Exhibitions

Brice Marden

June 14, 2003 – January 4, 2004

Brice Marden was born in 1938 in Bronxville, N.Y., and grew up in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. In 1963 he received his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University. The exhibition opens with paintings dating between 1964 and 1976 and characterized by a stringent compositional syntax and a sparing use of painterly means. These early abstract works make reference to Marden’s surroundings, to his personal life and experiences. They consist of one or several monochrome panels, worked in a nuanced palette of grays. The artist devotes meticulous attention to the application of his paint, thereby generating an opacity and sensibility which has been heightened even more since 1966, through the addition of hot wax. Marden’s painting Long Gulf, 1971, recalls the view of the Gulf of Mexico. It is distinguished by a horizontal format that is underscored by the line that separates the two panels, one dark gray, the other light gray. The palette of Star (for Patti Smith), 1972, a vertical work in three panels, is defined by the singer’s pitch-black hair and light complexion. The much reduced visual vocabulary of the paintings is linked with the artist’s personal impressions and feelings. Marden privileges intuition over intellectual knowledge, although fully aware of the interplay between the two.

Another group of works in the exhibition testifies to Marden’s interest in antiquity. He has long cherished the writings of author and poet Robert Graves. In The White Goddess, Graves examines the myth of matriarchy and describes the "Triple Goddess" as maiden, mother, and destructress. Marden’s "additive" panels embody this existential triad, both externally and internally, spatially and conceptually. Thus, the three panels in For Hera indicate the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, while those in Moon III refer to the phases of the moon, which are determined by the constellation of moon, sun, and earth.

In time, Marden produced increasingly complex painted architectures. Elements I, 1981-1982, consists of four panels in green, blue, red, and yellow. For the first time, an additive painting unites the vertical and the horizontal, the column and the beam. Despite the obvious architectural implications, the title suggests an interpretation that embraces the elements of earth, water, fire, and air, as proposed by the philosophy of nature in antiquity. In addition, it indicates Marden’s desire to transform a painted composition into more than the sum of its parts.

In the fall of 1978, Marden was commissioned to design new windows for the choir of the Basel Cathedral. This project, on which he worked until 1985, was never executed, but it confronted him with formal problems that ultimately led to a relaxation of the stringent canon of his painting. This change is documented, for instance, in Athena’s Notebook, 1979–1981. In a series of 30 drawings, the "indisputability of the plane" (Marden) is called into question and, for the first time, diagonals come into play. Similarly, diagonal, vertical, and horizontal lines crisscross and geometrically subdivide the five panels of the frieze-like Second Window Painting, 1983. In conjunction with a reasoned play of color and elements, the composition acquires a perspectival focus and a new sense of space. 

Under the influence of FarEastern calligraphy and poetry, the quality and act of drawing have acquired an even increasing significance since 1984. Untitled #1, 1986, is the first work in the present exhibition that testifies to a "drawn-painted-written" involvement with the art of the Far East. This approach has led to two highlights in Marden’s oeuvre: the Cold Mountain series, 1988–1991, and The Muses, 1991–1993.

Cold Mountain I (Path) shows parallels to the calligraphy of the Far East. The title pays tribute to the famous Chinese poet and hermit of the 7th century, Han Shan (Chinese for "cold mountain"), while the picture itself is laid out in the pattern of calligraphic writing. The signs, brushed in extremely diluted black on white canvas, are inscribed from top to bottom and right to left. Through intense reworking of the canvas, Marden gradually dissolved this strict structure. The signs in each column become a contiguous, linked assemblage; single lines flow into each other, take off on their own, or disappear under layers of paint until, finally, the written signs become pure image.

The nine daughters of Zeus, who delight the gods with their singing and dancing, are assembled in the monumental painting The Muses, 1991–1993. Here the clear structure of a disciplined calligraphy is transformed into a free choreography. The bodies are not figurative and do not describe an external reality; they are linear notations of dynamic movement, which does not render the Muses themselves but rather appears as living, dancing beings. If we accept the artist’s invitation and join the dancers, we will soon be able to understand and appreciate Marden’s artistic approach. Like the Romantics, he senses the inter-est, the being-in-between, between reality and ideal, between form and freedom, between the reality of surface and the sensuality of depth. Like them, he does not want to cancel out opposites; he wants them to interact and fuse into one.