Brice Marden, the Quicker Picker-Upper

The Propitious Garden of Plane Image, Third Version, (photographed unfinished in May 2006), 2000-2006, oil on linen, six panels, overall 72 x 288 inches, collection the artist. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, © 2006 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

How I wish I had never read this article about Brice Marden's intimate relationship with Bounty paper towels! I don't know if my feelings about the over-thought, overworked quality of his "loopy doopy" paintings (to borrow Sol LeWitt's phrase for his own squiggly phase) were excessively influenced by what I had learned about Marden's mop-ups. His squiggly phase (more conventionally described as calligraphic) was preceded by his Kelly-like colored-panel phase and his Ryman-like monochrome phase.

In his catalogue, Gary Garrels, curator of the Marden retrospective that opens Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, acknowledges the artist's propensity for obsessive reworking:

Marden, in examining paintings he has already released to the world, has occasionally decided that he wants to continue to work on them. The continuing evolution of a single painting can often parallel the challenge Marden has set himself throughout his career. For the conclusion offered by "finishing" is only temporary.

To my mind, the best works in the show, which I viewed yesterday, are the drawings---fluent, flowing and lyrical, in contrast with paintings besmudged by second guesses and doubt.

Like MoMA's recent Elizabeth Murray retrospective, this one ends with work on which the paint has barely dried: two sprawling six-panel versions of "The Propitious Garden of Plane Image." In the catalogue and again at the press preview, Garrels felt he needed to define the word "propitious" for the vocabulary-challenged. Maybe we're not great judges of art, but at least give us credit for SAT words!

Maybe I should Bounty this review.