Now on view in the Post – 1950 American Gallery
Walter Tandy Murch, “Resting Rock”
Walter Tandy Murch
American, 1907 – 1967
Resting Rock, 1961
Oil on canvas
Marion Stratton Gould Fund, 98.78
Walter Murch’s poetic depictions of objects—clocks, gears, light bulbs, tools, stones—defy easy categorization. Amidst his contemporaries in the 1950s and 1960s, Murch’s indefinable style was uniquely his own. Yet, like his Abstract Expressionist peers, he focused on the act of painting itself, and like the Pop artists, he celebrated the lowly, everyday object.
Murch was good friends with another outlier artist, Joseph Cornell, whose The Admiral’s Game is on display nearby. The two shared an interest in the poetic significance of mundane objects. Through their eyes, a common object like a rock or a scrap of weathered wood is transformed into something enigmatic and extraordinary.
~ Jess Marten, Curator of American Art
Posted: June 18th, 2013 under Collection.
Comments: 1
Comments
Comment from Philip Koch
Time: June 19, 2013, 4:31 pm
Murch was in abstract expressionist dominating times an outlier indeed with his palpable love of small distinctive objects. That he would bathe them in his mysterious atmospherie-infused light give them the feeling of being more an elegy that a cataloging of simple things.
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