Etchings to Rexroth #1 1986

Brice Marden made this etching, called 'Etchings to Rexroth #1', using, well, etching. It's all about the push and pull between the ink and the plate, the planned and the accidental. Look at the top right – see how that thick triangle shape just hangs there, all confident? Then, your eye drops down to that figure that almost looks like a person, made of these fragile lines. It's like he's saying, hey, art is a process, not a perfect product. Marden’s all about surface and texture, that’s what gets me going. The lines feel etched deep but the plate is also lightly toned. This is the magic of printmaking, the subtle, and not-so-subtle, trace of the hand. He was totally into calligraphy, so I like to think of Cy Twombly. Twombly always seemed to want to make paintings that felt more like drawings, and Marden made prints that feel painterly. It's all one big conversation, right? Art is never really finished, just passed along.