A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 196)

much larger imaginative realm…Gordy’s approach is, in many Ida Kohlmeyer accepted a teaching position at the University senses, mathematical: his patterns are recursive in nature, spiraling of New Orleans in this period, inspiring a new generation of into and out of one another, glimpses of but a single edge of an artists who studied with her at this new public university. She ever-extending fractal.” Gordy died at the age of fifty-two, in also expanded her own range and vision during the 1960s and 1986.27 1970s, moving from Abstract Expressionist works influenced by Rothko and Hofmann, such as Portent #2 (1960), to more Gordy joined a significant group of faculty artists when he geometric abstractions such as Rondo #2 (1968) and Slatted taught at Southwestern Louisiana University in the 1950s. Under William Moreland, the Southwestern art faculty grew in (1968), to figurative works such as Astride (1970-71) and Untitled stature, including the hiring of Elemore Morgan, Jr., a native of (Five Nudes) (ca. 1971), to abstractions such as Circus Series #2 25 (1978) and Vertical Rectangle #1 (1979). Clyde Connell advanced Acadiana who had studied in England at Oxford University on the GI Bill (with her evolving vision during American students who these years from her studio included R.B. Kitaj, on Lake Bistineau, outside Phillip Morseberger, and Shreveport, creating works John Updike). Morgan that included the Swamp returned to his native Songs series, Earth Figures region, where he painted (1970-73), the Post and Gate local landscapes and series of sculptures (1975), subjects, and in the the Non-Person series of wall process taught his hangings (1977), and the students an appreciation Habitat series of sculptures.26 of their own culture and Another artist of note place. Following Morgan’s during these years was death in 2008, William Robert Gordy, who studied Moreland observed that with Hans Hofmann in 1953, then received his BA Morgan “was fascinated degree (1955) and MA by a landscape which is degree (1956) at LSU. He usually ignored…he taught at the University of showed us how to see Southwestern Louisiana it…Interestingly enough, (now the University of that landscape had very Louisiana at Lafayette) in few worshippers…It was 1957, then settled in New there—the sky, the rice fields—not a lot you Orleans, where he became could really romanticize a central figure in the city’s or really feel a lot unless postwar art world. He you stopped and very became well known for carefully looked at it. paintings and prints marked That’s what Elemore by repeated, often geometric did.”28 Morgan was an patterns, evident in a major work such as Boxville Tangle accomplished #4 (1972), and in later years photographer who ROBERT GORDY (b. 1933, Jefferson Island, Louisiana – for large, abstract portraits of human heads, became immersed in Cajun music and culture, d. 1986, New Orleans, Louisiana) completed as paintings and as monotypes. His exploring his native region’s heritage, and the Untitled Male Head, 1984 Mixed media on Formica; 98 x 72 in. work has been associated with the national places and people he had seen earlier with his Ogden Museum of Southern Art Gift of Roger H. Ogden Collection Pattern and Decoration art movement of this father, photographer Elemore Morgan, Sr.29 period. A New Orleans critic recently described From 1974 to 1984 Elemore Morgan, Jr., Gordy’s art, the subject of a 2011 exhibition at the Contemporary photographed Cajun and Creole musicians. He published his Art Center. “Gordy’s work is largely characterized by bold lines images with author Barry Ancelet, in Makers of Cajun Music: and strong forms, stylized but clearly recognized figures, and a Musiciens Cadiens Et Creoles (1984). declared interest in the space of the canvas as a window into a Another major figure from this region to emerge to national 196 ART IN CONTEMPORARY LOUISIANA  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1263 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1266 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1263 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=585

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