Brice Marden
1938–2023
By 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 Jasper Johns—while employed as a guard at the Jewish Museum in New York during an important Johns exhibition— fostered his dedication to geometric formats; Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, and Robert Rauschenberg, 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.”
Marden created Summer Table 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 Summer Table 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.
Introduction
Nicholas Brice Marden Jr. (October 15, 1938 – August 9, 2023) was an American artist generally described as minimalist, although his work has roots in abstract expressionism, color field painting. and lyrical abstraction. He lived and worked in New York City; Tivoli, New York; Hydra, Greece; and Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania.
Wikidata identifier
Q475416
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 19, 2025.
Introduction
Known early in his career for his monochromatic canvases created with encaustic paints. Later, ca.1984 he developed a calligraphic abstract painting style, but also returned to his earlier monochromes.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, book artist, graphic artist, painter, sculptor
ULAN identifier
500118786
Names
Brice Marden, Jr. Nicholas Brice Marden
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 19, 2025.
