Painting Is a Supreme Fiction: Writings by Jesse Murry 1980-1993.

Painting Is a Supreme Fiction: Writings by Jesse Murry 1980-1993.

So excited to finally share this incredible book that Soberscove Press just published!! I’m honored to have been a part of this incredible process. For anyone interested go to soberscove.com to order today!

Painting Is a Supreme Fiction: Writings by Jesse Murry 1980-1993. @soberscove

Painting Is a Supreme Fiction presents the writings of artist and poet Jesse Murry (1948-1993), an exceptional thinker who believed in the capacity of painting to hold the complexity of human meaning. This unprecedented collection brings together his published art criticism with previously unpublished philosophical writing and poetry from 1980 to his tragic death from AIDS-related illness at the age of forty-four. The result is a portrait of an original mind who sought to unite the histories of Romantic landscape painting with the realities of Black experience through “a belief in the restorative and creative powers of the imagination.” In addition to Murry’s writings, this volume further includes excerpts from two 1980 panel discussions on art criticism and expressionism, as well as transcriptions of two of Murry’s notebooks, in which the spatialization of the words across the page approaches the condition of thought. These writings, accompanied by reproductions of selected works, present Jesse Murry in his own words, offering intimate access to this remarkable figure.

Edited by Jarrett Earnest and with a foreword by Hilton Als.

If interested in his paintings you can see his work at David Zwirner @davidzwirner - Jesse Murry: Rising, curated by Lisa Yuskavage and Jarrett Earnest, opening September 17, 2021, at the gallery’s 533 West 19th Street location in New York.

“From Notes on Landscape,” a poem by Jesse Murry, 1987.