Elena Rossi
Elizabeth Murray (1940-2007) was an American painter known for her innovative approach to the medium, combining elements of sculpture in her works. Recognised as one of the most important postmodern abstract artists of her time, Murray's work is characterised by a Cubist-informed Minimalism and streetwise Surrealism, with a playful and cartoonish style. She challenged the traditional rectangular format of painting, creating shaped canvases that extended from the wall, giving her work sculptural qualities. Murray's paintings often featured domestic objects such as cups, tables, and chairs, as well as abstract shapes and bright colours, pushing the boundaries of what a painting could be.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Approach to combining painting and sculpture | Murray's work is characterised by a Cubist-informed Minimalism and streetwise Surrealism. She approached her work through the constructive vocabulary of sculpture, warping, twisting, splintering, and knotting her canvases. |
| Techniques | Murray stretched the limits of canvas and oil, using curved lines and complex shapes to transform scale, shape, and form. She introduced three-dimensionality to her canvases, breaking from traditional, flat, rectilinear compositions. |
| Notable works | Dis Pair (1989-90), Stay Awake (1989), Her Story (1984), Not Goodbye (1985), Children Meeting (1978), Falling (1976), Painter's Progress (1981), Careless Love (1995-96) |
| Themes | Domestic life, relationships, the nature of painting, birth and death, laughter and confusion, fullness and loss |
| Influence | Cartoons, Walt Disney, comics |
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What You'll Learn
Elizabeth Murray's shaped canvases
Murray's work combines painting and sculpture in a unique way. Her shaped canvases are not just paintings that mimic sculptures, but rather, they are paintings that exist as literal objects in the viewer's space. The artist herself described her process as starting "physically, but ends intellectually." Murray's shaped canvases are characterised by their warped, twisted, splintered, and knotted forms, often with curved and complex shapes that extend outwards from the wall. This gives her work a sculptural quality and creates a sense of movement and energy.
One of the key aspects of Murray's shaped canvases is their object-centred representational nature. Her paintings often depict familiar objects such as coffee cups, tables, chairs, and other stylised objects, as well as cartoonish elements and floating eyeballs. These objects are presented in a playful and imaginative way, with a bright and silly aesthetic influenced by her love of cartoons and animation. Murray's work has been described as a "high-spirited, cartoon-based, language of form."
Murray's shaped canvases are a result of her experimentation with the materiality of paint and her constructive vocabulary of sculpture. She stretches the limits of the canvas, playing with its shape and form to create something that is still a painting but also occupies physical space like a sculpture. This can be seen in her works such as "Stay Awake" (1989), where the painting takes on the form of a coffee cup with visceral elements, existing as a physical object in the viewer's space.
The artist's shaped canvases also explore the layering of planes, textures, colours, objects, and shapes. She uses absences, redactions, and coincidental alignments in her compositions to create a sense of depth and perspective. Murray's work challenges the traditional flat picture plane, encouraging viewers to move around the sculpture to understand its construction. This can be seen in her work "Can You Hear Me," which has been described as a "raucous contemporary memento mori," paying homage to the death of medium specificity.
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Her use of three-dimensionality
Elizabeth Murray's work is characterised by her Cubist-informed Minimalism and streetwise Surrealism. She was determined to make fun paintings, influenced by her love of cartoons, comics, and animation. Her work is intentionally bright, often silly, and always playful.
Murray's use of three-dimensionality is a key aspect of her innovative approach to combining painting and sculpture. She introduced three-dimensionality to her canvases in the 1980s, marking a complete break from traditional, flat, rectilinear compositions. Her shaped canvases, with their curved lines and complex shapes, brought a new dimension to her work, both literally and metaphorically. This approach challenged the art-historical tradition of illusionistic space in two dimensions, as her paintings jutted out from the wall, blurring the line between the painting as an object and the painting as a space for depicting objects.
Murray's three-dimensional works play with the layering of planes, textures, colours, objects, and shapes. She experimented with the physicality of paint, warping, twisting, splintering, and knotting her canvases. This sculptural approach encouraged viewers to move around the work to understand its construction, engaging with the artwork in a more dynamic way.
One example of Murray's three-dimensional work is "Stay Awake" (1989), which depicts a cross between a coffee cup and a length of viscera or a fleshy organ. The painting exists as a literal object in the viewer's space, with its plywood form visible beneath the stretched canvas. Another example is "Dis Pair" (1989-90), an oversized caricature of a pair of blue shoes with orange laces curling and snaking across the surface like veins or sea worms. This work further emphasises the sculptural quality of Murray's paintings, as the laces seem to curl off the surface of the canvas.
In the 1990s, Murray continued to explore the sculptural potential of her canvases, creating works that extended slightly from the wall, such as "Careless Love" (1995-96). These three-dimensional explorations challenged traditional painting conventions and expanded the possibilities of what a painting could be, showcasing Murray's innovative and imaginative approach to her craft.
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The influence of cartoons and animation
Elizabeth Murray's work is characterised by a Cubist-informed Minimalism and streetwise Surrealism. She was influenced by painters ranging from Cézanne to Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Her childhood love of Walt Disney and comics also underpinned many aspects of her art throughout her career.
Murray's lifelong interest in cartoons and comic books influenced her artistic style. She sold sketches for a quarter each as a child and aspired to be a cartoonist. She also created comic books. Her work often began as a shape that she sketched or moulded in clay before creating her paintings on laminated wood and canvas.
Murray's work is considered playful, with her still lifes including images of cups, drawers, utensils, chairs, and tables, matched with cartoonish fingers and floating eyeballs. She brought humour to the ordinary, imbuing her works with intense colours and bizarre perspectives. She also introduced geometries that transformed scale, shape, and form to her thickly painted and layered compositions.
Murray's work is also considered to be a form of storytelling. She evokes human characteristics, personalities, or pure feeling through an interaction of non-figurative shapes, colours, and lines. She also explores themes of birth and death, laughter and confusion, fullness and loss.
Murray's work challenges the limitations of the picture plane, ultimately giving us the death of the two-dimensional composition and flatness. She creates a cartoon Cubism by not only breaking the picture plane but also cracking the objects themselves into smaller forms.
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The role of parody and pastiche
Elizabeth Murray's work combines painting and sculpture through her unique approach to the canvas, which challenges the traditional rectangular format and two-dimensionality of paintings. Her shaped canvases, three-dimensionality, and playful subject matter all contribute to a style that blurs the lines between painting and sculpture.
Parody and pastiche played a significant role in Elizabeth Murray's artistic practice, particularly in how she approached the history of painting. Parody, by definition, is an imitation produced with the intention to mock gently or playfully. Pastiche involves borrowing elements from various sources and combining them in a way that creates something new.
Murray often employed Cubist and Modernist abstraction techniques in her work, reinterpreting famous artworks from art history. By doing so, she playfully poked fun at the seriousness and hallowed history of painting as a medium. Her work is characterized by a sense of playfulness and a bright, colourful palette, influenced by her love of cartoons and animation. This intentional approach to subject matter and style was Murray's way of making fun paintings, moving away from the contemporary seriousness associated with the medium.
Murray's work can be seen as a parody of the traditional rectangular format of paintings. By pushing the boundaries of the rectangle and creating shaped canvases, she challenged the conventions of illusionistic space in two-dimensional art. Her works, such as "Children Meeting" (1978) and "Falling" (1976), are excellent examples of this. These shaped canvases are a form of parody and pastiche, referencing and reinterpreting art-historical styles while creating something uniquely her own.
Additionally, Murray's work often engaged with the themes of abstraction, fragmentation, and perspective, which were prevalent in modern painting during the 1980s. Her work expanded the field of painting by moving beyond the flat surface of the picture plane and integrating sculptural elements. This integration of sculpture into painting can be seen as a parody of the traditional distinction between the two art forms. By blurring the lines between painting and sculpture, Murray playfully challenged the seriousness and boundaries of artistic media.
In conclusion, Elizabeth Murray's use of parody and pastiche was integral to her innovative approach to combining painting and sculpture. By playfully engaging with art history, challenging traditional formats, and integrating sculptural elements, she expanded the possibilities of what a painting could be, leaving a lasting impact on the world of art.
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Her innovative approach to materials
Elizabeth Murray's innovative approach to materials is evident in her use of shaped canvases, which break with the traditional two-dimensional format of painting. By experimenting with the edges of the rectangle, Murray created works that extend from the wall, blurring the line between painting as an object and as a space for depicting objects. This three-dimensionality is further explored in her works from the 1980s, where she used multiple canvases for a single work, such as "Painter's Progress" (1981), which is composed of 19 canvases.
Murray's innovative approach to materials is also seen in her use of sculptural elements within her paintings. Her works often combine thick layers of paint with elements of sculpture, warping, twisting, and knotting her canvases to create a sense of movement and energy. This can be seen in her piece "Dis Pair" (1989-90), where the paint curls and snakes across the surface like veins, giving it a sculptural quality.
Another example of her innovative use of materials is her work "Stay Awake" (1989), which is a literal object in the viewer's space. It is a plywood form with a canvas stretched over it, challenging the traditional flat picture plane of painting. Murray's work "Her Story" (1984) also plays with the layering of planes, textures, colours, objects, and shapes, creating a sense of depth and abstraction.
Murray's childhood love of cartoons, comics, and animation influenced her bright and playful use of colour and form. Her work is often described as playful and goofy, with a strong sense of parody and pastiche, poking fun at the seriousness of painting as a medium. This can be seen in her use of bright colours and curved lines, as well as her incorporation of familiar objects such as coffee cups, tables, and chairs, combined with macabre images like floating eyeballs.
Overall, Murray's innovative approach to materials combines the physicality of paint with the constructive vocabulary of sculpture, expanding the possibilities of what a painting can be and challenging traditional art historical conventions.
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Frequently asked questions
Murray's childhood love of Walt Disney and comics underpinned many aspects of her art throughout her career. She also loved her mother's miniature paintings and cartoons and animations. She once wrote to Walt Disney, offering to be his secretary.
Murray combined painting and sculpture by using three-dimensionality in her canvases, breaking from traditional, flat, rectilinear compositions. She stretched the limits of the canvas and oil to make something that is still a painting but convincingly mimics a sculpture. She also used plywood forms over which canvas was stretched and adhered, refusing to let go of her medium.
Examples of Murray's work that combine painting and sculpture include 96 Tears (1986-87), Stay Awake (1989), and Dis Pair (1989-90).
Murray received numerous honours in recognition of her work, including the Walter M. Campana Award from The Art Institute of Chicago (1982), an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1984), and a MacArthur Fellowship (1999). She was also an instructor, visiting artist, and lecturer at various institutions throughout her career.
