Malcolm Morley on Abstraction, War, and the Pictorial Air of Aviation

In an interview with art critic Eleanor Heartney, veteran painter Malcolm Morley discusses his recent series of paintings inspired by aviation history. Morley, the first winner of the Turner Prize in 1984, is known for his association with photorealism (which he prefers to call 'superrealism') and neo-expressionism. He recounts how his childhood experience of the London Blitz during World War II, where he watched aerial dogfights from rooftops, informs his current works featuring pilots and aircraft. A book on aviation given by a young artist in Brussels sparked his recent focus, connecting to his earlier interests in mythology and heroism. Morley explains his technique of using a grid, borrowed from Richard Artschwager, to paint each square individually, creating a democratic surface without foreground or background. He insists he is an abstract painter, despite the figurative imagery, and admires Cézanne as the master who painted what he saw, not what he knew. Morley also discusses the symbolic elements in his paintings, such as the word 'CLASSIFIED' stenciled on canvases to distance himself from swastikas, and the ironic title 'Rules of Engagement' inspired by Jean Renoir's film 'La Règle du Jeu'. He reflects on the changing nature of warfare from chivalric codes to anonymous, abstract destruction, and positions painting as a primitive but necessary practice in a technology-saturated world.