It was almost Christmas, a perfect, chilly, blue-sky day to visit the Met Museum and see the Manet/Degas show before it ended. On my way, walking north on Madison Avenue, I passed the uptown branch of Gagosian Gallery and noticed a brightly lit poster behind thick glass announcing their exhibition of American artist Brice Marden's last paintings. The title of the show was "Let the painting make you," which sounded like an invite and a challenge, so of course I had to go in. I was in the perfect mood to ride in Gagosian's swanky private elevator and see how a famously serious painter with a six-decade career chose to communicate his last thoughts.
Brice Marden died in August 2023, and I had been watching his art evolve since I arrived in New York in 1975. Having seen scores of Marden shows, I was familiar with his creative timeline. But that day, seeing the words "last paintings" on the Gagosian poster struck an "artist at Golgotha" tone that got me psyched to see what kind of energy these things were putting out.
In the main gallery, I found six 72" x 96" paintings, each with its own distinctive palette: pink with powder blue lines; dense red lines on a mottled lead-gray background; rough black and white lines rubbing up against each other on a dark gray background (this is the "black one" mentioned below). Standing close and examining each painting's surfaces was like looking at pond water through a microscope, or at an opera from a balcony, and possibly at the inside of Marden's mind. As I searched for the artist's last thoughts, I felt awe and mystery-as I am sure the artist hoped I would.
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