Stay Awake
Artist: Elizabeth Murray (American, 1940-2007)
Date: 1989
Dimensions:
70 × 89 × 23 in. (177.8 × 226.1 × 58.4 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds given by Rita Barbour Kern
Object number: 2018.17
Label Text:“My paintings are often strange, and sometimes show me a part of myself—a violence and physicality that scares me. It’s not always pleasant or easy. I don’t always like it, and really when I do them it’s a journey.” – Elizabeth Murray
Elizabeth Murray’s dynamic, large-scale shaped painting, which is on canvas laid on a wooden armature, depicts a warped, larger than life coffee cup. Murray is best known for bridging abstraction with representation. She composes domestic objects such as utensils, chairs, and tables, in her cartoon-like, even outrageous visual language that often explores the psychological underpinnings of domestic life.
Murray’s signature style is evocative of her peers, the Chicago Imagists, which was formed by graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960s. In a period when painting was considered a serious, “high” art form, the Imagists defied artistic norms and created works that were brazen and grotesque. In that vein, Murray explores the physicality and structural possibilities of paint and canvas. Through various strategies of twisting, knotting, or collaging, she builds up her surfaces, resulting in a sculptural canvas with the composition protruding out into the gallery space and looming over viewers.
Elizabeth Murray’s dynamic, large-scale shaped painting, which is on canvas laid on a wooden armature, depicts a warped, larger than life coffee cup. Murray is best known for bridging abstraction with representation. She composes domestic objects such as utensils, chairs, and tables, in her cartoon-like, even outrageous visual language that often explores the psychological underpinnings of domestic life.
Murray’s signature style is evocative of her peers, the Chicago Imagists, which was formed by graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960s. In a period when painting was considered a serious, “high” art form, the Imagists defied artistic norms and created works that were brazen and grotesque. In that vein, Murray explores the physicality and structural possibilities of paint and canvas. Through various strategies of twisting, knotting, or collaging, she builds up her surfaces, resulting in a sculptural canvas with the composition protruding out into the gallery space and looming over viewers.
On view