Dis Pair
Elizabeth Murray
American, 1940–2007
fall 1989 - winter 1990
A pair of large, shaped canvases painted in oil with plastic caps on wood in which Elizabeth Murray turns picture-making into a buoyant, sculptural duet that playfully disrupts the traditional flat rectangle.
Deep cobalt, looping yellow lines and irregular ovoid silhouettes pull your eye around the surface, then into cutaway circular hollows and protruding triangular funnels that make the pieces read like two whimsical, mechanical organs jutting from the wall.
By hybridizing painting with relief and found elements, Dis Pair helped reopen the canvas as an object—bodily, theatrical, and cartoonish—advancing late 20th-century experiments that blurred painting and sculpture.
Medium
Oil and plastic cap on canvas and wood, two parts
Dimensions
10' 2 1/2" x 10' 9 1/4" x 13" (331.3 x 328.3 x 33 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Marcia Riklis, Arthur Fleischer, Jr., and Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro; Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund; and purchase
Accession
110.1990.a-b
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
