Brice Marden’s Notebooks

I’d love to take a look through these:

 

On a page of his 1964–67 journal, underneath a small cutout of Manet’s 1862 painting of Victorine Meurent, Brice Marden wrote, “Cézanne tried to kill painting by denying forms for the sake of painting. He seems to have come closest to painting painting out … I think a painter should paint to end painting for himself and some others. With this in mind and man in mind it seems inevitable that painting will go on.”

Now two of Marden’s journals have been exquisitely printed by the New York–based publishing imprint Karma, in whose gallery space the drawings, the journals, and a monochrome painting—Portrait (1964–65)—are on display….

Throughout the notebooks, intensity of method combines with a mix of quotidian marginalia and endless detail of a life engaged with social and street activity. Addresses and lists creep across the pages; one scrap of paper has Richard Serra’s phone number on it; Carl Andre’s is on another. There are newspaper clippings; business cards; pulpy glamour photos; a vehicle removal ticket from the City of New York Police Department; ticket stubs from concerts such as Wilson Pickett at Village Theatre on October 7, 1967, and Johnny Cash at Carnegie Hall on October 23, 1968. The ticket stubs stand in, almost, as color swatches or samples for his paintings. On another page of his notebooks, Marden has repeatedly written—like a child practicing a cursive signature—the name Zurbarán, with a single word standing tall among the four attempts: “ART.”

Source: “Paint to End Painting”: A Look at Brice Marden’s Notebooks

You can buy the facsimile journals here.

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