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Lot Essay
A banner of three equal, rectangular panels in a dark, almost black grey and white, Brice Marden’s Moon Study I resonates from the frame in a strikingly minimal display of geometric elegance and tonal sensitivity. Juxtaposing his fields of thickly-rendered pencil markings against the white ground of his paper, Marden constructs a composition that enacts a kind of comparison, or even conflict, between the natural, unmarked state of the drawing’s central region against the highly worked, textured surface of the painting’s sides. Each of the three columns stands steadfast on the surface of the work, yet it is only on moving nearer to its surface that we begin the perceive the textural distinctions between the bands of graphite and paper—the difference between the absence and presence of the human hand, and perhaps the conceptual difference between absence and presence itself.
Discussing his practice, Marden has drawn attention to the relationship between his visual asceticism and the emotional intensity of his work. His works are produced in a “highly subjective state within Spartan limitations” (B. Marden, quoted in Brice Marden. Paintings, Drawings and Prints 1975-1980, London, 1981, p.51), as he calls it, and here, as with Marden’s larger paintings, the stark simplicity and self-imposed formal restriction of his rectangular composition helps frame Marden’s explorations of mark-making with remarkable clarity, applying an intense, almost martial focus to the very act of leaving one’s trace on the paper. Indeed, perhaps in an even greater sense than usual, Marden’s drawing here bespeaks a profound sense of human effort and endeavour, his blocky fields of tone painstakingly created out of the minute scratchings of pencil on paper– a record of human activity in the world, humbling in its visceral simplicity.
Discussing his practice, Marden has drawn attention to the relationship between his visual asceticism and the emotional intensity of his work. His works are produced in a “highly subjective state within Spartan limitations” (B. Marden, quoted in Brice Marden. Paintings, Drawings and Prints 1975-1980, London, 1981, p.51), as he calls it, and here, as with Marden’s larger paintings, the stark simplicity and self-imposed formal restriction of his rectangular composition helps frame Marden’s explorations of mark-making with remarkable clarity, applying an intense, almost martial focus to the very act of leaving one’s trace on the paper. Indeed, perhaps in an even greater sense than usual, Marden’s drawing here bespeaks a profound sense of human effort and endeavour, his blocky fields of tone painstakingly created out of the minute scratchings of pencil on paper– a record of human activity in the world, humbling in its visceral simplicity.