Desmond Morris

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Desmond Morris (1969)

Desmond John Morris (born January 24, 1928 in Purton near Swindon , Wiltshire , England ) is a British zoologist , behaviorist , publicist and artist.

Morris became internationally famous for his bestseller The Naked Monkey . Various books on the body language of humans and animals followed. a. "Bodywatching / body signals", "Babywatching", "Catwatching", "Dogwatching" and "Horsewatching", which are also available in German.

Life

After completing his school education and his military service (1946-1948) Desmond Morris studied at the University of Birmingham until 1951 zoology . Already during his military service he gave lectures in fine arts at Chisledon Army College and began to paint professionally.

Immediately before beginning his studies, at the age of 20, Morris had his first painting exhibition at the Swindon Arts Center. In 1950 he was able to present his paintings together with Joan Miró as part of a show of surrealist works in the London Gallery. Also in 1950 he wrote and produced two surrealist films: Time Flower and The Butterfly and the Pin . Exhibitions in Belgium and Oxford followed . In 1957 he combined his artistic interests with behavioral issues in a unique way by having chimpanzees painted on canvases, exhibiting their paintings and drawings at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts and thus being able to make comparisons between great apes and human children.

From autumn 1951 Desmond Morris had enrolled at the University of Oxford for zoology and researched there for his doctorate degree (obtained in 1954) under the later Nobel Prize winner Nikolaas Tinbergen on aspects of communication in the reproductive behavior of sticklebacks . Morris published nearly 50 articles in journals in the 1950s and 1960s, his first being published in Behavior in 1952 .

In 1956, Morris moved to London, where he became head of a film and television team for Granada Television working for the Zoological Society of London . He developed the behavioral television series Zootime for ITV and 100 episodes of Life in the Animal World for BBC2 . In 1958 he published his first children's book about a chimpanzee in the London Zoo: The Story of Congo , which was a frequent guest on his television programs and made famous through abstract painting . In 1959, Morris moved to the London Zoo, where he worked as a curator for mammals until 1967 . The book that made him world famous was published in 1967: The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (German: Der nackte Affe ).

In 1967 he gave up his job at the London Zoo and became director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Surprised by the enormous commercial success of his sociobiological bestseller about the naked monkey , he left the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1968, moved with his family to Malta and devoted himself entirely to painting and writing for several years. In 1969 came - as a continuation of the naked ape - his book The Human Zoo (German: The Human Zoo ) on the biology of life in big cities.

In 1973 Desmond Morris returned to Oxford University and spent some time researching the innate foundations of human behavior in the group led by Nikolaas Tinbergen, who was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in December of the same year .

In the following years Desmond Morris undertook several world trips, wrote a large number of popular science, behavioral books, produced educational and television films, painted and showed his pictures in numerous exhibitions.

Desmond Morris has been married to Ramona Baulch since 1952 and has one son and four grandchildren.

Publications (selection)

  • The painting monkey . On the biology of art [A contribution to the investigation of visual behavior in great apes and to basic research in art]. With a foreword by Bernhard Rensch. (Original title: The biology of art translated by Hans Georg Lenze), dtv 517, Munich 1967 (license from Rauch Verlag Düsseldorf 1963)
  • The naked monkey. (Original title: The Naked Ape translated by Fritz Bolle), Droemer Knaur, Munich / Zurich 1968, as paperback: ISBN 3-426-03224-4 (Knaurs Taschenbuch 3224, 26th edition 1995)
  • The people zoo. 1969: Munich (Droemer Knaur), ISBN 3-426-00296-5
  • Intimate behavior. 1971: London (Random House), ISBN 978-0-394-47919-4
  • My life with animals. 1981: Munich (Droemer Knaur), ISBN 3-426-26036-0
  • Love goes through your skin. The natural history of intimate behavior. 1982: Munich (Droemer Knaur), ISBN 3-85886-001-8
  • The person we live with. A manual of our behavior. 1983: Munich (Droemer Knaur), ISBN 3-426-26072-7
  • The game. The fascination and ritual of football. 1984: Munich (Droemer Knaur), ISBN 3-426-26047-6
  • Why do dogs wag their tails? 1992: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-05807-0
  • Dog watching. The dog's body language. 2000: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-16503-9
  • Why do cats hunch their backs? 1991: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-05213-7
  • Das Tier Mensch (The human animal) 1994 from the Engl. v. Hasso Rost ISBN 3-8025-1278-2
  • Cat watching. The cat's body language. 2000: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-17259-0
  • Horsewatching. The horse's body language. 2001: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-19724-0
  • Man watching. Journeys to study the human species. 2002: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-18103-4
  • Why does the zebra have stripes? Body language and behavior of the animals. 1994: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-04371-5
  • Body talk. Body language, gestures and signs. 1997: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-12297-6
  • Babywatching, the body language of babies. 1998: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-14128-8
  • The naked Eva. The female body in the course of cultures. 2004: Munich (Heyne), ISBN 3-453-12006-X
  • The Naked Man: A Study of the Male Body. 2008: London (Jonathan Cape), ISBN 978-0-224-08042-2
  • with Steve Parker: The world of the apes (original title: Planet ape translated by Michael Kokoschka and Eva Sixt ), National Geographic / G + J , Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-86690-162-9
  • Owls: a portrait . Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95757-088-8 .
  • The life of the surrealists . Translated from the English by Willi Winkler, 352 pages, Unionsverlag, Zurich 2020, ISBN 978-3-293-00556-3 .

Web links

Wikiquote: Desmond Morris  - Quotes

supporting documents

  1. ^ Eva Hepper: “When the painters went to the zoo” , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed May 26, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Morris, Desmond
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Morris, Desmond John (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British zoologist, behaviorist, publicist and artist
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Purton near Swindon , Wiltshire , England