ABOUT PAINTING
Highlights and key moments from Elizabeth Murray’s interviews and lectures through the years, talking about painting.
About Painting: Labyrinth, 1989
Artwork: “Careless Love (Labyrinth)," 1995-96, oil on canvas, 106.5 x 99.5 x 27 in. (270.5 x 252.7 x 68.6 cm) Collection of the National Gallery of Art
Audio: Elizabeth Murray, October 1996. Elson Lecture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Photo: Elizabeth Murray, December 1987. Photo by Barry Kornbluh. ©2017 The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)
Transcript:
Marla Prather: Then here, a marvelous comparison, our painting, the National Gallery's painting is on the right, “Careless Love” but it's actually on the left as well, because it's led a double life. So it was a painting that you first made in 1989 called Labyrinth. I wonder
if you could talk a little bit about, one, why you decided to change the painting, and then how you did it.
EM: What's the date of the “Wonderful World” painting?
MP: “The Wonderful World” was '88.
EM: Yeah, because I was really trying to develop this idea of the cup physically, and it was coming further and further off the wall. This was the last manifestation of it. I was sort of bouncing off of this painting into this idea, and the painting got... The reason it was called “Labyrinth” was that I felt like I really got into this sort of tortured place with the piece. Some of the imagery is still in there, like the spoon that comes down through the center of the copy image and out, and then around to the right of the painting and into a sort of opening mouth.
So the painting went out of my studio and was seen, and this is kind of like an interesting thing of the life of a painting, because this isn't the only painting that this has happened to. Nobody except me and Paula [Cooper] really liked it. I really felt it was dense and rich and a place I hadn't really gone to before. Usually most of the work that I end up keeping is the work that nobody buys. So it came back to my studio. Eventually I got really tired of putting it out, because they're like, the paintings are really, as much as I always say… I always say, after I'm done with a painting and I've had the experience of making it, I don't really care about it anymore, and that's not really true.
I sort of hate it when something I care about sort of gets shoved away into the store room. So I took the painting back to my studio, and sometimes I put them away and... But sometimes I leave them out. Usually the ones I leave out, I end up cutting up and using in a different way or just throwing them out. This one, I just couldn't bring myself to cut it up. It was like two…
MP: Glad you didn't.
EM: Talk about dreams. I actually had dreams about the painting. That would be like…
MP: Those dreams again.
EM: So finally, I was at kind of an impasse waiting for something that Warren hadn't quite finished. I took the painting down and I put it up in the studio, and in this thrilling moment, I thought, "I'm in a whole different place with this. I still want this shape, but I want something else in terms of the whole feeling of the painting." So I sanded it down completely, and you can see the sort of changes that I made. The basic structure is still there, but I changed the spoon shape, sanded the spoon shape back so that it was flatter against the form, and changed the way it emerged out of the opening of the cup, and I changed the coloration immediately. I changed the coloration and it just began to come alive in a whole other way. But I would never ever want to say that this is more meaningful than this. I would die before I do it.
Tomorrow, 1988
Artwork: “Tomorrow,” 1988, Oil on canvas (4 parts), 11 1/2 x 132 3/4 x 21 1/2 in (283.2 x 337.2 x 54.6 cm) Collection of The Nishi-Nippon City Bank, Kukuoka, Japan © 2021 The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Audio: Elizabeth Murray, October 1996. Elson Lecture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Photo: Elizabeth Murray, December 1987. Photo by Barry Kornbluh. ©2017 The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)
Transcript:
Marla Prather: “We were talking in New York, that you wish that you had a marvelous explanation for why you painted shoes, but it is shoes that interest you and not feet."
EM: "Well, feet too."
MP: "Well, there's a marvelous inside/outside with these…"
EM: "Well, I think that the image, and it is a very compelling image to me. I do wish sometimes that could say exactly why, because it might be really fascinating to understand that. But what I was just thinking was the thing about that I think ... I think the thing that's hardest, and I know throughout time, this has not always been true, what's hardest for people, and sometimes artists themselves, is to really follow your nose and follow your desires, and allow yourself to do something for which there is no explanation, ready explanation. Just as I think it's very hard for many people to really look at something and not try to put words into it, or explanation into it, to really let themselves go with something visual and feel something visual just for the hell of it. Just for the beauty of really looking, because we're not like a looking culture right now."
Chain Gang, 1985–1986
Artwork: “Chain Gang,” 1985-1986, Oil on canvas (4 parts), 114 1/2 x 125 1/2 x 16 1/4 in (290.8 x 318.8 x 41.3 cm) The Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Stanford, California. Gift of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, and Mary Patricia Anderson Pence (1986.008) © 2021 The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Audio: Elizabeth Murray, October 1996. Elson Lecture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Photo: Elizabeth Murray, December 1987. Photo by Barry Kornbluh. ©2017 The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)
Transcript:
EM: I have to say this, sometimes I'll be listening to music or I'll hear a title of a song, a lot of my titles do come out of sort of pop songs that I ... I don't know why that appeals to me so much, but it does. I was listening to the song and I thought, "Oh God, that's a perfect word for painting. I've got to ..." Because I think there's another connection there with the imagery, which is sometimes ... To me painting is an incredible amount of fun and I love it, and it's a way to escape. Really, I think the most beautiful part of painting is when, not when I'm starting it, because I hate it. It's like going to work, going into the studio, getting started. It feels like this arduous task. That's the “Chain Gang” part of it.
But then, once I get going and I am inside of it, the most beautiful part of it is I get out of myself, and actually, maybe that's what people get out of looking at art. You just get out of yourself for a few seconds. It's such a relief. Actually, Picasso talks about that, and it's one of my favorite things that he says. But when I did this painting, it felt like “Chain Gang” was the perfect, perfect name for this painting. The imagery is about feeding. The difference to me in this painting is there are two pieces, there are two panels that slide into each other, and it is kind of like a page, or a book, or an opening book. Then the image of the spoon kind of shape comes sliding out of both sides, and there's a lot of illusionistic ... To me, that's very physical and was very exciting. Then the painting is very illusionistic and sepia of colors and tones that I hadn't really used before or enjoyed so much before. I felt I had so much control over.
Like A Leaf, 1983
Artwork: "Like a Leaf," 1983, oil on canvas, 98 X 90 x 9 in (248.9 X 228.6 X 22.9 cm) Private collection © 2021 The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Audio: Elizabeth Murray, October 1996. Elson Lecture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Photo: Elizabeth Murray, December 1987. Photo by Barry Kornbluh. ©2017 The Murray Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)
Transcript:
Interviewer: Well you mentioned cubism, and I show you hear a painting called Like a Leaf from 1983 against an interior, a domestic still life if you will, by Juan Gris. I'm put in mind of Gris a lot when I look at your work, was he of particular interest to you among the cubists?
EM: Yeah, really am always at a loss to say why. Because he's like the most uptight of the cubists. Maybe there's a connection with Miró with Gris for me too because I think they are very connected, although people don't talk about the two of them at the same time. And Miró reached the high points of his work after Gris was dead. But I'm sure they they knew each other and were connected in some way. But yeah, l love Gris more than Braque, really, It's Braque's cubism, although, you know, that was his in league with Picasso in that period of time. Cubism made a permanent imprint on me when l was a student. And the things loved about it were, for instance, the use of the print, the bringing, the daily ordinary life into the painting, which is what they did and making fun of it. There's incredible wit in cubism that I just really love and I relate it to pop art, really, that I think is just part of my work. It really was a powerful and is a powerful influence. It's not something I think about anymore. I mean, all those things just get ingested and they just become part of you like your DNA you know, your DNA of painting.
Join, 1980
Artwork: "Join," 1980, Oil on canvas (two parts), 133 X 120 in (337.8 X 304.8 cm) Private collection
Audio: Elizabeth Murray, Slide Lecture, Spring 1981, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. Courtesy MICA Archives, Decker Library.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Physically, How do you work on a canvas that size?
EM: With a couple ladders. This painting, It's not easily seen. It’s in two panels. again, similar to the other one, except it's like two straight panels.
Interviewer: How is how does that work in this case?
EM: Well, the division, if you look closely, you can see it right in between the black line and the white line. The two panels come together and I was interested–
Interviewer: They’re hinged together?
EM: Well, they're bolted together, but you can really see there's no attempt to disguise the… I call the painting "Join." I'm really interested in working in pieces, in pieces of things, putting pieces of things together, separate pieces to make a whole. I wanted to do a painting and two panels. I did this painting actually before I did the one you saw before it. So that’s my work up to this point.
Interviewer: Are the straight lines taped? The yellow and the darker one. Are those edges paved at all or are they totally...
EM: I used tape where the green meets the red. That's not yellow there. used tape to get use tape a lot to get the start of the line In some of these paintings, not in all of them. And then I work over the tape with the–That's not a yellow–no I see how deceptive these slides are. That's where the red and the green meet I use tape to form that line. And both of those shapes, the white line on the black line I just drew on straight and the edges of the shape.
Interviewer: But did you use tape selectively?
EM: If I want to make sure the line is going to go straight, I use tape, yeah. To make it start. I don't like to use it to finish up because I don't like that look, it goes too fast. I like to have a slow edge. But I'll do it to kind of map out. I make templates of shapes too. Like cut shapes out of paper and stuff.
Interviewer: To get it?
EM: To get a shape sometimes I'll take piece of paper, big piece of paper and cut a shape out and put it stick it on the canvas. One of the best things about oil paint is it's sticky. It's like glue.
Will, 1974
Artwork: "Will," 1974, Oil on canvas, 15 3/8 X 68 3/4 in (39.1 x 174.6 cm) Private collection © 2021 The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Audio: Elizabeth Murray, October 1996. Elson Lecture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Transcript:
EM: Well just to talk a little bit about the Will painting and the title Will was very deliberate and chosen for that painting. In 1974, I felt that I was starting to get a handle on how I wanted to proceed with the practice of painting And I felt very much–and this is going to sound actually very calculative–But I, when I look back on it, it wasn't so much. I felt I needed a way to get rid of my ego, to like, somehow get my, my practices and my habits in terms of painting out and reduce. And I was also at the time looking at and beginning to understand much more clearly painters like Marden and Agnes Martin, AI Held, Ellsworth Kelly, more conceptual kind of minimal ways of thinking. It took me a number of years to kind of get to the point in my own painting where I began to really to both accept it and go against it at the same time. Well, this is a kind of simplified, very drawn graphic kind of tougher thinking, about painting. What I was really starting to focus on was how how do I want to paint? How do want to build the paint up in the space? And the shape of the canvas was very important. I began, l think with a painting like this to sort of think about shape and different kind of balances and different kind of orders. But the thing that was just as important was like talking about the physicality of the paint.
White & Blue Column, 1973
Artwork: "White & Blue Column," 1973, Oil on canvas, 66 x 14 in. (167.6 x 35.6 cm) Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan. Bequest of James Pearson Duffy (2010.197)
Audio: Elizabeth Murray, Slide Lecture, Spring 1981, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. Courtesy MICA Archives, Decker Library.
Transcript:
EM: I got tired of—This is the same size as the other—using just lying on a ground of paint. And I wanted to do a shape on a ground. This is one of the first paintings like that that I did. And here I just wanted to make a I made a plank of glue and then I took little notches out of it and stuck them on the top and at the side in a sense, I was really thinking a lot about sculpture, and I always have, actually. But with this painting particularly, I was really thinking about sculpture.