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This image is for study only, and may not accurately represent the object’s true color or scale…
Etched Murmurs
This image is for study only, and may not accurately represent the object’s true color or scale…
This image is for study only, and may not accurately represent the object’s true color or scale. It should not be shared or reproduced without permission by the copyright holder. 

Etched Murmurs

Primary (Galesburg, Illinois, 1910–New York, New York, 2012)
Place MadeSanta Monica, United States, North America
NationalityAmerican, North American
Date1984
MediumEtching
DimensionsSheet: 19 x 15 1/4 in. (48.3 x 38.7 cm)
Plate: 11 7/8 x 9 1/8 in. (30.2 x 23.2 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Barbara and Jim Metcalf, 2024.54
Rights Statement
Collection AreaPrints and Drawings
Object number2024.54
On View
Not on view
Collection Highlight
Label Text
In Dorothea Tanning’s work of the late 1960s and ’70s, the Surrealist artist shifted from the crisply rendered “allegories of a dream state” that defined her early work, to vaporous, prismatic paintings and fabric “soft sculptures” featuring abstracted bodily forms and figures, depicted in stages of metamorphosis or locked in erotic struggles. The prints and drawing shown here trace this transition in her work, with amorphous figures entangled in a dance, an embrace, or a battle. Etched Murmurs, a reprise of her 1976 painting Murmurs, features a brown figure that may represent one of Tanning’s beloved Pekingese dogs, which often stood in for the artist herself.
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