Marilyn Murphy, Art Police, ca. 1980

"There is a particular logic inherent in Murphy’s conjunction, one based on visual punning and the slightly too bright, almost halated quality of her tonalities. If this is dreaming, it is lucid dreaming, a knowing exploitation of the dream state by Murphy to provide her and us, with images and sensations of improbable freedom and thrilling or hilarious juxtaposition."

• Peter Frank, Curator and Art Critic, Los Angeles
  Ms. Murphy, a Professor of Art at Vanderbilt, was the subjective of a mid career retrospective called "Suspended Animation". This is the description: In this mid-career survey, comprised of forty paintings and drawings by Vanderbilt University professor Marilyn Murphy, the artist’s subjects - represented with the bland anonymity of advertising art from the 1940s and 50s - were confronted with mysterious forces from nature and from within the repressed self that threaten to disrupt their ordered world. Murphy added a surrealistic dimension through the introduction of elements that seemed to have no rational place in the scene, but that contributed to the sense of unease and foreboding.

This exhibition was organized by the Frist Center, with a catalogue essay by the acclaimed art critic Lucy Lippard.

Signature: Titled "Art Police", signed and numbered from the edition of 7 on the front (recto)