WASHINGTON, D.C.- In conjunction with
The Phillips Collection’s 90th anniversary celebration, 15 recent glowing paintings by acclaimed modernist Joseph Marioni are displayed with a selection of about 30 works from the museum’s collection. The first Washington, D.C., exhibition of his paintings, Eye to Eye: Joseph Marioni at the Phillips is on view Oct. 22, 2011–Jan. 29, 2012.
Eye to Eye introduces the shared belief of Marioni and museum founder Duncan Phillips: color is the core of painting. Conceived by the artist, the exhibition shows the development of color and light in modernist painting in the context of The Phillips Collection. Marioni’s work incites a visual dialogue between art of the past and art of the present, between the visionary collector and the artist of today.
Marioni’s paintings are exhibited with works by Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Arthur Dove, Morris Louis, John Marin, Henri Matisse, and others in The Phillips Collection. “Working with Marioni reflects the Phillips’s commitment to drawing connections between modern and contemporary art,” says Director Dorothy Kosinski. “The deep colors of the artist’s luminous paintings, in conversation with works from our collection, reverberate through the galleries.”
Marioni is best known for his highly saturated paintings that appear like monochromes but are constructed of multiple layers of different paints. During the 1980s, he was one of the leading proponents of radical painting, arguing that concrete color, surface, and structure are the essential properties of the medium. Produced by applying acrylic paint with a roller on stretched linen, Marioni’s work is narrative-free, focusing solely on the exploration of color and light, or, as he says, “liquid light.” He builds up his paintings using brushes, palette knives, spoons, and even his hands, manipulating the paint to create a flowing, expressive surface. The artist shapes his canvases to control the downward flow of the pigment, using gravity to form a density in the center of the composition, transparency in the upper part, and drips along the bottom. The interlacing of opacity and translucence imbues Marioni’s work with a strong visceral presence.
Joseph Marioni was born in 1943 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has lived and painted in New York City since 1972. He studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy and the San Francisco Art Institute. Marioni has had solo exhibitions at the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Wiener Secession, Vienna; and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland. He has work in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.; Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass.; Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany; and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland. Marioni spoke at The Phillips Collection during a symposium about contemporary painting in fall 2008, and gave a lecture about fellow radical painter Robert Ryman in summer 2009.
On Oct. 22, Marioni leads a tour of the exhibition. On Dec. 10, his work serves as the point of departure for a symposium about the possibilities of abstract painting today, moderated by Michael Fried, J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, with participants Harry Cooper, National Gallery of Art curator of modern and contemporary art; John Elderfield, Museum of Modern Art chief curator emeritus of painting; and Karen Wilkin, art historian and critic.
90 YEARS OF NEW
In 2011, The Phillips Collection celebrates its 90th anniversary and launches the countdown to its centennial. A host of exhibitions, programs, and events throughout the year debut stunning new acquisitions in contemporary art, engage artists in conversation with the collection, and tell the story of artistic innovation that has been the heart of the museum since Duncan Phillips opened its doors in 1921.
