Brice Marden
dal 28/10/2006 al 14/1/2007
Segnalato da
28/10/2006
Brice Marden
The Museum of Modern Art - MoMA, New York
This retrospective is an unprecedented gathering of his work, with more than fifty paintings and an equal number of drawings, organized chronologically, drawn from all phases of the artist's career. Two new large-scale paintings exhibited for the first time are included. The gradual, deliberate evolution of the artist's work becomes evident, as well as the constant exploration of light, color, and surface at every turn.
A Retrospective of Paintings and Drawings
The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Gallery, sixth floor
The Paul J. Sachs Drawings Galleries, third floor
This retrospective of the artist Brice Marden is an unprecedented gathering of his
work, with more than fifty paintings and an equal number of drawings, organized
chronologically, drawn from all phases of the artist's career. Two new large-scale
paintings exhibited for the first time are included. The gradual, deliberate
evolution of the artist's work becomes evident, as well as the constant exploration
of light, color, and surface at every turn. The work of the first twenty years,
characterized by luminous monochrome panels, which first won the artist acclaim, is
now seen in balance with the celebrated work of the past twenty years. In the
mid-1980s Marden shifted to calligraphic gestures embedded in shimmering grounds
before moving to heightened color in the past decade. An installation of drawings is
installed in the Paul J. Sachs Drawings Galleries on the third floor. A major
publication accompanies the exhibition.
Brice Marden
American, born 1938
Ardently embracing painting's history, recent and remote, Eastern as well as
Western, Marden has explicitly cited affinities with everyone from the Spanish
Baroque realist Francisco de ZurbarA!n to the Tang and Sung Dynasty calligraphers of
China.
Marden acknowledged his Asian inspiration, and bases his idiosyncratic
interpretation of calligraphy on an overall fabric of translucent strokes.
Suggestive of nets and webs, the open tracery in Vine (1991-93) and related works
also recalls Philip Guston's loosely snarled drawings of the late 1950s and early
'60s, as well as the interstitial linear element in the flagstone pattern mimicked
by Jasper Johns in paintings such as Harlem Light (1967). Likewise, Marden's work
invoke the allover abstractions of Pollock. Marden's delicately articulated canvases
open inward to gossamer strands wafted by fluid currents.
The combination of respectful ambition and genuine refinement found in Marden's work
is the mark of a traditional painter. Unshaken by avant-garde attacks on his medium,
the artist has sought to synthesize once divergent approaches to it, and so add to
the still unfolding history of abstraction. As with all purposefully traditional
enterprises, the goal is not progress toward the unknown but fulfillment of an
existing promise. The rewards for such efforta€"manifest in Marden's work is art
of great stylistic fluency and beauty.
Image: Vine. 1991-93. Oil on linen, 96 x 102 1/2" (243.8 x 260.3 cm). Fractional
gift of Werner and Elaine Dannheisser
October 29, 2006 January 15, 2007
MOMA - The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues - New York
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