The first-ever monograph on painter Helen Marden, covering over forty years of her work.

This is the first ever monograph to present the full oeuvre of the painter Helen Marden. The book documents her development from the abstracted, dark, and muted landscapes of the early 1980s, through the vibrantly hued, more lyrical work of the 1990s and early 2000s, to the most recent Grief paintings, made in response to the passing of her husband, the artist Brice Marden. Over the last decade, Marden has attached found objects—primarily shells collected from around the world—to the surfaces of her works, giving them a unique texture and providing an index of her travels. A new essay by Anna Godbersen discusses the development of Marden’s practice in concert with changes in her personal life, her voyages around the globe, and her close relationships with key figures in the art world. An interview with the artist Kiki Smith is also included, along with a “travelogue” documenting Helen and Brice’s studios and travels over the course of their fifty-five-year marriage.

About The Author

Anna Godbersen was born in Berkeley, California and moved to New York to attend Barnard College. After graduating she worked in the literary department of Esquire magazine. Her debut novel was the first installment of the New York Times bestselling LUXE series for young adults. Her subsequent novels reflect an enduring interest in historical fiction and coming-of-age narratives. She holds an MFA in fiction from New York University, where she was the Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence and NYU Veterans Writing Workshop Fellow. She has taught creative writing at NYU, the Bard Prison Initiative, the Hotchkiss School, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and Catapult Classes. She has written on artists, writers, and creatives for Departures, Upstate Diary, and Liber.

Kiki Smith has been known since the 1980s for her multidisciplinary art exploring embodiment and the natural world. She uses a broad variety of materials to continuously expand and evolve a body of work that includes sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing, and textiles. Smith has been the subject of many solo exhibitions worldwide, including over twenty-five museum exhibitions. Her work has appeared in five Venice Biennales, including the 2017 edition. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2017 the Royal Academy of Arts, London, made her an Honorary Royal Academician. In 2006, Smith was recognized by Time as one of the “Time 100: The People Who Shape Our World.”