BRICE MARDEN – RED YELLOW BLUE
2013-01-21This is the first time that all four paintings comprising the historic group have been shown together, with loans from MOCA, Los Angeles, The Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, and private collections in the U.S. Fourth Figure (Red Yellow Blue) (1973–74), a related painting that treats the chromatic primaries as a composition of three horizontal bands, will also be on view.
Marden’s early monochromatic paintings exist as single panels, diptychs and triptychs. Restraining the gestural intensity of Color Field painting through contemplative reserve and calm, their inscrutable surfaces belie a nuanced equilibrium between emotive passion and formal rigor.
In each of the Red Yellow Blue paintings (1974), Marden painted slabs of dense yet nuanced color on three adjoined canvas panels, using oil paint mixed on the spot with melted beeswax and turpentine and applied with a knife and spatula. The dull sheen of the encaustic medium intensifies the bold, contrasting color blocks, built up through the temperamental layering process that yielded such intricately worked surfaces. The spirited variations within each “primary” trio (where red can range from cadmium to almost black, yellow from ochre to saffron, and blue from cobalt to sullen indigo) are rich with interpretative possibility, like musical chords improvised in major and minor keys.
Opposite – Red Yellow Blue III, 1974
Exhibition runs through to February 23rd, 2013
Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
New York
NY
10075
