Introduction to Paradise Paradox
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by Alanna Heiss
MOMA PS1, Shadows in Our Sun, 1999-2000, oil on canvas, 96" x 108"
To have a painter as a good friend for many years is to learn about that artist's work in a deeper—and possibly better—way than through exhibitions, or even through ownership. A friendship offers opportunities to see the work develop overtime, and often to stumble across older work during casual visits rather than formal “inspections.”
I have been fortunate to have such a relationship with Judith Murray since she and I were very young women living and making our way in New York City. She was an artist from the South, married to a painter from Hawaii, living a glamorous and productive artist's life with a studio and an ambition to match. Also from far away, in the Midwest, I was a young exhibition organizer and director of several not-for-profit artist spaces that showed work I chose from the artists of my generation. This meant that I was in the enviable position of visiting many studios and having a pretty good idea of the forward movement of painting and sculpture at that moment, the 1970s, in New York.
Judith's work was always completely serious, and quite formal. It was different from most work in painting and sculpture that I was following at the time because of its composition, determined to some extent by a painted sidebar on the right edge of the canvas, which never varied. The canvases were formally stretched, and never hanging from the ceiling or propped up on garbage cans. The colors were distinctly Judith's.
Judith worked through the years, representing intelligence, change, and commitment to a future that seemed hopeful and commendable. She had great collectors and great viewers and great exhibitions. A few of them were in my spaces: she had an extraordinary show at the Clocktower Gallery in 1972, which attracted viewers surprised not to trip over Dennis Oppenheim's dead dog or Gordon Matta-Clark's naked shower on the tower’s outdoor clock face.
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Judith Murray, Coltrane's Ruby, 1980, oil on canvas, 36" × 40"
Following the inaugural exhibition in 1976, which centered on site-specific work, my ability to show painting seriously at PS1 became a tremendous opportunity. Once again, I turned to Judith and to her brilliant—and at this point quite different and experimental—work, with brushstrokes so wild and lush that it was hard to reconcile with the contained and determined forms of her previous work.
Beauty itself became, as far as I could see, the determining lighthouse beacon of the artist, and in the years since, this has not changed. The new works in this book show the result of the last 10 years of what would appear to be Judith’s desire to make a painting you could lie on and literally fly away into heaven. I know this may sound like a teenage 1960s 45 record, but if you are in the right room at the right time, with the right light, with the right painting of Judith Murray's, you have a possible chance of “lift off.”
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ALANNA HEISS is a New York-based curator and founder of PS1 Contemporary Art Center (now MOMA PS1), who has organized over 700 exhibitions world-wide.