Brice Marden

Distant Muses

2000

Acclaimed American artist Brice Marden has long been working in abstract mode, creating lush, monochromatic multiple-panel paintings and notebooks full of mesmerizing drawings that are imbued with the lyricism of calligraphy. He’s been deemed a master of minimalism.

“Ultimately, I’m using the painting as a sounding board for the spirit,” Marden has said. “You can be painting and go into a place where thought stops — where you can just be and it just comes out.”

Marden received his BFA from Boston University College of Fine Arts in 1961 and his MFA from Yale University’s School of Art in 1963. Afterward, the Bronxville, New York, native moved back to New York City. There, he was exposed to the work of Jasper Johns while he was working as a guard at the Jewish Museum and later Robert Rauschenberg’s art when he became Rauschenberg’s studio assistant.

Apart from these iconic artists and the Abstract Expressionist movement, Marden’s inspirations are numerous and broad-ranging: trips to the Hydra islands in Greece since the early 1970s (he now keeps a home there), Baroque masters like Francisco Goya and Chinese stone carvings from the late eighth century. Each of these influences yielded a milestone in Marden’s career, whether he created a revered series of paintings or incorporated a new technique or approach in a practice that has been otherwise evolving for years.

Marden is also known for experimenting with the tools he uses to paint his networks of colorful, rhythmic lines. Sometimes he replaces brushes with sticks, dipping their ends in ink and making art that references Chinese calligraphy. In his early days, Marden was also known to paint with kitchen spatulas. His dedication to gesture and line is at the heart of his practice.

Marden’s work can be found in the collections of the Tate Britain, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and other institutions.

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