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Floor 4: Elizabeth Murray & Joan Mitchell: Touch object for Things to Come

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Wall Text

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.”

Tour Navigation

This gallery has 5 entry points. You are viewing the page for: Touch object for Things to Come.
  • West entrance from landing
  • Southeast entrance from Guston
  • Northwest entrance from Twombly
  • Touch object for My Manhattan, January
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