(Detail) Gridded Monument Man, 1990 The painting features a pair of dead bodies, whose diagonal arrangement is meant to suggest that they are just two of many.
Gridded Monument Man, 1990 84 x 216 x 10 inches The painting features a pair of dead bodies, whose diagonal arrangement is meant to suggest that they are just two of many.
Mona, Mona, 1990 114 x 156 inches For Murphy the problematics of sexuality and knowledge suggested by Mona, Mona are not contemporary but timeless, intrinsic to the human animal, not the products of a confusing and an uncertain era.
(Detail) I Decline, 1988 Diptych (120" x 120") featuring the playwright Sam Sheppard Sheppard's face appears both intense and troubled. Above the furrowed brow and down-cast gaze is a black mass of wildly tangled hair. Playing over this brooding double portrait, on both the actual painting and the plexiglass sheathing, is a fury of indecipherable messages drawn from various texts. Only the Russian word for freedom and the artist's name, both in reverse, can be read. Our inability to understand the writing, to make sense of what is so urgently communicated seems crucial to the work's meaning.
(Detail) I Decline, 1988 Diptych (120" x 120") featuring the playwright Sam Sheppard Sheppard's face appears both intense and troubled. Above the furrowed brow and down-cast gaze is a black mass of wildly tangled hair. Playing over this brooding double portrait, on both the actual painting and the plexiglass sheathing, is a fury of indecipherable messages drawn from various texts. Only the Russian word for freedom and the artist's name, both in reverse, can be read. Our inability to understand the writing, to make sense of what is so urgently communicated seems crucial to the work's meaning.
(Detail) The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1989 referencing the eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson.
The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1989 8 ' x 16' the eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson.
(Detail) Three Compositions in Black and White 1989 Triptych, each panel measuring 90 x 56 inches reflects Murphy’s thoughts on the human condition
(Detail) Three Compositions in Black and White triptych each panel measuring 90 x 56 inches
(Detail) Cross Roads, 1990 triptych each panel measures 120 x 120 inches (10 x 10 foot) Three of these monumental figures are featured. The pose, although Murphy borrowed it from Soviet Realism, ultimately derives from images of the Classical gods.
(Detail) Cross Roads, 1990 120 x 120 inches (each panel) (Triptych each panel measures 10 x 10 foot) Three of these monumental figures are featured. The pose, although Murphy borrowed it from Soviet Realism, ultimately derives from images of the Classical gods
Untitled (Salieri), 1988 The painting portrays Mozart's competitor, Salieri, who was consumed with jealousy over Mozart's gift of music. Murphy paints Salieri boxed in and beating against the darkness of his own mediocrity.
The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1989 96 x 192 inches 8 x 16 foot
"Mia's Lover" there are arms and legs which are neither and both. The bow isn't a bow. The darkness is blood. The painting is actually a photograph,the photograph many photographs torn and laced together. The paint that is there isn't on the canvas, but on Plexiglas atop the canvas.
"There are places where the walls almost meet; then, it is the shoulders that take the shock. But instead of stopping short, and even turning back, saying to himself, This is the end of the road, nothing now but to return to the terminus and start again,' he attacks the narrow sideways and finally squeezes through, to the great hurt of his chest and back." This indomitable hero, not the real-life Beckett, is the man pictured in Vladimir's Carrot.
8x16-foot study of one of Murphv's teachers. Jim Herbert, who is used here by the artist as a symbol for all mankind. (By Joseph Perrin, Southern Homes, 1989)
Art/ World The Work of Todd Murphy, 1989 by Joseph Perrin
Dangling in the Tourneforte, 80×70 inches, presents Murphy's homage to writer and poet Charles Bukowski. The title comes from one of Bukowski's poems, and Murphy "used his picture to describe something I feel about him" By Joseph Perrin
Three Compositions in Black and White, each panel measuring 90×56 inches, reflects Murphy's thoughts on the human condition.
Three Compositions in Black and White, each panel measuring 90×56 inches.
" I Decline," 1989 The prominent inclusion of the artist's own name across the top of Sheppard's head reveals his sense of identification with the playwright. By Joseph Perrin
I Decline, 1989, In " I Decline" the shadows are of words falling from the Plexiglas cover back onto the canvas and even onto the gallery wall. By Joseph Perrin
In ironic contrast to the raw power of his art, Todd Murphy relaxes here with his friends. The painting behind him portrays Mozart’s competitor, Salieri, who was consumed with jealousy over Mozart’s gift of music. Murphy paints Salieri boxed in and beating against the darkness of his own mediocrity. By Joseph Perrin is head and professor emeritus of the School of Art and Design at Georgia State University. 1989
"Daedalus" (as self portrait), 1989 “I use art in the same way Daedalus used the wings.” 1989
Daedalus, 1989 Monumentality and power fill the cavernous space of Murphy’s studio. Above, Daedalus, builder of the labyrinth in Greek mythology. He escaped from it by constructing wings for himself and his son Icarus. Daedalus is often used by Murphy as a self portrait. —- by Joseph Perrin, 1989 “I use Art in the Same way Daedalus used Wings.” ——-Todd Murphy, 1989
“Gridded Monument Man (1990). The painting features a pair of dead bodies, whose diagonal arrangement is meant to suggest that they are just two of many. The word "pithecus” scrawled across the work refers to an early primate, Australopithecus. The reference reminds us not only of how far we have evolved but of what has not changed our—mortality. The calm tone of the painting encourages a philosophic acceptance of the fact.”—-Bradford R. Collins
Mona, Mona (1990), for example, appears simply to rehash that favorite icon of popular culture, the face of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. Moreover, the diptych composi- tion suggests a fashionably Postmod- ern take on the theme. During the 1980s, David Salle popularized the format as a way of suggesting a fragmented, divided consciousness. That Murphy meant to suggest something of his own uncertainty via the diptych is clear from his choice of subject. The original enigma of this face has been further complicated in recent times by the complex appropriations of a number of artists, most notably Duchamp, Warhol and Johns. By repeating his own version of the face, Murphy calls to mind those other repetitions. Furthermore, by including the bocce balls at the bottom of his work, he cleverly alludes to the issue of sexual confusion that surrounds not only Leonardo and his famous portrait, but the lives of his three best-known appropriators, listed above. —-BRADFORD R. COLLINS, 1991
In "Mia's Lover" there are arms and legs which are neither and both. The bow isn't a bow. The darkness is blood. The painting is actually a photograph,the photograph many photographs torn and laced together. The paint that is there isn't on the canvas, but on Plexiglas atop the canvas. And six inches away from it is another sheet of plastic scratched and marred. This exhibit of only six paintings, but very large paintings, and a few drawings is one of the best things to be shown in this state in recent memory. The University of South Carolina's McKis- sick Museum BY JEFFERY DAY
"Murphy's presentation manifests a passionate engagement with the thorny issues of his work, a positive, active immersion in them. Ultimately, what distinguishes Murphy from most of his American contemporaries is his commitment to the human- not the American—condition” ——Bradford R. Collins
