Marshall Arisman Memorial Exhibition 2024
As a member of the class of 96’ we would see Marshall mostly on Wednesdays and Fridays. But Fridays were by far my favorite. On Friday afternoon, which often went into the early evening, Marshall would hand us forty dollars and we would go and pick up as much cheap red wine as those forty bucks could take us. Then, back in the studio, we’d sit on the floor around Marshall, and he would regale us with long stories about art, politics, the ethereal and himself. Occasionally, he would even grace us with the sound of his saxophone. It was nicotine-coated, turpentine-scented, uncensored, pure and mesmerizing storytelling. And, although none of the stories seemed specifically tailored to us students, he somehow knew how to pick the ones that not only spoke to us, but often times managed to resolve the doubts and difficulties we were having with whatever project was on our plate at the moment. I adored Fridays.
Fast forward thirty years, and now as the chair of the department my mentor founded in 1984, I find myself in the curious position of curator of his memorial show. In the past several months I have spent much time in his home studio on the Upper West Side gleaning through multiple stacks of flat files and rolled up canvases with his soul mate, wife, and collaborator, Dee; digging through work for this memorial show, with Sabu the loud cat, always by our side. As a fellow artist, it’s an odd thing to be tasked with. It felt a bit like going through the private diary of your favorite musician or author; engrossing, but at times almost too intimate to look at. Rummaging through nearly thirty drawers revealed to me, to no surprise, the inner workings of Marshall’s artistic mind.
As artists, we are grateful for the recognition and fame that come with cohesive, iconic and recognizable styles, yet at the same time the work that gives us fame can also hinder the many, often divergent, facets and curiosities we are eager to explore. In my journey through his archives, it was evident to me that Marshall never stopped questioning, searching, experimenting. Aside from the groundbreaking and well documented works that brought him fame and defined an era, many of the folders were filled with work that defied chronology and dates; as Marshall passionately painted over works, re-titling, changing dates, or tearing them apart to create completely new pieces. This show will, I hope, reveal Marshall as the eternally curious, indefatigable artist that he was.
Marshall first rose to major fame with his powerful series of ink drawings “Frozen Images”.They illustrated gun violence and environmental decay and were widely published by the New York Times. Similarly charged, were his bold paintings, which followed in the tradition of painters such as Bacon, Soutine, and Goya. Fortunately for us, his work was shown extensively in his lifetime, to the great enjoyment of his students, followers, and collectors, and was exhibited in a blockbuster show at the SVA Chelsea gallery in 2017, masterfully curated by Francis Di Tommaso.
Personally, I felt the vigor and power he was able to express with his graphic line to be the core of his illustrations, paintings, and even his storytelling. It represented the most distilled and pristine part of his work, often overshadowed by his most famous paintings. His line work is the vehicle that transports us. It is the stethoscope that allows us to hear the heartbeat, rhythm and the energy of his work. Many perceive his style as fast and spontaneous, with the occasional casual strokes of a genius. But boxes and folders filled to the brim with studies and sketches tell a different story, showing how thoughtful and meticulous his process was. The boxes also revealed how much humor, wit, warmth, and love he had for his family and friends. They represent a very different side to the somber tone of his major works. Equally as telling are his practically obsessive-compulsive storyboards and scripts for his books and movie projects. Pages upon pages of notes, xeroxes, vividly colored Post-it’s, doodles and annotations to fine-tune every inch, word, and second of his final versions. He clearly enjoyed taking his untethered ideas to the limit, stretching them to the edge of absurdity, perhaps giggling to himself with the thought that his books might remain eternally unpublishable!
I wish I could have had more of those Friday afternoons. His conversations were always inspiring, generous, and challenging. His deep voice and narration style will remain unparalleled in my mind. He would slowly build up to a story’s climax, pause to break off the filter from his blue, and then in later years yellow, American Spirit cigarettes, gaze at you, and say before revealing the story’s climax, “does that make sense?”. He would light the cigarette with gusto, pausing just long enough for you to pick up the thread and answer. And I can recall that in those few moments, my mind would race. Naturally, I understood what he had just said; I was hanging on his every word. But it was clear to me that he was asking something more; something that forced you to put yourself in the position of both narrator and participant, to consider all the angles, and then question yourself again before answering. And with that one simple, gnawing little phrase, he was telling us to analyze, to question, to explore, to listen; and when we thought we had the answer, to ask ourselves all over again. It was the process. The road. The journey. This is what mattered. The work was the end result, but it was the path and how we got there that truly represented us as artists. Trying to be an artist is no joke. There are no shortcuts, no A.I. fix-its. It requires endless patience, perseverance, and an unconditional devotion to one’s craft.
Does that make sense?
-Riccardo Vecchio
Marshall Arisman was the soul of the School of Visual Arts – its conscience and compass and trickster and conjurer – an artist who inspired others to find themselves, as he found himself, in their own way and time through their own means, whenever and wherever they manifest.
Although his heart stopped suddenly one sunny spring Friday morning, his aura continued to glow.
His legacy is not his large body of work but the rays of light shining through that oeuvre - from monumental canvases to ephemeral scraps and sketches.
He left visionary remains, reflecting life from the inside out and the outside in.
Marshall defined an essence that was by association synonymous with SVA. This mysterious quality was not something he could turn off and on at will – he was a vessel and vehicle. Everyone wanted to have a piece of Marshall inside themselves. The lucky ones have it.
Yet he was not SVA’s resident idealist whose kindnesses and generosity transformed his students (although I don’t doubt his giving attitude did transform many students). During Marsh’s long (but not long enough) career as artist and educator he enabled his students to find their talents and make their necessary mistakes. He cast a spell over those who were in his orbit. His wisdom was never laden with typical platitudes, but rather insights communicated through his actions, which first and foremost was in his work.
Marshall showed by example that there were learned methods to release the positive and negative feelings that comprise the soul. He never forced them on anyone. He never drowned us in homilies from the pulpit of art, but instead used art to grapple with (and accept) recurring demons. Even his most caustic images reassured rather than carped.
The work in this exhibition is not the “best of . . .” But rather some of them are lesser known pieces that he kept to himself and a few others for what he’d say “to amuse myself”. I can see him now, looking down on the work from wherever he’s hanging out, and hear that recognizable sarcastic, Arisman snicker.
– Steven Heller
A friend is someone you can rely on for assurance, for help, someone so safe and non-judgmental you can say any damn thing that comes into your head, someone whose very presence is uplifting. Marshall was that person for me: dependable, funny, a great companion, and a master of his art. For many years -decades actually – Marshall’s studio on 23rd Street was my primary destination whenever I was in New York City. I was always on a flying visit but whatever I had to do was incidental to visiting him and sitting among his paintings and sculpture and free-associating with him on many subjects – art, violence, pizza, books, stories. He was among other things a great story-teller.
It was a loft, filled with his work – the tormented paintings depicting villains and maniacs, as well as victims of Hiroshima; the later work inspired by Native American imagery – elk, bulls, buffalo, deer; the series he called “sacred monkeys,” sketches for further work, a table of work in progress – a book he was working on, and his saxophone, which he played, serenading his studio alone, to (as he told me) lift his spirits. What a joy to sit there and talk and listen and make plans.
Early on we conceived an outrageous book “The Endangered Species Cookbook”, based on recipes I’d collected in my travels, that he would illustrate: turtle soup, roasted bear’s paw, steamed moose nose, whale steaks. And there was the series of his portraits of suicide bombers that I wrote an introduction for. Now and then I’d put him in touch with my publisher and Marshall would do a book jacket for one of my books – one of his glorious angels for my novel “Millroy the Magician,” a haunting wraith for “Chicago Loop,” a tortured face (Marshall’s own) wrapped in ribbons of metal for my novella “Doctor DeMarr.” They were the most powerful book jackets I’d ever had – in themselves works of art.
He told me that everyone had an aura, which I imagined as a sort of soft glow emanating from one’s being. He’d been raised in Jamestown adjacent to Lily Dale, a spiritualist community in upstate New York (“Hey, Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown!” he said.) He described my aura as bluish and benign and I guess he found it satisfactory. There are halos and auras, and an element of the mystical in everything he did- his work, his belief; and this spiritual element was apparent in how he lived his life, a combination of Zen and a reverence for the natural world, a love of wild animals (and the enigma of cats). And yet there was something in his psyche that related to terror and violence – the anarchy of humanity; and so when a magazine or newspaper was looking for someone to illustrate a piece on a murderer, or mayhem, Marshall was chosen to depict that vision – his portrait of the condemned man Gary Gilmore comes to mind.
I never spent time with Marshall without feeling uplifted afterward. He really had no use for money, and apart from the materials he used for his art he was almost monastic in his needs. But what impressed me in the years I knew him was the sense that at the core of his being was serenity, kindness, loyalty and love – and it was these qualities that sustained him, the traits that makes someone a dear friend. As for his art, defying the all the trends, always self-assured, it was vivid, humane and incomparable.
-Paul Theroux
