Elizabeth Murray Do the Dance 2005

  • Not on view

The title comes from the 1960 Ray Charles/Betty Carter hit Murray listened to while painting this work. The imagery within the jumbled and interrupted maze is at once comic and abject, recognizable and uncanny—an overturned bottle, faces, bodies, and organs, as well as references to the paintings of Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. Unlike these painters, who applied paint to flat canvases, Murray describes her process as "a construction." "The painting comes to me in pieces and it goes up on the wall," she has said.

Gallery label from What is Painting? Contemporary Art from the Collection, July 7–September 17, 2007 .
Medium
Oil on canvas on wood
Dimensions
9' 5" x 11' 3" x 1 1/2" (287 x 342.9 x 3.8 cm)
Credit
Gift of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, Agnes Gund, and Arne Glimcher
Object number
212.2006.a-e
Copyright
© 2023 Estate of Elizabeth Murray / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Department
Painting and Sculpture

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