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Monograph on Walter Tandy Murch (2021)
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Recently I became aware of the paintings of an extraordinary Canadian-born artist named
Walter Tandy Murch
(1907-1967). I am amazed to think that I had never heard of him before.
I am drawn to his work in part because it has so much to do with styles
and “ways of seeing” that I myself feel compatible with.
His work has the seemingly effortless charm of
collages and
assemblages,
in which familiar components are recognizable—up to a point—yet
disarmingly strange and beclouded. His paintings are not collages of
course. They are unforced yet purposeful patterns of paint. The mystery
that they induce comes partly from the struggle between the clarity of
the thing portrayed—a bowler hat, gears and scientific tools, the
backside of a manikin—and a half-rhyming, impending surrounding that
threatens to merge. But it doesn’t.
Murch’s very finest works
traverse a tight rope on the cusp of genuinely excellent gallery art
(not easily found at the moment) and the best magazine illustration.
Somehow he excelled at both, and we should not be surprised to find that
his work remains formidable whether mounted on a gallery wall, or
printed in full color on a magazine cover. Among his most powerful
paintings are works that were commissioned as illustrations for the
covers of
Fortune Magazine and
Scientific American.
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Walter Tandy Murch / Cover Illustration
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In researching Murch’s origins, I was more than pleased to find that he was student of
Arthur Lismer (of the
Canadian Group of Seven), one of my favorite painters, and one whose well-known works include a masterful depiction of the RMS
Olympic, dressed in
dazzle camouflage.
As in Murch’s own paintings, Lismer is good at inviting us to
participate in hide-and-seek. Murch moved from Canada in 1927 to New
York, where he later studied with
Arshile Gorky, another favorite artist of mine, who taught
civilian camouflage during World War II. He was also greatly interested in the dream-like box collages of
Joseph Cornell, of whom he painted a portrait in 1941.
While
he was always prolific, Murch was never widely known, perhaps in part
because he dared to be a “fine artist” when exhibiting at the
Betty Parsons Gallery,
and yet to apply the very same skills in illustration, advertising,
graphic design, restaurant murals, the design of department store
windows, and teaching. He lived for only sixty years. In the year before
he died, his work was exhibited in a major retrospective at the
Rhode Island School of Design. In 2021, Rizzoli USA published a full-color book about his life and work, titled
Walter Tandy Murch: Paintings and Drawings, 1925-1967. At the top of this post is the cover.
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Walter Tandy Murch / painting
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Those
who are immersed in vision and art—whether fine art or design—are
nearly always prone to be devotees of cinema. I certainly fall within
that group. Among the films that I admire are
The Conversation,
The English Patient,
Julia,
The Godfather series, and many more. That said, as I was basking in the pleasure of having found the artist
Walter Tandy Murch, imagine my further exhuberance when I also learned that Murch’s son is the celebrated filmmaker and sound designer
Walter Scott Murch. Among his many remarkable films are the few that I have listed above, but there are many more of equal or greater distinction.
RELATED LINKS
Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?
Nature, Art, and Camouflage
Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage
Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage
Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage
Optical science meets visual art
Disruption versus dazzle
Chicanery and conspicuousness
Under the big top at Sims' circus
