GLENN LOWRY: Richard Shiff:
RICHARD SHIFF: It might be surprising to enter this section of the exhibition and see these very organic, loose, vine-like drawings with so many apparently rigidly structured drawings having preceded them. But Marden has always combined the desire to work with a rather precise structure, and the desire to wander through a surface.
GLENN LOWRY: This drawing and the two to the right all relate to the theme of Aphrodite.
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.
RICHARD SHIFF: 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.
GLENN LOWRY: Marden has often been inspired by classical themes. These Aphrodite drawings relate to his painting The Muses and other works on view on the sixth floor.