Untitled

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    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
mid-1980s
Marker and paint on paper
25.5 x 19.5 inches
Collection of
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Museum purchase and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

Another cancer-related work includes all of the earlier five-color-encoded features, drafted on a piece of pink paper. The color pink seems to have emerged as a symbol for danger or illness in Murray’s work at this time. Typical Murray improvisational arrangements of form, line, and color are interrupted by a protruding creature (in the lower-right quadrant): a growth, a malignant tumor, gland or organ, or anthropomorphic praise figure. At the top of the drawing is a row of small human forms, blue with yellow and black. These are possibly people on whom Murray is counting to help him in his battle with cancer: good but not perfect people, people on the side of God (perhaps his doctor, nurse, preacher, family, and friends). Murray, it appears, depicted neither heaven nor a Supreme Being in his art, but was instead more concerned with earthbound activities and the unseen world containing them.