Went to see the Brice Marden retrospective@MoMA a few days ago and I was reminded how different a paintings looks ‘in the flesh’ as opposed to a reproduction of it. Brice Marden’s paintings (more than most) suffer from the inability of a reproductive process to capture the nuance, the surface quality and the subtle transparencies and incidents that are the real subject of his art. The intense looking that is required of his images does not travel well to the small-format printed page. On the web, these paintings look like cartoons.
I must say that the earliest monochrome paintings literally pale next to the later, richer and denser images. These paintings sing with color and light and the sure hand and eye of a master painter in his prime.
*Thanks to simpleposie from Toronto for this photo.
