TitleLeopard Panthera
Artist
Malcolm Morley
(1931 - 2018)
Date1997
MediumOil on linen
DimensionsUnframed: 55 7/8 × 43 1/4 in.
Framed: 57 1/4 × 44 3/8 × 2 in.
SignedSigned at lower right: "MALCOLM MORLEY · 97"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, January 20, 1999
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1999.3
Label TextMalcolm Morley was born and raised in London, England and studied first at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts before attending the Royal Academy College of Art. In the late 1950s Morley moved to New York where he was working in a gestural abstract style reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism, which, by the mid-1960s became more Minimalist-inclined. In 1964, practically overnight, Morley began painting large battleships and cruise ships in a highly-realistic style that allied him with the photorealist painters such as Chuck Close, Robert Cottingham, Richard Estes, and others. For Morley, these paintings were a natural outgrowth of the abstractions, which themselves were highly structured. After approximately five years he returned to a more expressionistic style and has continued to make radical stylistic shifts in his work ever since. In 1984 he won the inaugural Turner Prize from the Tate Gallery, London.While Morley had exhibited in New York as early as 1964, it was his inclusion in group exhibitions such as the seminal "Directions 2: Aspects of a New Realism" which traveled to Milwaukee and New York in 1969 that helped expose his work to a larger audience. In the 1990s Morley partially returned to earlier subject matter and was painting kitsch-inspired scenes of battleships as well as images of South African animals taken from postcard imagery the artist had found. "Leopard Panthera" is from this latter group and depicts a leopard with a recently killed deer in its mouth. Some critics have noted that Morley's irreverence and his penchant for kitsch is a deliberate critique on the hierarchical opposition between tastes.
