Skip to content
Brice Marden
Cold Mountain 6 (Bridge), 1989-1991

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Cold Mountain 6 (Bridge)
Artist name
Brice Marden
Date created
1989-1991
Classification
painting
Medium
oil on linen
Dimensions
108 in. × 144 in. (274.32 cm × 365.76 cm)
Date acquired
1999
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Purchase through a gift of Phyllis C. Wattis
Copyright
© Brice Marden / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/99.367
Artwork status
On view on floor 4 as part of Freeform: Experiencing Abstraction

Artist Brice Marden discusses various ways of looking at paintings, comparing the process to a sort of “dance.“

Audio Stories

Marden on the Zen origins of his Cold Mountain paintings

Show TranscriptHide Transcript

transcripts

NARRATOR:  

Artist Brice Marden. 

 

BRICE MARDEN: 

I used, as the basis for this group of paintings, poems by a poet named Han Shan, who was a Tang Dynasty poet, who wrote the kind of Zen nature poems. And I found a translation which showed the poems in Chinese. So I could see the structure in Chinese, and I took that structure and used that as the basis for the paintings. You could probably go through this painting and distinguish each time it was painted on. In the beginning, they get very gestural; and then a lot of the additional drawing tends to slow down that gesture. I would erase, just by painting white over the existing black line. And these lines start becoming counter figures, or ghost figures.  

 

In the poems, theyre constantly talking about these monks wandering in the mountains, and theyre meditating, and the achievement of truth, you know, you cross this bridge. And its a very tricky stone bridge, and thats where the immortals are living. And this painting evolved so that there was a sort of arc. So thats why its called Cold Mountain (Bridge) 

Read MoreCollapse

Other Works by Brice Marden

See other works by Brice Marden

Please note that artwork locations are subject to change, and not all works are on view at all times. If you are planning a visit to SFMOMA to see a specific work of art, we suggest you contact us at collections@sfmoma.org to confirm it will be on view.

Only a portion of SFMOMA's collection is currently online, and the information presented here is subject to revision. Please contact us at collections@sfmoma.org to verify collection holdings and artwork information. If you are interested in receiving a high resolution image of an artwork for educational, scholarly, or publication purposes, please contact us at copyright@sfmoma.org.

This resource is for educational use and its contents may not be reproduced without permission. Please review our Terms of Use for more information.