Ten Days

This plate is one of a series of eight-from the first portfolio that Brice Marden produced-relating to sketches he made of olive trees in Greece. At the same time that the composition seems to deny space by pushing the image up to the picture plane, the shape of the paper restricts the image to a linear, geometric format. Despite the grid's mathematical exactness, the gestural marks constituting the picture surface evince a human dimension, as well as evoking landscape elements. The segmented composition and the silver gray aquatint reference the physical environment, and man's relationship to and interpretation of nature.