Continuous Project Altered Daily

Robert Morris Continuous Project Altered Daily from 1969 is a letterpress print that exemplifies the Minimalist sculptors engagement with the conceptual dimension of art, in which the physical object is secondary to the process of its creation and the ideas that govern it. The title, which describes a project that is continuous and altered daily, is both a description of the work and a statement of the artistic philosophy that motivated it, asserting that art is not a finished object but an ongoing process of modification and revision that never reaches a final state. Morris, who was one of the foundational figures of Minimalist sculpture in the 1960s, expanded his practice in the late 1960s to include text-based works, performances, and installations that challenged the assumption that art must take the form of a discrete object. The letterpress medium, with its associations with office documentation, bureaucratic record-keeping, and the material culture of administration, gives the work the character of a report or a memo rather than a work of art, emphasizing the conceptual content of the title over the visual qualities of the object. The year 1969 places this work in the period when Morris was most actively engaged with Process art and Anti-Form, producing works that challenged the formal austerity of his earlier Minimalist sculptures and embraced the messy, contingent, and process-driven qualities of art that exists in time rather than in the timeless present of the Minimalist object.

Morris text-based and process-driven works of the late 1960s are significant contributions to the development of Conceptual art and Process art, and Continuous Project Altered Daily influenced the development of process-based art and the broader tradition of art that challenges the assumption that art must take the form of a discrete object.

A 1969 letterpress print by Morris titled Continuous Project Altered Daily, asserting that art is an ongoing process of modification rather than a finished object, using the bureaucratic medium of letterpress to emphasize conceptual content over visual qualities in the tradition of Process and Conceptual art.