Elizabeth Murray the subject of this fascinating documentary from Oscar nominated costume designer turned director Kristi Zea is an extraordinary artist that everyone should know, but sadly few outside the art world do. Hopefully after this very affectionate portrait of her finds the audience it so deserves, Murray will get some of the recognition she is due. It will sadly come a little late for her as shortly after she became one of a few women to ever be granted their own retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2007, she died of lung cancer aged 66.
Born in a small town in Illinois into a desperately poor household, it was Murray’s High School Art Teacher who recognizing how talented her pupil was, insisted on paying the fees herself for Murray to attend Art College in Chicago. Miss Stern was the first of many women who would be there to help Murray through the years. In fact the next one to step up to the plate later on was the influential Soho dealer Paula Cooper who gave Murray her first NY Show.
Several of the talking heads in the documentary, many of them artists, took great pains to explain how Murray’s work over the decades could not be pigeonholed as she continually experimented in different genres and each time managing to put her own spin on them.
If being a female artist trying to break through in a field which was regarded globally as a closed men-only world wasn’t bad enough, Murray insisted on having a full family life too. When her first marriage failed and she was then as a single parent, she re-married and at the age of 40 had two more children. Juggling all her roles however didn’t seem to faze her at all, and according to her offspring, now adults, they were used to their mother spending hours with them in her painting studio, enriched their young lives.
Zea’s film is enriched by the fact that it includes several interviews with Murray herself as she prepares for the MOMA Show. Frail after all the aggressive medical treatments, she still shows a remarkable determination to work as often as she can. From all accounts it is the same spirit that she has nurtured throughout her life and career, and whilst she pragmatically accepts that she never got her fair share of success and financial reward because she was a woman, there is not even a hint of bitterness or regret in her words.
Then there is her work itself. It is incredibly beautiful, passionate and full of color too. As she got physically smaller due to her health, the actual art got bigger and intricate. There is a wonderful scene when one of her latest pieces was being installed at the Venice Biennale, and the curators jump for joy when they finally manage to hang this large cut-out work exactly right.
Murray’s work is now in many of the most prestigious galleries such as the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and the Hirshhorn Museum, and this documentary will quite rightly having you make tracks to see them.
The title of the film is also the name of the last piece of art that Murray was working on before she died ……now everybody actually does have a chance to know.
