VirginiaCreates: Elizabeth Murray

Elizabeth Murray was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, draughtsman and mother.

Who Wants, 2003

From the series One series of 6 unique works
3-dimensional multi-colored lithograph/screenprint,
cut, collaged, and hand-painted by the artist
50 × 47 1/2 × 6 in Edition of 6

What I want more than anything else in my life and in my painting is,

however I get there, for things to unify and for things to come together.

Elizabeth Murray

my understanding is that this photo was taken during a panel of NY artists who met soon after 9/11

Elizabeth Murray is one of my idols, one of my heroines and a woman who I could write about for days and days.

I had the privilege of experiencing, and one does experience Murray's paintings, during her retrospective at the MOMA, NYC, October 23, 2005–January 6, 2006. Murray's was of the first exhibits in the new and improved MOMA. I have always believed that Murray's was the perfect exhibit to showcase the museum's newly renovated space since many of Murray's paintings are huge and need large enough walls and enough space for viewers to stand back to be able to fully appreciate the work.

I was first drawn to Murray's work because I was curious about who was this woman artist having a retrospective at the MOMA and whose subjects had a domestic feel and whose colors were wild and bright. These were all elements of my paintings on the time and I wanted to study how Murray made these attributes of her work succeed in the contemporary new york art scene. But when I entered the museum's galleries and came face to face with Murray's work my curiosity became utter devotion.

Elizabeth Murray, Möbius Band, 1974.
Oil on canvas, 14 x 28 inches (35.6 cm x 71.1 cm)
Collection of Ellen Phelan and Joel Shapiro

The scale of her work is compelling. I still remember standing in front of some of her towering canvases and literally feeling a physical reaction. I was also enamored with her twisted, morphed and sectional paintings. Note these 3 photos of Murray's work, you can see the progression that her canvases take, from square, flat paintings, to shaped canvases to skeleton-like puzzles of connecting and protruding brightly painted uniquely shaped canvas components (note the dates that these works were created).

I was also drawn to how her paintings were really sculptures. She also has 'sculptures', like her 'Red Shoes' shown below.

"Elizabeth Murray" at the Museum of Modern Art,

installation view, with Don't Be Cruel (1985-86),

left, and Beam (1982) and More Than You Know (1983)

I was interested in the artist Elizabeth Murray because of her subject matter and her colors, but once I started to learn and read about her I became a devotee and I remember so clearly the day that I read in the New York Times that she had died, I felt the loss, for me and the world.

Morning is Breaking, 2005-2006
Private Collection, Los Angeles, Courtesy Pace Gallery

Below you will find quotes, excepts and links to more about Elizabeth Murray. Fortunately there is a good amount to be found online. I HIGHLY recommend the art21 episode about Murray. And thanks to doing some research for this post I have discovered that there is a documentary about her, Everyone Knows ... Elizabeth Murray, which I can NOT wait to see. Enjoy! VF

Murray ... painted on wildly shaped, multi-part canvases whose contorted forms gave off a gyroscopic energy, but on close inspection, revealed domestic scenes being blown apart, as if struck by a tornado engineered by Picasso working hand-in-glove with Maxim Gorky, Jean Arp and a crew of wrecking ball cartoonists.

Elizabeth Murray @ Cantor Arts Center

She makes motifs from Frank Stella, Edvard Munch, and Walt Disneyher own. And she uncovers inconsistencies in each. It makes her retrospective a great end to the first year of MoMA's expansion.

Nudging and Shaping, Joan Snyder and Elizabeth Murray, by John Haber

http://www.haberarts.com/moma04.htm

Elizabeth Murray (September 6, 1940 – August 12, 2007) was born in Chicago in 1940. She earned a BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. A pioneer in painting, Murray’s distinctively shaped canvases break with the art-historical tradition of illusionistic space in two-dimensions. Jutting out from the wall and sculptural in form, Murray’s paintings and watercolors playfully blur the line between the painting as an object and the painting as a space for depicting objects.

Her still lifes are reminiscent of paintings by masters such as Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse; however, like Murray’s entire body of work, her paintings rejuvenate old art forms. Breathing life into domestic subject matter, Murray’s paintings often include images of cups, drawers, utensils, chairs, and tables. These familiar objects are matched with cartoonish fingers and floating eyeballs—macabre images that are as nightmarish as they are goofy. Taken as a whole, Murray’s paintings are abstract compositions rendered in bold colors and multiple layers of paint, but the details of the paintings reveal a fascination with dream states and the psychological underbelly of domestic life.

art21.org

Red Shoe, 1996, The Stuart Collection at the UC San Diego

While visiting the campus, Murray was drawn to a grove of diminutive eucalyptus trees near the theaters and drama department. The image of a shoe emerged quickly, prompting Murray's first fully three-dimensional site work. "It was like taking one of the paintings and filling it up with air, which feels to me something that they are already trying to do. Like blowing themselves up somehow; there's a lot of pressure from the inside," she explained.* *Simon, Joan. "An interview with Elizabeth Murray." Elizabeth Murray: Recent Painting. New York: Pace Wildenstein, 1997.

Inspired by Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock’s work, as well as Pablo Picasso’s Cubistworks, American painter Elizabeth Murray’s oeuvre span styles from a Minimalist use form and color to bold, cartoonish Surrealism. Her works push the boundaries of a two-dimensional medium; the irregular triangles in the “Giant Maiden” series (1972) strain against the edges of canvases painted in high relief, while the explosive colors on an intricate collage-like canvas in Do the Dance (2005) lend the painting a kinetic, almost optical quality.

American, 1940–2007, Chicago, Illinois, based in Washington County, New York

www.artsy.net

While she achieved a good deal of recognition in her lifetime, Elizabeth Murray, the subject of this fine yet too-short documentary, remains an American artist who hasn’t quite gotten her due. One hopes “Everybody Knows ... Elizabeth Murray” changes that at least a little. (my hope as well. vf)

Review: ‘Everybody Knows ... Elizabeth Murray’ and Now You Will Too

EVERYBODY KNOWS ... ELIZABETH MURRAY

NYT Critics’ Pick, Directed by Kristi Zea, Documentary, Biography

GLENN KENNYJAN. 10, 2017

Continue reading the main story

“Bop” and the Process of PaintingElizabeth Murray

click here to read Art21's interview

https://art21.org/read/elizabeth-murray-bop-and-the-process-of-painting/

Murray in front of her large-scale mosaic mural entitled Blooming in a New York subway station
Lexington Avenue (59th Street), 59th Street · Installed: 1996.

"One of Murray's newest works is also the largest and most ambitious of her career -- a 120- foot mosaic mural that graces the mezzanine of a subway station in midtown New York City. The mural depicts a richly-colored fantasy of sunbursts, coffee cups and serpentine tree branches. "I had this vision of people getting up really early, half in a dream state, putting on their clothes, drinking a cup of coffee and getting on the subway to go to work," [said the artist]." Source: usinfo.org.

just a few link to find more about

Elizabeth Murray:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Murray_(artist)

click here to read about her installation/mural, Blooming, in the NYC subway:

http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Artwork:_Blooming_(Elizabeth_Murray)

Elizabeth Murray, 66, Artist of Vivid Forms, Dies

ROBERTA SMITH, AUG. 13, 2007

Continue reading the main story

Elizabeth Murray on Art21

https://art21.org/artist/elizabeth-murray/

The WorldNews (WN) Network, you can find videos and other articles here

www.artomi.org