Bedtime
Elizabeth Murray
American, 1940–2007
1996
A mezzotint and monotype by Elizabeth Murray that stages pillow‑ and ribbon‑like, cartoonish forms to evoke the uncanny, dreamlike motions of bedtime.
The image hits you with a velvety night: deep, burnished blacks and muted jewel tones contain bulbous, almost sewn shapes and a sinuous red ribbon dotted with eye‑like discs, all floating in an ambiguous, theatrical space.
Murray’s print pushes printmaking toward the sculptural and painterly, folding cartoon energy and ambiguous domestic narrative into a tactile, late‑20th‑century rethinking of abstraction and image‑making.
Medium
Mezzotint and monotype
Dimensions
plate: 19 1/2 × 19 1/2" (49.6 × 49.6 cm); sheet: 28 3/4 × 26 9/16" (73 × 67.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Emily Fisher Landau
Accession
242.1996
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
