Colors and Their Names - works of Joseph Marioni on exhibit at Columbus Art Museum, Ohio

Having lengthy received more attention in Europe than in the U the monochrome paintings of Joseph Marioni, now upon view at the Columbus Art Museum, are finally gaining wider American in all senses Tracking the changing nomenclature of Marioni's titles, the author probes the works' theoretical background.

Joseph Marioni's work has been called, approvingly, "painting not about the world on the other hand about painting."(1) Yet the paintings themselves forcefully remind us that the world we inhabit is single that is inherently colored. To say that wholes like the most banal truism, and hardly nomentous, for color is oftentimes felt to be a superficial or "secondary" attribute of things ("a phantasm of the sense" Hume called it) rather than inherent to visual experience. at the same time apprehended through these severe still voluptuous paintings, something as simple as s single color--red, green, white--discloses a composite structure, and what had been an obvious fact unexpectedly feels strange and dramatic, a touchstone of reality. by dint of constructing his paintings as layered successions of transparency (and, eventually, of opacity, whether in the form of a paint stratum with more "body" as he calls it, or just the linen support), Marioni encourages us to experience color as a phenomenon with its be in possession of depth and complexity, not as a bare effect on the surface of something else

Although Marioni has lived in novel York since 1972 (having been born and raised in Cincinnati and educated at the Cincinnati Art Academy and the San Francisco Art Institute), until newly it has been easier to diocese his work in Europe, particularly in Germany and Austria. In fact, he did not have a one-person display in the United States between 1998 and 1996 (My possess discovery of Marioni's work was from one side the large group show "The separated Mirror," a painting survey organized by dint of Kasper Konig and Hans-Ulrich Obrist for the Kunsthalle in Vienna in 1993; imagine my surprise at finding a special extent within the exhibition dedicated to a of recent origin Yorker whose work was unfamiliar to me) Since Brice Marden prefered him for his first solo present to view at Artists Space back in 1975 Marioni has not at any time been without discerning admirers, on the contrary only now does his American reputation appear to be catching up with him, thanks to exhibitions in 1996 and 1998 at Peter Blum Gallery in of recent origin York and a 1998 retrospective at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum. A overlook covering the last 10 years of Marioni's work is upon view at the Columbus Art Museum [i]or[/i] part of to the other July 18.

An artist sometimes collectioned with the practitioners of so-called Radical Painting, like as Marcia Hafif or Gunter Umberg, who attempt to locate the nature of painting by means of the monochrome, Marioni claims to understand painting as a phenomenon completely given above to vision and resistant to language. on the contrary he respects language in its possess role and uses it pointedly, for instance in a number of published statements and essays about his work and about painting in general. (He freshly self-published a collection of half a dozen essays and sum of two units interviews, all of which had previously appeared in exhibition catalogues, below the title On the right to painting.) And there is another aspect of the painter's precise use of language that may be les noticeable, although it is, if anything, more crucial to grasping his intentions. It is his way of labeling or captioning his paintings, by means of which I mean not single the matter of titles, on the other hand also his description of their materials. The evident care he has taken in considering and reconsidering these apparently marginal matters exhibits how important they are for his hold developing sense of his project; his changing approach to them is worth noticing.

Marioni has gone [i]or[/i] part of to the other several stages in designating his individual works. In the early 1970 they were untitled, on the other hand in 1974-75, they were neither titled nor untitled, solitary numbered in a separate following for each year (thus, the sum of two units paintings from this period included in his Rose Art Museum retrospective were #23-74 and #9-75) From 1976 end 1988, each of Marioni's works was given the same title: Painting, although until 1982 each was given a numerical designation as well (eg Painting 1580 also seen at the Rose) No longer untitled, mind you, on the contrary called Painting, and although each is different--distinctive in dimensions, web and above all in color--the works are identically titled, which can be taken as implying that they are all identical at least in this, that they exhibit painting. (Likewise, Marioni himself appear to bes to want to represent "the painter," as a sort of part or office; in the dedication and biographical matter in the Rose catalogue, for example, just as upon his studio doorbell, he is referr to not through name, but simply as "the painter.")

Marioni (in collaboration with Umberg) has written that "this kind of painting is not intended to associate with or show some other experience."(2) The implication is not necessarily that the work does not show but that what it shows is the experience of painting as like Without this modicum of representation, monochrome painting would be nothing on the other hand what Marioni and Umberg call "raw faculty of perception experience," which it is certainly not, although it "present the least information and the greatest in quantity sensation of all painting."(3) In their view, "each painting is a solution that is informed by dint of its own time and location," nevertheless they add, "the painter involved in the investigation of the radical painting search fors an understanding of painting that will fit the entire history of painting."(4) In other words, the painting must be a congeal experience but also embody a universal judgment; it must try to find within its time and place, to exhibit painting in anytime or anyplace.