BRICE MARDEN

(1938-2023)

Flesh (Back Series)
1967-68

Footnotes

Provenance
The artist
Ralph Humphrey, New York
Bykert Gallery, New York
Peder Bonnier Ltd, New York
Andy Warhol, New York
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Andy Warhol Collection, 2-3 May 1988, lot 3369
Private Collection, Antwerp

Exhibited
New York, Bykert Gallery, Brice Marden: Back Series, 6-31 January 1968
New York, Vivian Horan Fine Art, Minimalism: On and Off Paper, 28 September-17 November 2006
Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Art, December 2006-circa October 2014, on extended loan

Literature
Encrevé, Lucile, and Laurence Cars, Correspondances Musée d'Orsay Art Contemporain no. 7: Brice Marden/Gustave Courbet, Paris: Musée d'Orsay and Argol Éditions, 2006, p.30
Eileen Costello, Brice Marden, London, New York: Phaidon Press, 2013, p. 56
Mark Stone, "Brice Marden The Seventies", Henri, 29 May 2020

The present lot is an unequivocally unique work in which the viewer's experience transcends any written articulation of its beauty. Painted by Brice Marden in 1967, Flesh is one of only seven works that make up the rare Back Series completed by the artist in 1967-68 and has an extraordinary history of ownership, including the personal collection of Andy Warhol. The seven works that make up this series are deeply personal and embody Marden's visionary approach to abstract painting. It is no coincidence that each painting in this series is the same height, 69 inches, as the artist's wife and fellow painter, Helen Marden, who remained a steadfast influence on her husband for the entirety of his career. With a gentle, yet assertive hand, Marden rendered surfaces of amazing complexity. Though each brush stroke was deeply considered, Marden's monochrome paintings are vast landscapes of a particular hue that feels spiritual and instinctive. This is abundantly clear in Flesh in which the unique color emanates from the canvas transforming a combination of inanimate materials (Marden's hallmark use of beeswax and oil paint) into a transcendent and intimate portrait.

Flesh was a foundational work in the seminal exhibition at the Bykert Gallery in 1968, which displayed each piece from the Back Series and whose announcement card detailed a photo of Helen Marden's back. Flesh underscores, in its intangible effect and poignant title, the throughline of this exhibition in which each painting is, either directly or indirectly, an intimate portrayal of an individual such as For Otis (after Otis Redding) and Nico (after the German singer, actress, and Warhol muse). Said to be painted during a period of distance between the artist and Helen Marden, the Back Series is directly connected to the symbol of one's literal back in which "the idea of rejections – expressed at a primitive and direct level by the turning of one person's back on another – is integral to these paintings" (Linda Shearer, Brice Marden, Brice Marden's Paintings, Exh. Cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1975, p. 17).

It is no coincidence that Marden often worked in a life-size, human, scale in which the abstract becomes corporeal to result in a viewing experience that is not about observing from the outside in but rather the inside out. It is this framework that emphasizes Marden as a painter whose process and artistic undertakings speak to the traditions of painting rather than Minimalism or Post-Minimalism (a movement in which his early works are frequently categorized). As Marden once said, upon seeing Edouard Manet's Street Singer, he "saw the warm umber and the color fell into place it became a total color sensation. Each part built towards this total which came slowly, as if being mysteriously revealed. I try for this in my work" (quoted in Brice Marden, Brice Marden's Paintings, Exh. Cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1975, p. 12).

Marden was a serious student of Art History. As a guard at the Jewish Museum in the early sixties, Marden meditated upon Jasper Johns' 1964 survey exhibition in which he drew inspiration not from Johns' use of language and objects, but rather from his astute painterly character. As Roberta Smith writes, Marden "turned to the history of painting for inspiration, opening up new possibilities for abstraction and beyond [...] He talked, like a traditional painter, of the importance of light and nature and reverentially considered the rectangle one of the great human inventions." ('Brice Marden: A Legacy Beyond the Monochromes', New York Times, 14 August 2023) So, it is no surprise that a work like Street Singer would resonate in Marden's practice as a significant influence. Flesh is a resolute and sublime painting that speaks to the fundamental tenets of Marden's practice that endured for the entirety of the artist's career.

In a 2009 interview, Gordon Locksley said "Brice Marden changed, for the rest of my life, the way I look at paintings" (quoted in With You I Want to Live: The Collection of Gordon Locksley and George T. Shea, exh. cat. Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, 2009-10, n.p.). Tastemakers Gordon Locksley and George Shea saw the artistic genius of Marden long before the Art World recognized his brilliance. And now, Marden is celebrated as one of the most important groundbreaking artists of his generation who energized the medium of painting for generations to come.

Marden received his MFA from Yale University's School of Art and Architecture in 1963 and shortly after secured his first solo exhibition at the legendary Bykert Galley in 1966, while working as Robert Rauschenberg's studio assistant. He has been the subject of numerous significant retrospectives at institutions such as the Hamburger Bohnhoff Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Marden's work can be found in countless permanent collections such as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris amongst others.