- Author: Desmond Morris & Philip Oakes
- Title: The Secret Surrealist: The Paintings of Desmond Morris
- Binding: hardcover with jacket
- Size: about 9" x 12"
- Pagination: 112pp
- Published: Phaidon (Oxford), 1987; stated first
- Condition: Very good; some light shelfwear of jacket; spine very stiff; very clean
- ISBN: 0714824488
[OCR is approximate, as always]
Desmond Morris has a world-wide public image as broadcaster and zoologist and as the author of popular books on human behaviour. It is not so well known that in private he is also a committed Surrealist painter. He has been active as an artist for over thirty years, and held his first London exhibition, with Joan Miro, as long ago as 1950
Desmond Morris developed an interest in art at a young age. As an only child, he enjoyed the solitude of time spent alone observing the world, and he was peculiarly alive to visual impressions. From these early perceptions evolved both his desire to paint and the keen observation of the behaviour of man and animals for which he is so well known. On leaving school, he spent a year as a lecturer in fine arts, but then enrolled at university to study zoology, and from this time on he has pursued his two interests of art and science in tandem. But he decided to concentrate on science as his profession, and painting has remained a largely private occupation.
Artist and scientist, Desmond Morris actually describes himself as an 'explorer', and certainly there is an enthusiastic inquisitiveness which inspires both his art and his scientific investigations. His paintings are peopled with fantastic organisms, 'biomorphs', in- fluenced by biological shapes and structures, colours and patterns-creatures of the imagination. In his own words, they mutate from canvas to canvas, growing, developing, changing, as the artist nudges them gently through a gradual evolution. It is a strange personal world, and one where the artist admits he himself never knows quite what will happen next. This is what excites his curiosity, and in this book we, his audience, are able to join his journey of exploration.
The Secret Surrealist is published to coincide with an exhibition of Desmond Morris's works at the Mayor Gallery in London. Philip Oakes, poet, author and for many years an arts columnist with The Sunday Times, introduces the paintings, and the artist himself contributes an essay about his work and a commentary on the plates. There are also biographical notes and a complete checklist of works.
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