I can’t get the image out of my mind of the drawing sticks lined up on Brice Marden’s work table, their end-points covered in ink. He drew with sticks, then tried to get that same feeling when he painted. He was often trying “to get more drawing into the painting.” He was influenced by East Asian art and culture, specifically Chinese poetry, calligraphy, and scholar rocks, or gongshí, naturally occurring rocks contemplated by Chinese scholars. Calligraphy fit well into Marden’s existing love of columns, his variations on the grid, and his belief in a non-hierarchical placement of drawing next to painting. In 1977, he was commissioned to redesign the stained-glass windows of Basel’s medieval cathedral, and after a working period of seven years, his proposal was turned down. Although the windows were never built, the paintings and drawings he made in preparation constitute a cohesive body of work and an important turning point towards the use of more color. His Window Paintings were shown in Kunstmuseum Basel in an exhibit called Inner Space in 2022. In a short video recorded at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Marden offers suggestions for “how to look at a painting.” First, he says, stand the same distance away as the painting is high, then come closer, then go back again, and repeat this, like “a little dance.” In an interview, Marden says, “I’ve always believed that art is a way towards an enlightened state” and that “landscape isn’t just a bunch of trees and mountains…” He liked to weed vast areas of moss in his garden. I went out to my garden today and collected sticks. Then I drew with them. It was wonderful.
-Morgan English