Dear friends,
Staff at the CU Art Museum are thinking of you! While we are closed to the public we will bring the collection to you in our monthly newsletter.
This month Hope Saska, curator of exhibitions and collections, discusses a Marcia Marcus painting featured in Body Language: Picturing People. Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Sandra Q. Firmin
In this time of social distancing it’s easy to imagine that the women in Marcia Marcus’ painting are spaced six feet apart, avoiding contact. Viewed through this lens, they seem isolated, each carving out space in the room. Yet, by looking carefully, we identify formal elements, such as the contrast of white skin against dark clothing, the flat, shadow less light and overall neutral tones that unify the composition. Further, the self-possessed figures are arranged in a triangular composition indicating personal relationships and interconnection. They are together, apart.
When organizing the exhibition Body Language: Picturing People, I was struck by the fierce individuality of the subjects in Marcus’ Three Figures (1960). Curatorial assistant, Avery Glassman (MA, MBA, 2021), was similarly fascinated and through email correspondence learned that the figures are Marcus herself, reflected in the arched mirror; dancer Sally Gross at left; and seated, right, fellow painter Barbra Forst. The social connections between the women, all artists working in New York in the 1960s, are enhanced by the interlocking geometric interior setting of the artist’s studio. Here, Marcus references earlier traditions of royal portraiture, explicitly citing Diego Velàzquez’s Las Meninas (1656), where the artist used the device of a mirror to place himself among the Spanish royals. Three Figures also recalls a tradition of male group portraits intended to document social and commercial bonds. Wealthy Dutch merchants in the 1600s made much of this format. Representations of groups of women, unrelated by family, are historically less common. Marcus revises that tradition, asserting her social network and claiming the studio as a professional space.