Curator, Mia Matthias: We are looking at a 1982 painting by Elizabeth Murray titled Yikes, which shows a coffee cup with the contents spilling out of it. But it could be read as a number of other things. It could be a head. The handle of the cup could be an ear.
Artist, Elizabeth Murray: A cup is such an interesting object. It's got an inside and outside; it's got a protrusion—the handle. Sits on a saucer, which is another circle. There's just a lot of ways that you can play around with those shapes. It's three-dimensional and hollow, but you can flatten it out and make it into something different.
Mia Matthias: I think that there's a sense of humor in her work. This cup is larger than life. It's leaning in one direction. It has this giant gap running down the middle. She has this idea of taking these everyday items that you don't think about, and she is warping them and creating something that is both recognizable and that you've never seen before.
Elizabeth Murray: That is what I play with the most, getting an object to be just off enough so that you have to think about what it might be. And then getting the very obvious to go along with the more puzzling elements in the work.
Mia Matthias: She characterized the gap between the canvases as a “yell,” and I think that connects really beautifully to how she's able to animate these inanimate objects and almost find a sense of emotion in items that we use every day.
Archival audio from: Elizabeth Murray and Dodie Kazanjian. Interview with Elizabeth Murray, 2005 June 7-July 20. Dodie Kazanjian papers, 1949-2025. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.