Accession Number
1976/1.231

Title
Hydra Study

Artist(s)
Brice Marden

Object Creation Date
1975

Medium & Support
graphite and wax on Arches heavy white paper

Dimensions
44 7/16 in. x 32 15/16 in. x 1 7/8 in. ( 112.87 cm x 83.66 cm x 4.76 cm )

Credit Line
Museum Purchase

Label copy
March 28, 2009
In Hydra Study, Marden weds the geometric structures and systematic focus of Minimalism to an insistence on the hand-made. This combination creates a series of ambiguities: Marden’s formal vocabulary is rigorously geometric, yet traces of the artist’s hand are visible; and while the drawing’s internal structure both reflects and reiterates the shape of its pictorial support, it also references architectural forms on the Greek island of Hydra, where the artist has summered since the mid-1970s.
Marden often worked on such drawings over long periods of time, applying layer upon layer of graphite and wax, gradually building up rich, sensuous surfaces on the paper. Reflecting back on the process in 1997, Marden noted that, “There was a tedium [that] was almost meditative.” And while his drawings sometimes evolve into paintings, for Marden a drawing is not “just a study or something on the way toward something else,” but rather “a complete experience in itself.”

Subject matter
The piece is about the interplay of its elements: the interplay of dark and light, glossy and matte surfaces, within the pulsing form of nested rectangles.

Physical Description
At the outer edge a long black rectangle composed of graphite and wax extends upward. Within this border is a white rectangular stripe, following the same arc as the outer black rectangle, which is exposed Arches heavy white paper. An inner black stripe sits at the composition's center composed of the same wax and graphite.

Primary Object Classification
Drawing

Primary Object Type
abstract

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
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Keywords
Abstract (fine arts style)
Minimal
Op art
abstraction
geometric abstraction
geometric patterns
modern and contemporary art
rectangles
sea monsters