Floor 4: Elizabeth Murray & Joan Mitchell: West entrance from landing
Overview
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“I really enjoy making [my paintings], and I like the thing-ness of them. It also is my nature to say, “You don’t like objects? Well, I’ll give you objects. You’re not going to believe the object I’m working on right now.”
—Murray, 1987
Elizabeth Murray
Born 1940, Chicago; died 2007, Washington County, New York
Elizabeth Murray initially planned to be a commercial artist before encountering the works of Paul Cézanne and other artists at the Art Institute of Chicago, which persuaded her to become a painter. She arrived in New York in 1967, at a moment when painting was being declared dead, but she never wavered in her commitment to it. Her exuberant, highly physical works draw from the language of cartoons and graffiti and merge abstraction with representation. In the eccentrically shaped canvases she began making in the late 1970s, Murray quite literally expanded the boundaries of painting, and by the late 1980s, her complex artworks were projecting into the viewer’s space.
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“I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me—and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed.”
—Mitchell, 1958
Joan Mitchell
Born 1925, Chicago; died 1992, Vétheuil, France
Raised in a well-to-do Chicago household that valued culture, Joan Mitchell studied art and poetry from an early age. By 1950, she committed herself to abstraction and became one of the few women to gain recognition in the male-dominated art circles of postwar New York. Though her energetic, expressive marks are sometimes linked to her background as a competitive athlete, she worked slowly, to distill memories of places, people, and her beloved dogs. In 1959, Mitchell moved permanently to France, eventually settling in Vétheuil, north of Paris, where Claude Monet once lived. There, she painted sweeping, multi-panel compositions that radiate intensity and color.
Objects
5 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Label Text
1987
Oil on canvas
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1994
It takes time to recognize that this warped canvas represents a table with legs in the form of four small elements that project from the canvas. On its surface Murray painted the dark-blue outline of another splayed table, along with an elongated spoon and a cup filled with an orange-red liquid that splatters outward. She drew upon imagery from her immediate surroundings—everyday objects in her studio and home. The forms unmistakably reference the body, with suggestions of orifices and fluids. At the same time, the pool of orange and the giant drops refer to the medium of paint itself.
Visual Description
A wide, irregularly contoured oil-on-canvas work (about 7 × 9 × 1 ft) presents an abstract composition containing cool greens and blues with a vivid orange-red core. A deep teal field is modulated by soft gradients and shadowy, angular shapes. Near the center-right is a large orange-red oval form, its interior subtly mottled with darker tones. Overlapping this oval on the left side, a white-and-pale-blue ring encircles a small gray center. A thick, white ribbon line trails from this ring and loops downward and to the right, then back toward the lower edge. Several red, teardrop-shaped marks radiate around the central cluster. Some point outward like splashes or droplets. In the lower center, a second circular motif appears: a blue dot encircled by a white ring, set within a lighter blue oval patch. On the left side, a pale turquoise sweep curves inward, and near the lower-left quadrant a small spiral-like circle with a white center is surrounded by tiny red droplet marks. Along the upper right and far left edges, short, raised-looking teal bars or tabs project inward. The palette also contains white contour lines and soft airbrushed shading.
Tactile Description
[DRAFT TEXT UPDATE WITH TACTILE DESCRIPTION] A large, irregularly shaped oil-on-canvas painting shows swirling teal and blue forms around a bright orange-red central oval, punctuated by white-rimmed circular motifs and red droplet-like marks.
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1988
Oil on canvas
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1988
As in My Manhattan, January, on view nearby, this work features a central circular opening from which cartoonish drops flow. Here, however, the surface is a complex, multipart form that bulges out and loops back on itself. To prepare the canvases for works like Things to Come, Murray first sketched her ideas, then modeled them in clay, then translated them into full-scale drawings from which assistants built the shaped wooden supports. Such works blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture. The artist noted: “They’re really paintings, but I think that they do transgress—they’re transgressors into space.”
Visual Description
A large, roughly 9.5 × 9.4 ft oil-on-canvas work with physical depth (about 2 ft) forms an irregular, sculptural-looking shape of bent and broken planes painted saturated ultramarine blue and luminous golden yellow. The composition is split into an upper and lower mass that nearly meet around a circular hole near the center, creating an opening edged with textured, reddish-brown paint and visible canvas thickness. Across the surface, broad yellow forms are bordered by dark outlines and shadowy gradients that reflect folds and bulges. The blue areas are punctuated with angular, lightning-bolt zigzags and small triangular shards in yellow and orange. Several painted, glossy teardrops appear: a larger white-blue droplet near the upper right and multiple smaller drops descend from the central opening onto the lower yellow band. Along the left and right edges, the canvas appears torn back or peeled, exposing inner structure, which include tan wood-like supports, raw canvas, and mottled underlayers. The lower section sweeps in a long, curling arc, ending at the right in a flourish of yellow edged with greenish-black shadow.
Tactile Description
[This touch object is not located within the gallery but can be checked out at the front desk.]
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1989
Oil on canvas
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2008
In Bracket, as in many of her later paintings, Mitchell joined multiple canvases to create a panoramic, immersive composition, producing something of the experience of being in an actual landscape. Bold strokes of cobalt blue, emerald, and sienna are set in different arrangements on each panel, suggesting perhaps the passage of time. Mitchell painted this just three years before her death. Despite declining health, she infused it with all the energy of her earlier paintings of the 1950s. She explained: “I just got up on that f—ing ladder and told myself, ‘This stroke has to work.’”
Visual Description
Spanning about 15 feet wide and 9 feet tall, this oil-on-canvas triptych contains three vertical panels separated by narrow seams. A predominantly white ground is overrun by broad, looping brushstrokes and scraped patches of saturated color—especially intense cobalt and ultramarine blues concentrated across the upper half of the central panel and extending into the right panel. Dense greens cross with the blues in ribboning arcs, while bright oranges and golden yellows flare in clustered areas. This is most noticeable toward the upper left panel and the upper right panel, which creates mirrored bursts at the edges.
In the lower third areas across all three panels, darker earthy browns and maroons gather in angular strokes and blotches. These are interspersed with occasional deep blue marks. The paint marks vary from opaque, thick passages to thinner applications; numerous drips run vertically downward, especially from blue areas near the top and from mixed colors in the middle. Smudged transitions and softened whites partially hide underlying colors, leaving semitransparent traces of earlier marks. A sweeping band of blue dominates the top center, while the lower areas open into lighter, hazier space punctuated by warm, jagged marks and scattered stains.
Label Text
1987
Oil on canvas
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1989
Visual Description
A tall oil-on-canvas painting (about 9 × 6.5 ft) presents an abstract field of color masses and sweeping brushwork over a predominantly white background. Broad, opaque strokes and soft patches build clustered forms: at the upper left, there is a bright yellow-orange cloud of paint with areas of thinner application revealing pale pink and white beneath; at the upper right, a heavy dark green section spreads in blocky, overlapping strokes with multiple vertical drips running downward. Across the middle, saturated cobalt and ultramarine blues intersect with teal and grassy greens, forming a central, swirling band of interlaced arcs and directional marks. Toward the right-center, a darker, mottled mass mixes deep blue with maroon and reddish-brown, edged and punctuated by small flashes of orange-yellow; this area also shows pronounced dripping and pooling. Along the left side and lower portions, orange-yellow strokes reappear in broken patches and smeared marks, while the lower center contains looping green and yellow gestures that thin out into translucent washes. Throughout, the white ground remains visible in gaps between strokes and numerous drips and streaks descend vertically.
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1956
Oil on canvas
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1982
In the upper portion of this composition, arcing green lines interwoven with passages of white suggest the spreading canopy of a tree, while a concentration of thicker marks below hint at a trunk. The dense network of brushstrokes might also be read as the overlapping leaves of an artichoke (normally spelled artichaut in French). Here, as she often did, Mitchell sought to capture her personal response to the landscape, as filtered through her memory. “I could certainly never mirror nature,” she said. “I would like more to paint what it leaves with me.”
Visual Description
An abstract, oil-on-canvas painting (about 5.5 × 6 ft) contains a field of layered brushwork that clusters into a condensed center. Creamy whites and pale grays are applied in loose swaths and softened passages, creating a ground. Looping lines and quick strokes in teal, turquoise, blue, olive, and brown crisscross and knot together, especially across the upper half. The middle of the canvas contains interlaced, calligraphic strokes—some are thin, while others are thick and more opaque—forming a web that alternates between transparency and heavy paint. Toward the lower center, darker, more saturated patches of green and deep blue collect in both vertical and horizontal strokes. The edges are open and pale, with faint, sweeping traces and diluted washes. At the bottom right, a handwritten signature reads "Mitchell."