Brice Marden is an American artist best known for his 1970’s monochromatic panel paintings and, later, for his brightly colored, large-scale paintings of wavering lines. He has participated in hundreds of group and solo exhibitions, most notably his 1975 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum and “Brice Marden: Cold Mountain,” an exhibition that travelled from Dia Center for the Arts in New York to the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Menil Collection (Houston), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid), and Städtisches Kunstmuseum (Bonn).
Suicide Notes (1974) is a book of drawings. The front cover reads: “These are [scratched out text] suicide notes…I don’t know what my mind means!?” Inside are seventy-two pages, each featuring a small, black and white drawing. They all have a scratchy, frantic quality to them, while still continuing Marden’s formal exploration of shapes (mostly rectangles and squares) as containers, or windows. Centered on each page, they have a simplicity to them, allowing each shape to be studied in detail.