Mediterranean colours, reflections and reactions: Brice Marden’s marble fragments

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Abstract In 1981, Brice Marden started an unusual practice. He began painting on marble fragments which he found lying around the garden of his residence in Hydra, Greece, after some works for the construction of a marble bench. He would dedicate himself to this practice during the following summers spent in Greece until 1987 only to re-engage with this practice many years later, in 2011, and continued until his passing. In this paper, I would like to argue that Marden’s marble fragments can embrace multiple and different aspects of the artist’s relationship with the Mediterranean, including two main axes of this influence in his work, antiquity and landscape. My purpose is to examine these complex relationships through different approaches which will show how in Marden’s hands, these stones present key readings of the Mediterranean.