BP Artist Talk: Malcolm Morley

Malcolm Morley is admired for his refusal to settle into a style or a way of making art that is predictable. “I wouldn’t want anything I did to look like anything else and I wouldn’t want anything else I’ve done to look like much of what I’m doing now.”

The British-born painter, who has lived in the United States since 1958, is credited with initiating two influential art movements in the 20th century: Super Realism and Neo Expressionism. A notoriously troubled childhood and intense period of analysis has lead Morley to realise that the events of his life fed both the content and the process of his art-making. He is candid about the artworld and never afraid to take risks. He subscribes to Freud’s observation that you can’t achieve happiness “unless you can tolerate a certain amount of uncertainty.”

The artist, winner of the first ever Turner Prize in 1984, gives a lecture on his work.

Supported by BP