Transcript Elizabeth Murray - Norfork Panthers

SHAPED CANVAS ARTISTS
Abstract Expressionists
Frank Stella
Elizabeth Murray
Charley Hyman Armstrong
FRANK STELLA
Reading
Material
Stella began studying art at the
tender age of fourteen . His
much-proclaimed works –
“Transitional Paintings” and
“Black Paintings,” were
produced in Stella’s New York
art studio. An exhibition of
Stella’s work was held at the
Museum of Modern Art,
beginning in 1959.
Frank Stella
Frank Stella
During this creative
period, the influence of
the abstract
Expressionists is
unmistakable. For the
next two decades, Stella
exhibited throughout
the world, while
continuing to work as a
teacher.
“The Pequod meets the Bachelor”, 1988, Mixed
media on etched magnesium and aluminum ,
Frank Stella
The large-scale pop art
paintings he produced
in the 1960's became a
seminal part of
American art history.
Between 1960 and
1980, Stella exhibited
throughout the world,
while continuing to
work as a teacher.
FRANK STELLA "Il Drago e la cavallina fatata", 1986
oil, urethane enamel, fluorescent alkyd, acrylic and printing ink on canvas, etched magnesium, aluminum and fiberglass
386.7x440x96.2cm
Frank Stella
From 1978 to 1980, a
traveling exhibition in
the U.S. showed a
retrospective of his
work. Stella’s “post
abstractionist,” largescale pop art paintings
are now imbedded in
art history.
“Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb”, Mixed media on
etched magnesium and aluminum SIZE: h: 179.5
x w: 160.5 x d: 57.5 in / h: 455.9 x w: 407.7 x d:
146 cm
ELIZABETH MURRAY
Shape Canvas Painter
1940-2007
Featured in Art21
Terrifying Terrain
Elizabeth Murray
CRITICAL ANALYSIS PROCESS
1.) Describe – State the facts.
2.) Analyze – Discuss this art
using the expressive
properties of the elements
and the principles of design.
3.) Interpretation – What do
you think this means?
4.) Evaluation – Was this artist
successful? (After a fair amount
of discussion go to the next slide
and read about this work.)
Elizabeth Murray
"Terrifying Terrain" was inspired TERRIFYING TERRAIN
by a rock-climbing trip in
Montana. Murray translates the
strong visual, tactile, and
psychological moments of this
experience into paint by creating a
shaped canvas that embodies the
rugged terrain she encountered.
The surface of the work is highly
irregular and uneven, with
overlapping planes, conveying the
mountainous Montana landscape.
While
climbing
multiple
layers over
of rock, the artist recalls that small pieces of
rock were continually breaking off and falling down around her.
This precarious situation was translated into the addition of
small raised pieces to the surface of the canvas to resemble the
falling rock. The opening in the middle of the canvas is meant
to simulate the experience a climber would have looking down
into a ravine.
As is a common strategy in many ofTERRIFYING TERRAIN
her works, Murray also fuses
elements of the real world with
abstraction. Here, a bright red dress
floats incongruously over the center
of the dark green landscape, adding
a surreal note and suggesting a
hidden layer of meaning. Such
speculation is encouraged by the
artist, who, characteristically,
incorporates several themes into a
single work. The long, skinny
sleeves
of thethe
dress
wrap their
way around
periphery
of the irregular canvas, holding
together the fragmented pieces of the landscape, both literally
and figuratively. Like her contemporaries Jennifer Bartlett and
Susan Rothenberg, Murray reasserts the importance of
narrative content within the abstract idiom. This painting is a
major work by an artist who received critical acclaim in the
1980s and gained popular appeal in the 1990s.
TERRIFYING TERRAIN
"Terrifying Terrain,"
Murray effectively mates
deliberate design with
happenstance and
disjointed forms with an
underlying structure,
merging the artistic
freedom of the action
painters with the clean
essentials of the
Minimalists. The result is
an exhilarating jigsaw of
overlapping layers and
shifting planes that
coalesce into a shallow,
Elizabeth Murray
A pioneer in painting,
Elizabeth Murray’s
distinctively shaped
canvases break with
the art-historical
tradition of illusionistic
space in twodimensional pictureplane.
Elizabeth Murray
Jutting out from the wall and
sculptural in form, Murray’s oil
paintings and watercolors playfully
blur the line between the painting as
an object and the painting as a space
for depicting objects.
Elizabeth Murray
Her still lifes are reminiscent
of paintings by masters such
as Cézanne, Picasso, and
Matisse; however, like her
entire body of work, Murray’s
paintings rejuvenate old art
forms. Breathing life into
domestic subject matter,
Murray’s paintings often
include images of cups,
drawers, utensils, chairs, and
tables.
Elizabeth Murray
These familiar objects are
matched with cartoonish
fingers and floating eyeballs.
Abstraction is a key
component. Murray’s paintings
are abstract compositions
rendered in bold colors and
multiple layers of paint.
Elizabeth Murray
SUMMER WIND
But the details of the
paintings reveal a
fascination with dream
states and the
psychological underbelly
of domestic life.
Elizabeth Murray
BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Murray was born in Chicago in 1940. From an early age, she
showed an interest in art that her parents encouraged. In elementary
school she sold drawings of elephants, cowboys, and stagecoaches to her
classmates for 25 cents apiece. This early success kept her interest in art
alive.
A high school teacher
recognized her talent and
created a scholarship for her
at the Art Institute of
Chicago. Murray took classes
in figure drawing, landscape
painting, and traditional
techniques. She walked
through the exhibit halls of
the Art Institute museum.
Surrounded by masterpieces,
she was inspired to become a
painter.
Elizabeth Murray
In the 1960s, she was told
that painting was dead.
Everything that could be
done had been done. Murray
refused to listen and kept
painting. Through her
perseverance, she developed
a style that combines
painting with sculpture.
Murray is now considered a
master of the shaped canvas.
Elizabeth Murray
“For a couple of years I’ve been
working with cutting out shapes
and
kind of glomming them together
and
letting it go where it may, like
basically making a zigzag shape
and making a rectangular shape
and a circular, bloopy, fat, cloudy
shape and just putting them all
together and letting the cards fall
where they may. I don’t know why
I’m doing it this way
because what I want more than
anything else in my life and in my
painting is for things to unify, to
come
together.”
— Elizabeth Murray
“Bop”, 2002-2003. Oil on canvas, 9”10” x 10” 10 ½”
Photo by Ellen Page Wilson Courtesy
PaceWildenstein, New York
Elizabeth Murray
“Painting is a whole other deal.
It’s so physical. You’re squeezing
the paint out of the tube, which
is fun. You’re mixing up the
paint. There’s a whole other
kind of process, physical process,
to get over to the space, to the
canvas, to the actual painting,
and then start putting the paint
on.”
— Elizabeth Murray
“Bowtie” 2000, Oil on canvas, 85 x 77 ½”, Photo by Kerry Ryan McFate
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York
Elizabeth Murray
“For me, and I think this is different
for all artists, I can have as much
control as I want to have. But the
minute I start controlling it too
much,
it stops making sense. I don’t want
that mark-by-mark control. I want a
certain amount…and then I want to
let go of it. And I’m not talking
about
happy accidents. That’s not like
what
really happens in the work. If I let
something just slide off, it’s not
something that I’m not seeing. I see
every little inch of it. It’s all about
getting what I intend and what my
head and my emotions want and
what my arm does. And letting my
arm do things that I think I don’t
“Worm's Eye”, 2002. Oil on canvas, 97 x 92” Photo by Ellen Page Wilson
know
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York
about.” — Elizabeth Murray
Elizabeth Murray
CHARLEY HYMAN
ARMSTRONG
LINKS

Foam Board Paintings Lesson

Frank Stella Reading Material

Art21: Elizabeth Murray

Drawing Insights: Line, Shape, Value, Form, Light and Shadow,
Space, Linear Perspective, Size and Proportion, Expressive
Properties Quiz