On Saturday, I saw Brice Marden's retrospective at MoMA with a new art buddy - a math teacher with a much longer attention span than mine. The show is perfectly gorgeous, though it's hard not to laugh at the taped interview with Marden describing a romantic figure in a landscape when you're staring at a monochrome canvas the color of a wet slate roof. The end of the chronological exhibition is the most stunning; although Marden is using the same intertwined ribbons of paint against varying fields of color, the recent paintings have built up in intensity.
Jerry Saltz points out, however, in his review for the Village Voice, that "Viewers will leave the sixth floor of this retrospective never knowing that Marden was in artistic hell for nearly 10 years." That's for sure. The show unfolds as if Marden always knew where he was going, and excludes his "false starts, dead ends, and messy thoughts."
Later that night it was time for Gustav Mahler's titanic Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, performed at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle.
Above: 6 Red Rock I, 2000–2002
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