andrewmarvick.com


Andrew Marvick

Born Los Angeles, California 1957


Education: Ph.D. (art history), Columbia University 1994; M.A., UCLA 1982; B.A., Harvard University 1980; credential in studio art, Accademia N. Simi, Florence 1978. 

 

My early training in art was rooted in the European tradition.  As a student of art history I was greatly affected by the ideas and methodology of S. J. Freedberg.  Most of my work prior to 1997 is traditional figurative art, mainly oil paintings. Over the past several years, however, I've been painting in direct reaction to the origins and development of abstract and non-objective European and American painting from 1900 through 1970, exploring the ideas and expressive properties of the art and answering in each case with a series of new pictures responsive to the early models through the filter of my temperament. The history of European formalist modernism's first broad range of adventures fascinates me, both for the art's genuine achievements and for its now familiar, even quaint visual appeal. My paintings are exercises by a lifelong student of form in art, as well as a kind of personal painterly record of modern art history.

 

These drawings and paintings are products of the early 21st century, of course; but they are also artifacts of the 20th century, made as though for the aesthetic discernment of the 19th.  The historicism of the images is, in fact, their predominant theme.

 

All content of this website is copyright 2008 by Andrew Marvick.