/books/review/the-british-surrealists-desmond-morris.html