- Artist
- Brice Marden 1938 – 2023
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 2740 × 1520 × 65 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased with assistance from an anonymous donor 1990
- Reference
- T05723
Technique and condition
The following entry is based on an interview with the artist held on 24 February 1992.
Marden prepared his canvas by stretching double oil primed Berge's linen canvas onto a foldable stretcher manufactured by Quali-T-Creations of Long Island City, New York. The folding stretcher was necessary to allow the canvas to pass down the staircase leading to his studio. The priming was lightly sanded with a fine grit sandpaper before painting, producing a smooth, hard surface suited to the linear, calligraphic application of thinned, translucent oil paint.
Marden uses several makes of artists' oil colours. In this work he probably painted with Winsor and Newton's and Grumbacher's vine black and terre verte. He particularly valued the pale apple green of Grumbacher's terre verte which is a purified earth pigment. The oil colours are thinned with turpineol, a viscous fraction of turpentine, and applied with long handled brushes and painting knives. Alterations were made by erasing wet paint with paper towels or scraping down dried paint with knives, leaving feint traces behind. One of a series, the painting was developed over many months. All the decisions Marden made, from the first mark to the last, remain visible on the canvas whether as positive applications of paint or the ghosts of erased lines.
The painting is neither varnished or framed.
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