MALCOLM MORLEY Another Way to Make an Image, Monotypes

Monotypes are all about touch. Malcolm Morley has one. Several, actually. Blocks of color-saturated ink with currents of tone and texture brushed or wiped across them provide the brilliant, faceted ground for images of aircrafts, boats, and beaches that alternate between ecstatic play and impending or unfolding calamity. Bathers leap and dive, planes leap and dive, vessels ride the swells and shudder. As their technique dictates, most of the 19 works on view are one-shot images. Two woodblock prints and an etching in three separate states have been thrown in for good measure and for contrast, accenting the variety and verve of this good “Bad Painter’s” work in all media. He’s 80 but can still show his contemporaries and his juniors how to make pictures that snap, crackle, and pop. In these examples there may be trouble in paradise (AHOY! Cliff Westermann of the Death Ships!) but it’s paradise all the same, and one comes away as refreshed as if one had made it to the water’s edge. To paraphrase the great French rapper Chuck B. (THAT’S BAUDELAIRE)’s “Invitation to Voyage,” Morley’s differently but comparably hedonistic handmade postcards serve up a place where, “everything is vitality and delight / luxury, chaos and voluptuous.”