Model, from the portfolio Ten From Leo Castelli

This work comes from a portfolio of ten multiples produced by Leo Castelli’s New York gallery in 1967. Robert Morris’s Model relates to a larger endeavor, namely his planned (and never realized) contribution to Land artist Robert Smithson’s runway project for the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. In 1966, Morris had created a rectangular plaster model showing the circular earth mound he proposed to Smithson, invoking a form he had employed in his earlier Minimalist work. For the Castelli portfolio, he rendered the mock-up in molded plastic and, uncharacteristically, chose a vibrant Kelly green, perhaps suggesting the grassy knoll that he envisioned.