{"data":{"id":"833","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":833,"topgoose_id":1322,"tms_id":833,"display_name":"Brice Marden","sort_name":"Marden Brice","display_date":"1938–2023","begin_date":"1938","end_date":"2023","biography":"\u003cp\u003eBy the time he finished his MFA at Yale University in 1963, Brice Marden had begun to develop what would become a vital concern of his early work: the use of monochrome abstraction to conjure expressionistic effects. In 1964 his exposure to the art of \u003ca href=\"/artists/653\"\u003eJasper Johns\u003c/a\u003e—while employed as a guard at the Jewish Museum in New York during an important Johns exhibition— fostered his dedication to geometric formats; \u003ca href=\"/artists/1132\"\u003eMark Rothko\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/artists/1143\"\u003eRobert Ryman\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"/artists/1074\"\u003eRobert Rauschenberg\u003c/a\u003e, for whom he worked as an assistant in the mid-1960s, were other notable influences. Minimalism was then the dominant idiom, and while Marden borrowed its formal rigor and muted palette, he did so to expressive ends. In his words, his art is “highly emotional.”\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMarden created \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/2369\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSummer Table\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e using a combination of melted beeswax and oil paint, a mixture he developed in the mid-1960s in order to endow the surface of his canvases with a luminescent tactility. Comprising three panels of equal size, the work seems to pulse with chromatic tension. The artist applied the paint with a spatula, producing a dense, matte surface devoid of brushstrokes. Traces of his process remain, however, in the narrow strip of paint drips and spatters at the bottom of each panel. And although \u003cem\u003eSummer Table\u003c/em\u003e is wholly nonrepresentational, Marden has identified it as rooted in nature and experience. The work’s palette evokes the sun, land, and sea of the Mediterranean, and was directly inspired by the memory of a table set with glasses of lemonade and Coca-Cola that the artist saw on the Greek island of Hydra, where he has spent time since 1971.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500118786","wikidata_id":"Q475416","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:19:07.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-11T07:02:02.566-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/833/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/833/exhibitions"}}}}