Andrew Morrow is an accomplished figurative painter whose CV lists—besides the usual MFA—training in classical animation. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before his paintings began to move. In a recent exhibition, “Something Went Wrong in the Bedroom,” Morrow used a series of paintings as a source for a multimedia video installation, leaving the actual canvases in his studio.
More unexpected than this fusion of painting and movement was the way Morrow married Giovanni Battista Tiepolo with Tracey Emin. With a clear nod to Emin’s messy bed (which, complete with condoms and blood-stained underwear, Emin exhibited as part of the Turner Prize in 1999), Morrow brought a replica of his own bed into the gallery, headboard and all. In contrast to Emin’s sexual abandon, Morrow’s marital bed was restrained, nicely made up: alarm clock, serious reading material and a telephone were carefully placed on bedside tables. There was nothing on the floor but a sprinkling of comfy slippers, children’s toys and a utilitarian-looking bra.
All this was painted white, which made the scene look even more pristine and innocent, while providing a perfect screen upon which to project a computer-manipulated video of Morrow’s paintings. The projection showed a circular view of heavenly clouds that provided an unsteady support for groups of figures in various states of undress. Some had obvious pornographic sources, others—a fox, a lamb—may have come from children’s bedtime stories. Accompanied by soothing, melodic music, the clouds slowly drifted apart, and sets of figures began to change positions and overlap. Here and there, handwritten painting directions appeared in this shifting scenario. This was the bewildering dream of a painter, a father, a man.
Where the bed was restrained, excess—which has been a hallmark of Morrow’s painting—returned in the dream video. There, the overabundance of movement, drama and nudity let Tiepolo in. In particular, the video’s luminosity, tone and composition brought to mind the grand master’s 1752 work Allegory of the Planets and Continents, a ceiling painting in the majestic stairwell of the Residenz in Würzburg, Germany.
Like Morrow’s video, Tiepolo’s painting shows heavenly clouds that provide an unsteady support for groups of figures in various states of undress. Turning these figures into gods and mythical creatures was one way to adhere to 18th-century norms of public display of sexuality while still satisfying voyeuristic desires.
Times change, and Morrow’s installation showed a restraint of sexuality in private (rather than public) life. His dazzling and innovative “motion-painting” created a mesmerizing atmosphere that almost, but not quite, hid the psychological impulse of the dream depicted, an impulse arising from the conflicting demands of middle-class fatherhood, male sexuality and the vocation of painting. With humourous and frank self-analysis, “Something Went Wrong in the Bedroom” touched on real, contemporary issues of male identity while showing connections to—and deviations from—moments of cultural history.
