REVIEWS:    ARTFORUM 98  |   ARTFORUM 2006  |   BOSTON  |   ZURICH  |   CCAC

ARTFORUM - September 1998 Art Review Joseph Marioni: Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University By Michael Fried Joseph Marioni is an American painter in his midfifties who makes monochrome paintings. Until now I have never been attracted to the monochrome,which inevitably has struck me, in the many instances of it I have come across over the years, as artistically inert, or to use the language of "Art and Objecthood," as merely and depressingly literal. And in fact the monochrome fully emerged as a genre of artmaking in the wake of Minimalism, as a way of not severing the final tie with painting – of not quite moving "beyond" painting into the realm of objecthood as such – while nevertheless professing allegiance to the literalist aesthetic with its sweeping deprecation of the pictorial. So it was a shock when I visited"Joseph Marioni: Paintings 1970-1987, A Survey," organized by Carl Belz at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, and realized after a few minutes in their midst that the artist's monochromes were paintings in the fullest and most exalted sense of the word. How could that be? How could a type of work that I considered simply a vehicle for a hackneyed theoretical / ideological stance, a stance that at its freshest I regarded as mistaken, have been made to yield paintings of beauty and power?
Much of the answer lies in Marioni's color: for him the monochrome is precisely that, a painting of a single color, though to say this scarcely suggests the complexity of his procedures or the richness of his results. Take a recent work characteristically entitled Blue Painting,1998, which I saw in Marioni's New York studio while on a visit several weeks after my first encounter with his art at Brandeis. On a stretched canvas of modest dimensions (ca. 23 5/8" x 19 11/16"; all his paintings are vertical in format), Marioni, using a large roller, laid down four separate waves of acrylic paint: an indathrone ground, blue-black; a layer of ultramarine, a reddish blue, thin, completely transparent,		Blue Painting Acrylic and Linen on Stretcher 23 5/8 x 19 11/16 1998 No. 12
virtually substanceless; a layer of thalo blue, a green-blue, relatively thick; and finally an extremely thin layer of cobalt blue, an opaque color but at that degree of dilution rendered translucent, almost but not quite a glaze. Throughout the process the canvas was upright so that the liquid pigment, once applied, flowed toward the bottom of the picture; indeed the colored field reveals itself, when we look closely, as vertically striated, as though the sheer density – probably not the right word – of the paint layers led to a kind of internal curtaining. (When we look even more closely, the horizontal weave of the stretched linen is also in evidence.)
In all his works of the past two decades we find that same downward flow, not only within the painted fields but also at their limits, toward the edges of the canvas, particularly the bottom and the sides, where drips are allowed to form, lower layers are permitted to show through, and an impersonal but exquisite touch makes itself felt (the effect is not unlike that in certain Chinese and Japanese ceramics). Another feature of his paintings is that the rectangular canvases are ever so slightly narrowed toward the bottom, to match the tendency of the downward-flowing paint to draw in from the sides; in the same spirit, the bottoms of the stretchers are rounded so as to avoid a build-up of paint along the lower edge of the canvas. The result of this highly refined interplay between the physicality of the support and the materiality of the pigment is double: it gives rise to a sense of seamlessness, of aesthetic harmony, that, again, is almost Eastern in its affective resonance; at the same time, the interplay compels a recognition of the separateness of the elements or, say, of the composite nature of the painting as a whole (as in Robert Ryman's paintings but in a wholly different spirit). Some of this can be seen in reproduction, but no illustration can begin to capture the absolute specificity, which in this case also means the transfixing intensity, of the ultimate hue, or the tensile integrity of the paint surface, or the sheer rightness of the color in relation to the size and shape of the support, or the suggestion of depth within or behind the paint surface, an effect that has become increasingly important to his art. In Blue Painting that suggestion of depth is largely the work of the layer of transparent ultramarine, which functions as a kind of"spacer" within the material substance of the colored field. The Rose Art exhibition – not quite a full retrospective but nevertheless a compelling account of the evolution of Marioni's art over almost thirty years – was masterfully chosen and mounted by Belz, who also contributed an acute and moving essay to the catalogue. On the strength of that exhibition, I consider Marioni to be one of the foremost painters at work anywhere at the present, and the great and thought-provoking surprise his art has given me is not only that it transcends the previous limitations of the monochrome but also that it is the first body of work I have seen that suggests that the Minimalist intervention may have had productive consequences for painting of the highest ambition. Simply put, the Minimalist hypostatization of objecthood, which called for and indeed presumed the surpassing of painting largely on the grounds of its manifest relationality, seems to have led in Marioni's art to a new, more deeply founded integration of color, amateriality, and support, which is to say to an affirmation of the continued vitality of painting that has something of the character of a new beginning.

ARTFORUM - Sepember 2006 Art Review Joseph Marioni PETER BLUM CHELSEA By Michael Fried At Peter Blum's new gallery in Chelsea, Joseph Marioni recently showed six paintings made earlier this year in his newly renovated studio, a former meeting hall in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. This studio has, for the first time, given Marioni the space to take his art up to what may well prove to be its maximum size —and the results are dramatic. The artist paints on stretched canvases hanging on a wall, using a long-handled roller. There is a limit to his (two-handed) reach with such an impliment, and in several of the paintings on view here, that limit seems to have been attained. What is imediately striking, at first almost jolting, about the new work is that with two exceptions —a smaller, exquisite white painting on the street wall and a gorgeous "black" picture, lush as a poppy, in the back room — it departs from the delicately layered and amazing sensuous coloristic and factural register of his most characteristic pictures of the previous ten or more years. Not that multiple layers of transparent and translucent acrylic are not everywhere in evidence; but the overall effect of the layering, at the new scale, is less overtly sensuous than it is reveling of the internal structure, or rather the constructedness, of the individual paintings. So, for example, in a magnificent large dark canvas (gray-blue over orange over white over ocher) just slightly more vertical than square, jagged, flamelike internal figuration unexpectedly recalls the forms in certain of Morris Louis's dark veils, though with an altogether more material resonance. (Even more veil-like in its figuration and proportions is an incandesant green canvas that strikes a coloristic note unlike anything in Marioni's work to date.) Moreover, the picture's sheer size (eleven by ten feet), in combination with the perceptual difficulty posed by its extreme darkness, has the effect of calling into question the apparent seamlessness one associated with Marioni's previous work, only to arrive at a different sort of pictorial integration that stands at the very limit of viable relations of internal scale. In two other paintings , both horizontal rectangles, the image-gestalt changes, with the layers of paint (after the first violet one, itself modified bt a final all-embracing layer of transparent green) dramatically drawing in from the sides of the canvas to force the issue of a Newman-like confrontation with the viewer. In these paintings also, the central downward-flowing "sheets" of paint —milky green in one,mikly blue in the other —reveal just a hint of upper-right to lower-left bias that I see as expressing the artist's right-handedness, more broadly his embodiedness, as he wielded his long-handled roller, to transport waves of liquid pigment to the canvas and to influence the pignments in subtle ways so as to produce the final results. All the canvases are unframed, as their heroic physicality requires them to be. These are by no means comfortable paintings, but they express in every square inch of their redoubtable surfaces a pictorial; conviction that has all but vanished from the comtemporary scene. Put differently, they are truly challanging works, and the challange they extend is not just to their viewers but also to their creator: to withstand their impact, to learn to move freely around them, to explore their implications for his paintings to come.

THE BOSTON GLOBE - Friday, April 24, 1998 Art Review Emotions unfold in a one-color canvas: Single color, manifold feeling By Christine Temin GLOBE STAFF
WALTHAM – Yasmina Reza's global hit play"Art" deals with the varying reactions to an all-white painting – from reverence to ridicule to rage. Although it's been more than eight decades since Russian Suprematist painter Kasimir Malevich introduced his white-on-white works, monochromatic painting still makes many people squirm with suspicion. Those people should head for the Rose Art Museum, and so should everyone else, to see		Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University 1998
the superb retrospective of 28 years' worth or works by Joseph Marioni, a mid-career New York painter who has stuck to one-color works – or works that seem one-color – with dogged determination. It's paid off. Monochromatic painting has been called the tombstone on the grave of modernism. Marioni's show looks more like a birth and maturation, although there's a near-death experience in the middle, in the flat, factual paintings of 1979-80. After that, though, Marioni's works grew freer and more confident, like a patient who has survived a killer disease. Carl Belz, the outgoing director of the Rose and curator of this show, first saw Marioni's work at the Howard Yezerski Gallery on Newbury Street five years ago. (Yezerski is currently exhibiting Marioni's work alongside that of seven other monochromatic painters, both American and European, who put Marioni in context.) The Rose show is Marioni's first solo in a US Museum. He has more of a following in Europe, Belz says, because Europe has more a tradition of monochromatic painting. It wasn't until the minimalism of the 1960s that one-color painting became popular here.
"He calls himself a painter, not an artist," says Belz of Marioni. On a first visit to Marioni's New York studio, Belz assumed the sign outside,"Painter," meant the space had once belonged to a commercial painting company. It hadn't. In works that at first seem simple, Marioni teaches you that red can range from liturgical solemnity to flamenco fiesta to something		Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University 1998
that makes your eyes feel like pepper has been rubbed in them. And he shows that color can induce emotional reactions far more complex than yellow equals happy and black means sad. Marioni is more a vertical painter than a horizontal one, which ties him to figurative painting more than landscape or still life. Barely discernible upright forms populate some of his paintings. Some smaller works are ever so slightly tapered, narrowing from top to bottom, an allusion to the human body. Marioni's not working in a vacuum: You can see links with many movements and masters. Manet's potent way with black, Robert Ryman's with white, the little"rips" of Clyfford Still, Morris Louis's concern with edges, Mark Rothko's hovering colors, Ellsworth Kelly's pristine one-color paintings – Marioni acknowledges and builds on all of these. There are important differences, though. Louis and his fellow Color Field painters soaked paint into canvas so the two became one. Kelly's one-color works have an industrial, factory-fresh look. Marioni's paint, on the other hand, asserts its independence and expressiveness: It clots, folds, and drips. And Belz notes that while Rothko aimed for transcendence and the Suprematists for utopia, Marioni paints the here and now and makes you eager to explore it.
His manner of working says much about his message. He paints with a roller, because, Belz says, you can't draw with a roller as you can with a brush. Marioni wants to avoid any signature gesture that would get in the way of your connecting with the paint itself. And he wants to avoid any whiff of narrative or specific imagery, so he titles his pictures after		Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University 1998
the date when he made them, or their dominant color. He leaves them open to your personal reaction, which is likely to range all the way from exultation to despair. All this from a one-color canvas. With his rollers, Marioni creates opulent textures that suggest flames, lava, even cascades of goopy chocolate syrup. These elaborate configurations take time to explore. While the paintings beckon from a distance, they're most regarding close up. Get close to a 1995 painting that looks all blue at a distance of a few years, and you discover dozens of tiny ruptures that reveal black beneath. The ragged rows of drips at the bottom of some of these gravity- directed pictures suggest a curtain you could lift and peek under. A 1992"Green Painting" is an emerald hue, with stalagmite-like forms. Most of the paintings give in to gravity; this one doesn't. In the most recent work in the show, a 1998"White Painting," Marioni tweaks you a bit. An intense wash of peridot green at the top pales as it travels downward. The rectangle is radiant. But it's not white."White Painting," in this instance, is about as accurate a term as"white people." * * *
Belz calls the Marioni exhibition"my last picture show," a reference to Brandeis University's ungracious deaccessioning of a director who has spent 24 years building the largest contemporary American collection in New England, so the Rose filled much of the gap left by bigger museums in Boston and Cambridge. Belz is taking early retirement at Brandeis's request,		Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University 1998
and although there's a chance he might return next year to stage a retrospective of his directorship, it's only a chance. Meanwhile, the Marioni show proves Belz is still in top curatorial form, willing to back an artist of substance rather than go with the latest glitz. The Marioni show is quintessential Belz, an illustration of his long-standing interest in the continuation of the high modernist tradition.
In that purist tradition, Belz doesn't use wall texts in this show, and he considered not even having labels. The art is supposed to explain itself, and he wants you to look, not read. The strategy doesn't always work. Here, it does. Not that Belz lacks something to say about these paintings, mind you. His eloquence on the subject of abstraction is hard surpass. If you can get to his gallery talk on Marioni, go. Belz has bought a red Marioni for the Rose. And two generous collectors Natalie and Irving Forman, gave Belz the chance to pick another, from the painter's studio, which they donated to the museum. Belz chose a 1975 work dominated by a monumental mass of paint the color and texture of heavy cream. It dissipates toward the edges, though, allowing you to see the weave of the unprimed linen surface. So Marioni's presence will live on at the Rose after his show closes. And Belz's presence will be felt at the museum as long as it exists, though the extraordinary collection he has built.

NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG - July 6, 1998 Art Review Frameless Immediacy: Joseph Marioni at Mark Müller's By Mrs. Angelika Affentranger Somebody once said one's eyes want to go swimming in Joseph Marioni's pictures. And indeed, some of the new works on view at Galerie Mark Muller in Zurich invite immersion; the gaze almost loses itself in the unfathomable depths of the coloring. These paintings exert a kind of pull; they are like fountains of accumulated energy. Yet other works by Marioni have the exact opposite effect; one's vision bounces off their smooth skin of color, as if reflected by a mirror and thrown back into the room. Here the energy of the colors flows out into the surroundings and transforms the impartial lighting of the gallery into radiant chromatic spaces. Matter-of-fact are the titles: Green Painting, Blue Painting, Red Painting. They could not be more appropriate for works that are so utterly self-contained in their presence as a picture, in their radical, frameless imagery. The parameters that Marioni has staked out for himself are exceptionally stringent: a monochrome palette and canvas. But the expressive potential that can be gleaned from them is virtually inexhaustable. Every picture is invented from scratch with its chromatic hues and values, its rivulets, and its delicately superimposed membranes of color. Frame, format, hanging (varied in height and distance from the wall) – as examplified by Robert Ryman's differentiated treatment of the picture – must be viewed as inherent components that contribute essentially to the mood exuded by each work. Even so, Marioni's paintings never appear as closure but remain open to the exploring gaze that takes up the thread of the color continuum and weaves on. Marioni sometimes calls his paintings icons, thereby evoking that archaic type of picture that seeks only direct confrontation with a seeing and sensing other. Translated by Catherine Schelbert

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER - October 22, 1998 Art Review Abstraction is back CCAC presents a small but revealing show of new U. S. and European painting By David Bonetti EXAMINER ART CRITIC OAKLAND – Despite evidence to the contrary, abstract painting did not die out with colorfield painting in the '70s. With the attention of critics, curators and collectors focused on minimal, post-minimal and conceptual art and the arts of mechanical reproduction, abstract painting had to lay low. However, now that conceptual art has become academic – it's what you're taught at art school – abstract painting has re-emerged, and it seems that its time out of the limelight has been good for it. Galleries are showing abstract painting again. And a few museums have begun to organize exhibitions featuring the new abstract painting."Abstraction Absolved" at the Mills College Art Gallery in 1996 and "Practice and Process: New Painterly Abstraction" at the Richmond Art Center this summer surveyed local tendencies. It also discourages generalization. The work comes from a variety of different aesthetic places and means a varity of different things. In any case, it is difficult to draw conclusions on the basis of seeing a single work by an artist whose painting you've never seen before. Of the dozen artist represented, I'd never seen work by six; I'd never even heard of five of them. Still, tentative generalizations are possible. The work in the show is emotionally reticent and suspicious of grand gestures, self-elected heroism and self-revelation. As much as for minimalist and conceptual artist, abstract expressionism is a bugaboo to be avoided. * * * Joseph Marioni's"Red Painting No. 5" (1996) is also blood red, but it makes no reference to anything outside itself. Marioni is a leading theorist for what he calls radical concrete painting, and for him color with its emotional resonance is the essential characteristic of painting that distinguishes it from other art mediums. To many, Marioni's radical painting is the touchstone of the new abstraction. In a brilliant lecture at CCAC, he put abstraction and concrete painting in different categories. Perhaps the most important reason to go to the show is to see his painting, none of which has previously been seen in the Bay Area. Simply put, Marioni's painting is about seeing. His process is simple, and it is all in the service of putting the viewer at the ground zero of seeing. On a black ground that remains visible around the edges, Marioni applies acrylic pigment. The paint covers the surface, but it is not put on evenly, so as your eye adjusts to the demands of veiwing it, you see how rivulets of pigment coursed down its surface, thanks to gravity, coming to an end unevenly at its bottom edge. That ragged bottom edge is the painting's key. Here is the essence: Paint, bearing color, covers a surface, unevenly. That is all there is, that is all there needs to be.

REVIEWS:    ARTFORUM  |   BOSTON  |   ZURICH  |   CCAC HOME  |   EXHIBITIONS  |   CATALOGUES GALLERIES  |   PUBLIC COLLECTIONS