at the Carnegie Museum of Art

Cold Mountain 3, 1988-91, oil on linen, 9' x 12'

This single decade retrospective allows an analysis of what has transpired since this late eighties’ stylistic break. Marden has developed his calligraphic mode throughout the nineties in allover works that bring linear drawing to the painting act . Combining eastern transcendence and western formalism, these works represent an inspired fusion of two abstract forms that Marden had been exploring for decades, the monochrome and the responsive line.

This exhibition’s works on paper continue the drawing exercises Marden began in 1972 when he chose long ailanthus twigs for his rendering tools. Cold Mountain Addendum II, 1991-92, and Green Eaglesmere Set, 2, 1993, have the accidental organic energy of Marden’s earlier ink sketches, but are juxtaposed with equally expressive thinned gouache fields.

Marden’s first major linear painting series, “Cold Mountain,” extends the ailanthus drawing technique to oil paint, linen and monumental scale. Cold Mountain 2, 1989-1991, shows an organic scaffold of somber blues, blacks and whites on muted warm ground. Like the drawings, the lines are expressionistic and prone to accidental occurrences. The marks constantly shift weight, direction, and trace hard angles along with liberal curves.

As the decade progressed, Marden’s palette became hotter and more vivid while his lines became more controlled. Painterly nuances once derived from paint layering now in the nineties come from a material paucity in thin washes and flat paint application. In dematerializing his already spare technique, Marden sometimes sands the paint to the canvas’ nap, thus literally leveling the hierarchy of support and medium.

The bold colors of Calcium, 1993-95, evoke Marden’s earlier high key explorations in his eighties’ panel paintings. Dense blue, orange and green are woven on and through a lavender washed field. These color combinations display the mastery of tonal relationships gained through years of studying and adjusting those of his monochromatic panels.

Later works like Study for the Muses (Hydra Version), 1991-97, show Marden controlling calligraphic expression. The forms are similar, but the line weight and density here is noble, homogeneous, and clean edged, a cartographic interpretation of Pollock’s skeins. Such works offer a tremendous depth illusion through lines that intertangle and are overpainted by the “background” color.

Han Shan, the eighth-century Chinese poet who inspired the “Cold Mountain” series, wrote of his freedom from the physical “world of dust.” Marden, too, in his later work transcends the physicality of his past paintings, forsaking fleshy substance for estimable palimpsests, all the while maintaining spiritual sensibility.

William V. Ganis

Brice Marden Work of the 1990s: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints is on view at
The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania May 20 - August 13, 2000.