Brice Marden, a renowned artist, passed away at the age of 84 due to cancer. In 1966, Marden exhibited his first solo show at the Bykert Gallery in New York, featuring a canvas titled “The Dylan Painting.” This artwork held a special significance as Marden had married Pauline Baez, the older sister of musician Joan Baez, and through her, he became acquainted with Bob Zimmerman, who later became Bob Dylan.
Initially, Marden had intended to create a painting for Dylan to help boost his career. However, by the time he finished the artwork, Dylan had already achieved great fame and didn’t need Marden’s assistance. The Dylan Painting, a plum-colored monochrome piece measuring 153cm x 307cm, is made using encaustic, a mixture of oil paint and beeswax applied by the artist with a kitchen spatula. Marden acquired this technique while working as a guard at a Jasper Johns retrospective in 1964.
Although the Dylan Painting deviates from the style of Johns’s popular paintings featuring flags, targets, and numbers, its essence is more reminiscent of Mark Rothko’s vivid and saturated canvases. Despite abstract expressionism, the art movement to which Marden belonged, being declared dead by 1966, Marden persisted in creating works that sought to evoke the sublime, rejecting the prevailing post-painterly abstraction trends of New York.
Over time, Marden’s paintings underwent gradual changes, establishing their own internal systems with “lots of rules, yet no rules,” as described by the artist himself. By the 1970s, Marden began creating pieces like “Made for Pearl,” which featured adjoining panels of colors that collaborated and subtly clashed. His time at Boston University, marriage to Pauline Baez, and a scholarship to study at Yale under Josef Albers influenced Marden’s exploration of color interactions.
Marden’s constant experimentation and resistance to conforming to artistic fashion garnered him a dedicated following. In 1975, Hilton Kramer, a critic for The New York Times, highlighted that younger painters saw Marden’s work as a model. That same year, at the age of 37, Marden received a career retrospective at the Guggenheim.
In 1977, Marden won a commission to design stained glass windows for the minster church in Basel, Switzerland, surpassing renowned artists like Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Joseph Beuys. Although the windows were never produced, Marden’s subsequent Basel Window study series showcased a shift in his palette from subdued minimalism to more vivid colors, influenced by architectural compositions.
A trip to the Far East in 1983 and an exhibition showcasing Japanese calligraphy in 1984 sparked a transformation in Marden’s work. He began creating large ink drawings using sticks from ailanthus trees outside his studio in Greenwich Village. These drawings featured loop formations, inspired by Chinese poetry characters and couplets. This development led to Marden’s famous “Cold Mountain” series (1989-1991), where he utilized cumbersome, meter-long brushes to achieve controlled yet loosen compositions reminiscent of Jackson Pollock.
The vermiculate line, characteristic of Marden’s later works, became iconic without limiting his artistic expression. His later pieces incorporated a new palette inspired by nature, particularly the northeastern landscapes of his upbringing in upstate New York, overlooking the Hudson River. Growing up in Briarcliff Manor, Marden credits a childhood episode of waking up in reindeer ferns as the moment he felt different, marking the beginning of his artistic journey.
Initially, Marden intended to pursue a career in hotel management and had applied to hotel administration schools. However, he changed his mind, opting to study art instead, which upset his family. Eventually, Marden and his second wife ventured into the hospitality industry, acquiring a hotel on the Caribbean island of Nevis and opening a village inn in Tivoli, New York.
Marden’s success afforded him various properties, including a Manhattan studio, a 400-acre farm in Pennsylvania, a residence on the Greek island of Hydra, and the estate called Rose Hill overlooking the Hudson in Tivoli. His artworks commanded impressive prices, such as the £25m sale of “Complements” (2004-2007) at auction in 2020, almost reaching the highest amount ever paid for a Rembrandt.
In 2018, Marden unveiled his largest painting, “Moss Sutra With the Seasons,” a five-panel masterpiece displayed in a gallery resembling a chapel in Maryland. It took him five years to complete. Marden’s meticulous approach involved transitioning from one panel to the next, reflecting the progression of seasons and color palettes. Despite battling cancer, Marden continued working on a new series of canvases featuring a green earth pigment called terre verte, illustrating his unwavering dedication to his craft.
Marden leaves behind his second wife, Helen Harrington, whom he married in 1968, their daughters Mirabelle and Melia, and his son Nicholas from his previous marriage to Pauline Baez, which ended in divorce in 1964.
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