Book Description

"Mars black, lemon yellow, use muddy white. Don't forget the young blonde in La Dolce Vita. Scenes in country cafe and post orgy on the beach. She is the one Benno calls the 'Purity symbol.' Orange green grey." This and other reflections make up Brice Marden: Notebook Sept. 1964-Sept. 1967 and Brice Marden: Notebook Feb. 1968-, facsimiles of American artist Brice Marden's (born 1938) personal journals. On every page, a patchwork of clippings, drawings, renderings and handwritten notes reveal the painter's thought process and document the political and cultural events of the era. A prolific notetaker, Marden filled his journals with subject matter as familiar as references to Italian film director Federico Fellini and as esoteric as "looking at an object in nature and running lines around it." The constant throughout is the work--deliberate, studied rectangles of graphite and ballpoint pen allude to the monochrome paintings that earned the artist fame and are a precursor to the panel paintings to come. Each journal is a unique guide to Marden's artistic output from that period as well as a distinct reference to the city--at that time bustling with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns--where he painted.