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拍品专文
Distinguished by its exquisite network of calligraphic lines, Brice Marden’s Dark Letter epitomizes the delicate calligraphy of his Cold Mountain paintings which he advanced and refined over the course of two decades. Executed between 2007 and 2009, soon after his major retrospective opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the present work belongs to the artist’s Letters series. In these, Marden included the addition of vertical margins that flank the central imagery. This framing device was inspired by the presentation of an eleventh century poem that Marden saw while visiting Taipei in 2007. In Dark Letter, the placement of these vertical bands on either side of the central image works to highlight and contain the vigorous, animated ribbons of color, while its earthen palette continuously evokes the natural world, conveying the feeling of sunlight rippling over a body of water.
In 2007, while his MoMA retrospective remained on view, Marden embarked on a major trip that took him around the world. On the first leg of his journey, he visited the National Palace Museum in Taipei, where he encountered an ancient poem from the Sung dynasty. This poem, written in what is called Seven-character Verse, by the poet Huang Ting-chien had been inscribed in black ink on a white sheet of paper, but the sheet had then been mounted onto a larger album page. The borders on either side of the central imagery appealed to him, and inspired the artist to make the first drawings of what would become the Letters series.
Thus, Marden created the largest cohesive body of work since his Cold Mountain paintings. The palette is peaceful and elegant, especially in the works on paper, consisting of black ink on white or ivory grounds, or, as in the present work, establishing a soft background with touches of white and green that inevitably elicits nature in all its bristling aliveness. This new composition also had the effect of unifying the two seemingly disparate methods of Marden’s practice: the monochrome, which had been the format of his 1960s and ‘70s paintings, and the calligraphic, which originated in Cold Mountain (1989-1991), and continued to evolve.
In Dark Letter, Marden creates an interconnected web of undulating black lines, which meander in and around each other, at times reaching the perimeter, only to circle back in on themselves. The artist has added white and green to highlight the twisting forms, resulting in a shifting depth of field that snaps back and forth between foreground and background. The vertical panels flanking the central imagery allow it to emerge with greater visual force, as they have the effect of containing it within the sheet but also acting as a framing device. The palette is likely influenced by Chinese landscape painting, speaking to “the colors of nature—cloud whites, foliage greens…tree-trunk and earth browns, sky and water blues. These colors drawn from nature are usually painted as if viewed from a great distance, through the haze and mists of time” (B. Richardson, “Even a Stone Knows You,” in Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retrospective, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006, p. 89).
One of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century, Marden came of age in the 1960s as a Minimalist, when he garnered significant critical acclaim for his monochromatic paintings of a single color. Evoking places or people that inspired him, these paintings were made by mixing beeswax and turpentine into oil paint, which he applied to the canvas while it was still warm. Their effect was mysterious and otherworldly, somehow managing to be inflected with many colors rather than just one.
In the 1980s, Marden abruptly shifted styles to create the Cold Mountain series. He used long acanthus sticks dipped in ink to create abstract glyphs on a white ground. These calligraphic works on paper had been inspired by the Chinese poetry that he saw while visiting Thailand, Sri Lanka and India in the early 1980s. Marden also looked to scholar’s rocks and studied patterns of natural growth in the world around him, finding inspiration in seashells, mountains and trees.
The directness of applying brush to paper has also proved to be very appealing to the artist, the effect of which is palpable in Dark Letter. “One of the things I like about drawing is that it’s a very direct form of expression…I love how drawing is so close to you. It comes right out of you. My work tends to evolve from this small, direct thing into something bigger” (B. Marden quoted in J. C. Lee, “Interview with Brice Marden: May 21, 1988,” in Brice Marden: Drawings, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1998, p. 23).
In 2007, while his MoMA retrospective remained on view, Marden embarked on a major trip that took him around the world. On the first leg of his journey, he visited the National Palace Museum in Taipei, where he encountered an ancient poem from the Sung dynasty. This poem, written in what is called Seven-character Verse, by the poet Huang Ting-chien had been inscribed in black ink on a white sheet of paper, but the sheet had then been mounted onto a larger album page. The borders on either side of the central imagery appealed to him, and inspired the artist to make the first drawings of what would become the Letters series.
Thus, Marden created the largest cohesive body of work since his Cold Mountain paintings. The palette is peaceful and elegant, especially in the works on paper, consisting of black ink on white or ivory grounds, or, as in the present work, establishing a soft background with touches of white and green that inevitably elicits nature in all its bristling aliveness. This new composition also had the effect of unifying the two seemingly disparate methods of Marden’s practice: the monochrome, which had been the format of his 1960s and ‘70s paintings, and the calligraphic, which originated in Cold Mountain (1989-1991), and continued to evolve.
In Dark Letter, Marden creates an interconnected web of undulating black lines, which meander in and around each other, at times reaching the perimeter, only to circle back in on themselves. The artist has added white and green to highlight the twisting forms, resulting in a shifting depth of field that snaps back and forth between foreground and background. The vertical panels flanking the central imagery allow it to emerge with greater visual force, as they have the effect of containing it within the sheet but also acting as a framing device. The palette is likely influenced by Chinese landscape painting, speaking to “the colors of nature—cloud whites, foliage greens…tree-trunk and earth browns, sky and water blues. These colors drawn from nature are usually painted as if viewed from a great distance, through the haze and mists of time” (B. Richardson, “Even a Stone Knows You,” in Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retrospective, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006, p. 89).
One of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century, Marden came of age in the 1960s as a Minimalist, when he garnered significant critical acclaim for his monochromatic paintings of a single color. Evoking places or people that inspired him, these paintings were made by mixing beeswax and turpentine into oil paint, which he applied to the canvas while it was still warm. Their effect was mysterious and otherworldly, somehow managing to be inflected with many colors rather than just one.
In the 1980s, Marden abruptly shifted styles to create the Cold Mountain series. He used long acanthus sticks dipped in ink to create abstract glyphs on a white ground. These calligraphic works on paper had been inspired by the Chinese poetry that he saw while visiting Thailand, Sri Lanka and India in the early 1980s. Marden also looked to scholar’s rocks and studied patterns of natural growth in the world around him, finding inspiration in seashells, mountains and trees.
The directness of applying brush to paper has also proved to be very appealing to the artist, the effect of which is palpable in Dark Letter. “One of the things I like about drawing is that it’s a very direct form of expression…I love how drawing is so close to you. It comes right out of you. My work tends to evolve from this small, direct thing into something bigger” (B. Marden quoted in J. C. Lee, “Interview with Brice Marden: May 21, 1988,” in Brice Marden: Drawings, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1998, p. 23).