Brice Marden
Went from waxy monochrome panels to calligraphic ribbons of line, slowly, over fifty years.
Brice Marden was born at Bronxville in New York in 1938 and trained at Boston University and Yale. The work of the 1960s and 1970s is monochrome: single rectangular panels, and later panels joined in twos and threes, painted in oil mixed with beeswax and worked with a knife to a matte, dense, slightly waxy surface in muted greys, greens and flesh tones. From the mid-1980s, after seeing Chinese calligraphy and travelling in Asia, the practice changed entirely into looping ribbons of line drawn with long-handled brushes over stained grounds, the Cold Mountain paintings among them. He died in 2023.
The two phases are entirely different objects and are the first thing a valuation distinguishes. The wax-and-oil monochromes are the technical problem: the surface is soft, holds fingerprints, marks with contact, blooms in heat, and cannot be cleaned or retouched invisibly, so condition reports on these need to be read closely. The later paintings are oil on linen and behave conventionally. There is a substantial print output — etchings and lithographs in editions — and a large body of drawings in ink and graphite. Signature and date are usually on the reverse.
If you own a work by Brice Marden
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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