Collection 1950s–1970s

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Brice Marden. Aphrodite Study. 1991-93 444

Ink and gouache on paper, 9 5/8 x 7 1/4" (24.4 x 18.4 cm). Gift of Patricia and Morris Orden. © 2025 Brice Marden / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Narrator: Brice Marden has often been inspired by classical themes. This drawing references Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Here’s the artist:

Arist, Brice Marden: Aphrodite is Venus, and I love the Botticelli Birth of Venus painting, and I love this idea of this figure emerging from the sea, and this foam. You know, it’s a central image, tightly surrounded, framed.

Narrator: Though Marden is known for his rigidly-structured drawings, he has always been interested in combining precision with a desire to wander through a surface. Here’s scholar Richard Schiff.

Scholar, Richard Schiff: This is one of many drawings that Marden makes with sticks, and some of them are as long as two feet. And with the extension of his arm, he may get a whole yard away from the surface of the paper.

I think there are two very definite advantages to this method. One is that the quality of line is unusual, and this increases our interest in looking. But the other advantage is that, at that distance, you don't need to step away from the drawing while making it. It's very common for an artist working at this relatively large scale to work, and then step away, take stock of it, and then go back into it. Marden, with the sticks, is at the right distance for viewing. So it becomes all the more continuous, and organic, as a process.

Brice Marden: If you draw with your fingers, it’s really tight, and then you draw and you use your wrists, and then you draw and you use your arm, and if you draw and you use your whole body, each time it extends the gesture, and it relates it more to that which is making it.