GARY GARRELS: In this gallery is a group of various paintings done between 1970 and 1974. For Pearl is a three-panel work finished in 1970. Where does the title come from?
BRICE MARDEN: It was dedicated to Janis Joplin, the singer who had died that year. She was going around with this nickname Pearl and, her last album was called Pearl. So this was for Pearl.
GARY GARRELS: But this was a painting that you had been working on for several months?
BRICE MARDEN: Yeah. It was based on ideas about the Mediterranean, the color of the sea, the color of the earth. Janis was given to wearing these kind of Dayglo colors and feather boas, and when she died, I took the painting more in that direction more than in the landscape direction.
GLENN LOWRY: Titles are part of Marden’s delicate balance between references to the real world that many of his paintings are based on, and his commitment to abstraction.
BRICE MARDEN: You don’t want to make it easy to understand, but at the same time you don’t want it to be totally obscure.
GARY GARRELS: What experience is possible with abstract painting that cannot be reached with a representational painting?
BRICE MARDEN: When you look at it, you have nothing to go on but yourself. You’re there and it’s there, and that’s what you have to go on. And I think the possibilities are of a much more intense, deeper relationship with art.