Brice Marden

"Paintings are physical. So is the act of creating them. This physicality should be emphasized. If you're not working with preconceived forms and thinking, then you can concentrate on expression. It is possible, I think, to make art on this instinctive level, out of a deeply felt response. The longer I paint, the more I think this is true."

Brice Marden, excerpted from Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retropective, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Brice Marden was born in Bronxville, New York in 1938. He studied art at Boston University and Yale University in the late 50s and early 60s, developing a preoccupation with rectangular formats and the repeated use of a muted, unique palette.

Marden moved to New York after graduation, he worked as a guard at the Jewish Museum and came into contact with the work of Jasper Johns, furthering his interest in gridded compositions. He made his first monochromatic single-panel painting in 1964, the year of his first solo exhibition and a stay in Paris, where he was inspired by the work of Alberto Giacometti. The next few years saw his first solo show in New York, his employment as Robert Rauschenberg's assistant and multiple semesters as a painting instructor at SVA.

Throughout the 1970s, Marden's work was showcased at Documenta, in a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and in various exhibitions that traveled throughout the United States. Trips to Rome and Pompeii strengthened his interest in Greek and Roman art and architecture.

In the mid-1980s, Marden turned away from Minimalism toward gestural abstraction, traveling to Thailand to learn about calligraphy and the art of the brush stroke. He continued to exhibit regularly in New York throughout the 1990s and was the subject of two major traveling shows. Marden currently lives in New York City and Hydra, Greece.

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retrospective Essays by Gary Garrels, Richard Shiff, Brenda Richardson, Carol C. Mancusi-Ungaro and Michael Duffy. In the autumn of 2006, The Museum of Modern Art will present Brice Marden: A Retrospective, the artist's first major American retrospective. The exhibition, which will travel to San Francisco and
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THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780870704468
$65.00 | Not available

Brice Marden: Letters Text by Jeffrey Weiss. The paintings and drawings that compose Brice Marden's Letter series, the artist's first extended group of works since his 2006 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, demonstrate the
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MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY
ISBN: 9781880146552
$45.00 | In stock

Brice Marden: The Grove Group
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GAGOSIAN GALLERY
ISBN: 9780962434761
$40.00 | Not available

Brice Marden

Brice Marden: Letters

Text by Jeffrey Weiss.
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery

The paintings and drawings that compose Brice Marden's Letter series, the artist's first extended group of works since his 2006 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, demonstrate the persistence of labor and method that has characterized the artist's practice for over four decades now. The Letter paintings have in common a strict formatting device: borders or bands of color along the left and right vertical edges of the canvas. This device was derived from a specific example of Chinese calligraphy, a Sung dynasty poem by Huang T'ing-chien called "Seven-Character Verse," which Marden first encountered in 2006, at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Marden's line steadily meanders and turns, always at ease with the edges of the frame, running along it or doubling back once it is touched. This monograph presents six of the Letter paintings alongside 13 related works on paper.

BRICE MARDEN: LETTERS
$45.00 | In Stock: Order now or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.