On Three Deliberate Greys For Jasper Johns

Brice Marden, Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns, 1970, oil and beeswax on canvas, 183.2 x 382.8 cm overall, purchased in 1971 by the National Gallery of Canada Shoutout to Abigail Kabaker for guiding Dexter Dalwood’s LRB review of the Jasper Johns show in Bilbao into my timeline. Dalwood’s kicker is an anecdote that now floats free of attribution: “In 1970, the minimalist painter Brice Marden painted a monumental canvas, Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns, and called Johns to ask him if it was OK to use that title. Johns replied: ‘Sure, as long as the greys are deliberate.’” Roberta Smith included it in her posthumous assessment of Marden’s legacy for the Times on August 14, 2023. But it originates from Smith’s sometimes colleague at the Times, Deborah Solomon, who, on August 10th, the day after Marden’s death, shared the story on a cursed social media site. Rather than link to it, I have copied it here: Brice Marden once told me that when he painted his monumental canvas,…