Elizabeth Murray: "Bop" | "Exclusive" | Art21

Episode #176: Filmed in 2002, Elizabeth Murray (1940-2007) is shown working on the large-scale painting "Bop" (2002-03) in her Manhattan studio. As Murray adds and removes shapes and colors to its interconnected canvases, she expresses frustration but later satisfaction with the piece. To Murray, experiences like this, of finding resolution after struggling, was a highlight of being an artist. The completed artwork is shown at The Pace Gallery.

Elizabeth Murray's distinctively shaped canvases break with the art-historical tradition of illusionistic space in two-dimensions. Jutting out from the wall and sculptural in form, Murray's paintings and watercolors playfully blur the line between the painting as an object and the painting as a space for depicting objects.

Learn more about the artist at:
http://www.art21.org/artists/elizabeth-murray

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Alice Bertoni & Susan Sollins. Camera: Ken Kobland. Sound: Judy Karp. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Elizabeth Murray & The Pace Gallery.

Elizabeth Murray: "Bop"

If I keep looking at it, I'll have to go back and start working again. [LAUGHS]

What I'm looking for is resolution. I have it one day and I don't have it the next day.

But, that's why being an artist is so great because you can get that kind of satisfaction.

The thing that has been hard about these paintings, is that I don't know how I'm gonna get them resolved.

I thought, when I did the drawings for this painting, I was very excited.

They looked really great to me. And then I blew it up,

And the guys who make these forms for me put it together, made it, and it came back into the studio.

And, you know, the minute I saw it, I just didn't see how it was going to go together at all.

Even before I touched it. Just the way the forms were working.

I just thought: "What was I thinking of! This is gonna be horrible."

And it was really, really a long journey with this painting.

The colors I thought I was going to use, none of them worked in the beginning.

But that's nothing new.

The whole painting was painful.

Usually, what happens is when I start to really hate it, it starts to go someplace.

But it's almost as though you have to get down into that place where

You absolutely hate it and want to rip it off the wall, rip it to pieces, and throw it out,

To start getting into it. It's very strange.

For instance, that particular bloopy shape with the spinal column that goes through it,

I wanted something through the center, it needed something in the middle,

That was going off-center in the form. I had a zig-zaggy line for a while.

And for a while, I liked it, and then one day, I came in here and I said, "No."

The spinal column ended up being a kind of way to get through the shape and into the next shape.

The resolution has to happen without anybody seeing it, not even me.

But I know that it's there. I feel that it's there.

There's a moment when I start to feel it with this painting. And I don't think I could describe it

But I do feel...I feel that with it because I can stop it.

When I look at it, instead of it being this battle, this conflict that I have to try to pull together,

I can look at it, peacefully.

[ART HANDLER 1] Ok, lift for the blocks.

[ART HANDLER 2] Where are the blocks?

[ART HANDLER 1] Come on Steve, we need a block man!

[ART HANDLER 1] No, not on the chicken head. [ALL LAUGH]

When it feels right, it's such a natural thing, when it feels right,

When you realize that something really is completed.