Though Brice Marden is renowned as one of the leading voices of his generation, the critical role of drawing in his distinctive approach is often overlooked. Carol Vogel elucidated in her profile of the artist in The New York Times that Marden’s “drawings have long been a critical first step to what eventually ends up on the canvas.” “I always have a notebook going so I’m not scared to death when I start painting,” Marden expressed to Vogel.i
Two exceptional ink on paper works, Letter of Gratitude #8, 2007, and Study for Cold Mountain 3, 1992, provide an intimate look into Marden’s process: they are reminders that though he utilizes drawing as a determinative, preliminary step, he also views them as fully realized works in their own right. Study for Cold Mountain 3 belongs to Marden’s Cold Mountain series, which he began in the late 1980s and was preoccupied with well into the early years of the 1990s. Perhaps his most famous body of work, this pivotal chapter in the artist’s oeuvre was inspired by the 8th-century Chinese calligrapher and celebrated poet Han Shan, known as “Cold Mountain.” Marden rendered these works in the same way Chinese is written—from right to left and top to bottom—and that schematic organizing principle is visible in the grid-like dots of Study for Cold Mountain 3 that underpin the layered triangles of the final painting, which is held in the permanent collection of the Dia Art Foundation.
"I always have a notebook going so I’m not scared to death when I start painting."
—Brice Marden
Though it was executed 15 years later, the visual affinities that Letter of Gratitude #8 share with Study for Cold Mountain 3 are immediately conspicuous. From Marden’s largest series since the Cold Mountain works, Letter of Gratitude #8 was inspired by a specific piece of Chinese calligraphy dating from the Sung dynasty that he encountered at the National Palace Museum of Taipei in 2006. The work features his signature interlocking, columnal loops and reflects the artist’s experiments with line and gesture, his automotive pen on paper. Though these two superb works differ stylistically, they both betray Marden’s inimitable hand—one that may appear to be as ruled by chance as Surrealist automatic drawings, but is actually methodical, precise, and intuitive.
