Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Preview image of work. soft ground etching and aquatint in sepia ink on Arches paper, Conundrums 14899

1991.17.5

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Conundrums

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Artist

Robert Morris (Kansas City, Missouri , 2/9/1931 - 11/28/2018, Kingston, New York)

Title

Conundrums

Creation Date

1989-1990

Century

20th century

Dimensions

4 7/8 in. x 6 1/4 in. (12.38 cm. x 15.87 cm.)

Object Type

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

soft ground etching and aquatint in sepia ink on Arches paper

Credit Line

Anonymous Gift and Museum Purchase, George Otis Hamlin Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

1991.17.5

Robert Morris—known as a major figure in Minimalism, Process Art, and Land Art—is also an ardent anti-war activist. Published by Vinalhaven Press in Maine, this series pairs his dire predictions of imminent catastrophe in the nuclear age with images based on works by Francisco Goya. While Goya candidly illustrated and criticized the human cost of war in the Napoleonic period, Morris responds to the more abstract nature of contemporary warfare conceptually. Made as the Cold War was coming to a long close, the work’s sepia color and long shadow links Morris’s words with Goya’s images in both tone and form. Morris articulated the conundrum: “perhaps evil is abyssal and beyond discourse, approachable only on an allegorical level (of the artists, only Goya looked it in the face).”