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work of the month: January 2001

Stirring Still
Elizabeth Murray, 1997
Oil on canvas on wood
Museum purchase and gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold B. McKinnon, Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Waitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Paul O. Hirschbiel, Mr. and Mrs. Norman C. Willcox, Mr. and Mrs. Harry T. Lester, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred F. Ritter, Jr., Mr. Thomas J. Brockenbrough, Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Dalton, Mr. and Mrs. George M. Kaufman, David and Susan Goode, Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Light and Norfolk Southern Corporation, Shelley and Jeffrey Weisberg, and the Walter P. Chrysler Art Purchase Fund.

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"I paint about things that surround me - things that I pick up and handle every day. That's what art is. Art is an epiphany in a coffee cup." - Elizabeth Murray

What two words best describe Elizabeth Murray's artwork? "Motion" and "Color." Early in her career, she often looked to comic books for inspiration. "Comic books are like slowed-down film in the way time and sequences are framed," explains the artist."I did a lot of painting using that structure."

Stirring Still is a prime example of Murray's use of motion to illustrate the tension of human emotions. "Stirring Still pictures a couple of snuggling, Disneyesque dancing jugs in several fabulous shades of blue, their caroming 'stirrers' looping above and below like racing umbilicals," a critic noted. If Murray wants us to imagine these metaphorical cups in a kitchen, then is it a scene of domestic tranquility or conflict? What does the title of the work suggest? As the composition literally changes, churns, right before your very eyes, Stirring Still reflects the artist's continuing treatment of human emotion and physicality through a celebration of color, form and shapes.

Murray gained inspiration from Pop artists such as Claes Oldenberg, who created art from ordinary, everyday objects. She earned her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1962, her MFA from Mills College in 1964, and then settled in New York in 1967. During the 1970s, she built shaped canvases and loaded them with thick paint. Her first one-woman exhibition was held at the Paula Cooper Gallery in 1976, when she was 36 years old.

Murray's recognition came during her 1987-88 retrospective, which traveled to six museums nationally. The artist gained "complete control of the complex means and possibilities of her work," believes art critic Roberta Smith. "It seems as if she could no longer resist the rather explicit meanings she found pouring out of her shapes as she painted them. When she gave in, the paintings gained a formal and emotional completeness they had previously achieved only intermittently." During this decade, the artist's renowned coffee cup forms emerged.

Murray has treated many household objects in her recent paintings - from steaming hot mugs to kitchen tables, to sneakers. Because her works are a celebration of paint, the artist says her key influences were Matisse and C¹zanne, with their sensuous use of color. Murray's colors are applied in thick strokes, and her painted shapes dialogue with her sculpted canvases. Her idea for a painting begins as a small drawing, which evolves into a 3-D clay model, then into sculpted sheets of poplar plywood, which are covered with canvas. Finally, she moves in with luscious layers of paint which reflect emotion and her sense of playful humor. How do the colors in Stirring Still define the relationship between the two cups? What exchange is taking place here, and how do the movement and shapes accentuate this?

"Murray's unique blend of image and abstraction in Stirring Still is the end-of-the-millennium counterpoint to the Abstract Expressionist, Pop and Color Field masters," says the Chrysler's Curator of American and Contemporary Art Lynn Marsden-Atlass. "The painting's sense of movement and visual energy underscore a theme of anxiety that is pervasive in the art of the 1990s." Murray's work reflects emotion and humor through its ever-moving colorful shapes. What feelings do you have when you look at Stirring Still?

Elizabeth Murray will speak at the Chrysler Museum of Art on Wednesday, January 31, 2001 at 6:00 pm in the Museum Theatre.

-- Julie Strohkorb

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Artists keep their own work fresh by talking with their contemporaries and studying the techniques of those masters who have gone before them. What trends in art have influenced Elizabeth Murray?

Fauvism
A short-lived French expressionist movement in painting appearing in 1905 distinguished by bold distortion of form and the use of strong, pure and discordant color. Henri Matisse's work provides an excellent example. Influenced by African, Polynesian and South American decorative arts, these artists realized how unexpected shapes and colors suggested new ways of expressing emotion.

Cubism
An early 20th-century movement in art that consisted of the rediscovery of pictoral space, based on principles of simplified forms and a shifting point of view. These artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, wanted to capture the essence of forms in space by presenting the forms from several different angles in abstract arrangement.

Abstract Expressionism
A post-WWII attitude in painting characterized by emphasis on spontaneous, free, and psychic self-expression. These artists exercised considerable freedom of technique and execution to attain this goal, with a particular emphasis on the physical characteristics of paint itself to evoke expressiveness. Abstract Expressionist artists included Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline.

Pop Art (stands for 'popular' art)
A style begun by American artists in the 1960s including Claes Oldenberg and Andy Warhol. Popular culture, especially the media and advertising, provided subjects for artists of this movement which chiefly celebrated postwar consumerism.

RESOURCES

Atkins, Robert. ArtSpeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990.

De la Croix, Horst, and Richard Tansey, Gardner's Art Through the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.

Harrison, Jefferson C. The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections. Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum of Art, 1991.

"History of Painting." Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago: Britannica.com, Inc. Accessed December 18, 2000 www.britannica.com

Smith, Roberta. "Motion Pictures." Elizabeth Murray: Paintings and Drawings. Eds. Sue Graze and Kathy Halbreich. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1987. 8-25