Harvard Art Museums > 2000.241: Yellow Painting Paintings Collections Search Exit Deep Zoom Mode Zoom Out Zoom In Reset Zoom Full Screen Add to Collection Order Image Copy Link Copy Citation Citation"Yellow Painting (Joseph Marioni) , 2000.241,” Harvard Art Museums collections online, Apr 25, 2024, https://hvrd.art/o/174914. This object does not yet have a description. Identification and Creation Object Number 2000.241 People Joseph Marioni, American (Cincinnati, OH born 1943) Title Yellow Painting Classification Paintings Work Type painting Date 1999 Culture American Persistent Link https://hvrd.art/o/174914 Physical Descriptions Medium Acrylic and linen on strectcher Dimensions 243.8 x 182.9 cm (96 x 72 in.) Provenance Recorded Ownership History [Howard Yezerksi Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts], sold; to Harvard University Art Museums, 2000. Acquisition and Rights Credit Line Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Purchase through the generosity of Dr. Irving and Natalie Forman in honor of Michael Fried Copyright © Joseph Marioni Accession Year 2000 Object Number 2000.241 Division Modern and Contemporary Art Contact am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu Permissions The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request. Descriptions Commentary As a monochrome painting by an artist who has consciously predicated his painterly project in response to Michael Fried’s "Footnote #6," in his celebrated essay, "Art and Objecthood -- "[T]he task of the modernist painter is to discover those conventions that, at a given moment, alone are capable of establishing his work’s identity as painting" -- "Yellow Painting 1999 No. 3", 1999 adds to the particular formalist gauntlet laid down by Michael Fried during his years as a graduate student at Harvard. This connection is underscored by the donors’ decision to dedicate the painting to Fried. Like the gift of Deborah and Martin Hale, "Red Painting, 1999", Marioni's "Yellow Painting" is one of a group of four paintings made by the artist specifically for Harvard's Fogg Art Museum. Marioni self-consciously responds to the painting of a number of artists already in the Fogg's collections, especially to Pollock; Rothko; Noland; Louis; Stella and Marden; even more specifically to Robert Ryman, whose "Untitled" 1958 and "Untitled" 1959 are on longterm loan to the Fogg. During the 1980’s, Marioni also instigated a series of dialogues and exhibition projects with the German painter Gunter Umberg, around the European concept of "concrete" painting. Like Ryman, who, in his mostly white paintings, has extracted seemingly unlimited outcomes by varying the organization and manner of his strokes, the type and density of his pigments, and the nature of his support surface and attachments of support to wall, Marioni has adapted a Minimalist reliance on permutations of a set of pre-determined variables, in his case, sticking to monochrome acrylic on canvas, but introducing a broad range of color. Marioni, however, paints with a roller, eliminating the constructive element of the stroke. In this, his project is at once more phenomenological, more iconic, and more anthropomorphic than his Abstract Expressionist or Minimalist predecessors. Marioni’s preference for an unmediated application of paint echoes Pollock, but toward different ends: he is interested in allowing the paint "to be what it naturally is, liquid color," and he aims to avoid any intimation of drawing. At the same time, his layered pigments incorporate stain, but are not about staining; he relishes the corporeal association of paint with skin. Marioni has referred repeatedly to his interest in the fundamentally iconic essence of painting -- he says this as an observant Catholic -- citing both Veronica’s veil (the painting as relic) and Malevich as inspiration toward this end. His paintings alternate between overtly iconic, square formats and more vertical, larger scale planes. In both cases, Marioni treats the entire painting as image and works to inspire a private dialogue between the painting and its viewer. Publication History Greg Stone, Artful Business: 50 Lessons from Creative Geniuses (Boston, 2016), p. 94, ill. (color) Exhibition History Contemporary Art from the Harvard University Art Museums Collections, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/23/2007 - 01/31/2008 Verification Level This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
