Collage IX: Landscape

George Morrison (1919–April 17, 2000) was an Anishinaabe artist from the Grand Portage Reservation in northern Minnesota. He created landscape paintings and wood collages in a unique style that drew on elements of Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. He is one of Minnesota’s best known artists, and as his career progressed, he was recognized as one of the first contemporary Native artists to explore new forms of modern art not traditionally associated with Native American art.Morrison grew up impoverished, one of 12 children in Chippewa City, near the shores of Lake Superior. He spoke only Anishinaabemowin until he was about 6 years old, when he was sent to a boarding school in Wisconsin, where he learned English. Through his early years, his teachers recognized and nurtured his talents. Eventually, he achieved an art scholarship to the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), which he attended from 1938 to 1943. That year, he received a prestigious Van Derlip Traveling Scholarship that enabled him to travel to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students League. In 1952, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to travel and study art in Europe. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and at the University of Aix-Marseilles, Aix-en-Provence, France.

In 1954, he returned to New York and developed friendships with influential American expressionist artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollack, and Franz Kline. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Morrison lived in cities in the Midwest and on the East Coast, including New York, Providence, R.I., and the Cape Cod art community of Provincetown, Mass. In Provincetown, Morrison first began to gather driftwood along the beaches for the creation of horizontal mosaic wood paintings. These collage “wood paintings,” which he continued to make for decades, became highly sought after by museums and art collectors.

Throughout his career, Morrison taught art at various colleges, including Cornell, Dayton Art Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, and Pennsylvania State University. However, in 1970 he decided he wanted to return to Minnesota. He took a position at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, where he taught Native American studies and art.

Environmental Influences

Place was incredibly important to Morrison. No matter where he was in the world, when he created new artworks, he would sometimes include the location along with his signature. However, one place—his homeland—held in his mind, body, and spirit a power that never left no matter how far he traveled:

The horizon of Lake Superior is like the edge of the world. Artistically, it’s the dividing line between water and sky, color and texture. It has an extensity that relates it to the broader range of the universe. I like the range of color that’s constantly changing, that’s never the same. I’ve heard other people say they don’t see the lake all the time, but they’re aware of it and when they go on vacation, they miss the lake. (John Camp, St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch, “Artist Confronts Life, Death,” September 7, 1986, p. w11A)

While in Minnesota, Morrison built a home with an art studio on the Grand Portage Reservation on Lake Superior; he named it Red Rock for the jasper
in the nearby bluffs. This period marks a shift back in Morrison’s art to his Ojibwe roots and the nature surrounding him at Lake Superior, as is seen in many of his horizon-line landscape paintings. In a naming ceremony in the 1960s, an Ojibwe elder gave him two names he had dreamed of for Morrison. Both had unexpected resonance to the artist’s career, even though the elder claimed to know nothing of his life. One of the names, Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo (Standing in the Northern Lights), was the title of one of his important 1950s paintings. Gway Ke ga Nay Bo (Turning the Feather Around) is the title of his huge wooden mosaic mural decorating the Minneapolis American Indian Center on Franklin Avenue.

Collage IX: Landscape

Collage IX: Landscape is the first wood collage Morrison made while in Saint Paul, using driftwood he gathered along the shores of Lake Superior.
Throughout his life, the lake’s horizon line inspired how he fitted together the wood pieces he collected. The patterns of the wood grain reminded him of patterns he saw at the lake—clouds in the sky, ripples in water, colorful patches on rocks.

Collage IX: Landscape is an abstract structure, without identifiable subject matter; yet, with its horizon line it intentionally evokes a landscape in nature. Above the horizon line, the wood pieces are similarly shaped, with straight angles prevailing. They are systematically aligned, suggesting the calm order of an expansive, cloud-filled sky. Below the horizon line, the shapes of the wood pieces are irregular in size and shape, with curved edges more evident, and their gathering is chaotic, suggesting the arbitrary shapes and movements of the waves, rocks, and land.

Summary

George Morrison’s works occupy both Native galleries as well as modern art galleries. He was one of the
first Native American artists to break away from cultural stereotypes to create artworks that speak on a universal level, while also maintaining a connection to his roots along Lake Superior.

Questions

Look closely at this artwork made out of many pieces of wood. Artist George Morrison calls this a landscape, a word used to describe an artwork showing a place. What about this reminds you of a place? Look for a line (called a horizon line) that shows where the sky meets the land or water.

The shapes are made of old pieces of wood the artist found, particularly along the shore of Lake Superior. He used the colors and textures of the driftwood to “paint” a picture of the patterns he would see at the lake. What patterns do you see here that remind you of nature? (Think about sky, rocks, water, trees, and light.)

Morrison also sometimes caught glimpses of shapes that reminded him of the Underwater Serpent spirit in the foregrounds of his landscapes (see page 14 in the essay on the Anishinaabe Club). What shapes here might suggest the powerful spirit?

People see so many different things in this “painting.” What do you see in it?

Compare and contrast Collage IX: Landscape with Dyani White Hawk’s painting Untitled (Quiet Strength I) (pages 30 and 42). Both artists use abstraction to express ideas that are important to them. What do these artworks have in common? In what ways do they differ?