[Untitled painting from 2016]… Mullen’s work is on view at the Museum of Modern Art. Credit… Marlon Mullen; via Museum of Modern Art, New York. [New York Times caption and illustration]
“I think he feels understood through his painting, and that gives him a way to talk to the world.”
(The artist’s sister)
I feel an uncanny affinity with Marlon Mullen’s ceremony of preparation! A colleague and I have lately ruminated on how a style of painting which we admire can verge gloriously on the cartoonesque. Just as, I would add, cartooning is itself a glorious art form.
Before Marlon Mullen begins a painting, he likes to tidy his work space. He’ll pre-mix his paints — Golden acrylics in recycled pots — and lay out his brushes and canvas on his table. Often, he’ll empty the studio’s trash cans.
Mullen saw Van Gogh’s 1889 painting “The Starry Night” on a visit to MoMA early this year. When he reproduced the painting, he worked from the cover of a catalog curators had sent him, including the book’s spine information along the left-hand edge of his canvas. Credit… Marlon Mullen; NIAD Art Center and Adams and Ollman, via Museum of Modern Art, New York. [New York Times caption and illustration]
The pictures for which Mullen is best known are based on covers of art magazines like Art in America and Artforum, abstracting both image and text into mosaics of solid color… “Sometimes Marlon prioritizes something when making an image that I would consider a minor detail.” That could be a bar code — a bugbear to graphic designers that Mullen appears to celebrate — or an object’s shadow.
[Painting from 2024]… Credit… Marlon Mullen; NIAD Art Center and Adams and Ollman, via Museum of Modern Art, New York[New York Times caption and illustration]
Mullen has lately begun to attend to the sides of his canvases as well as their fronts, copying text from magazines’ spines and thus highlighting his pictures’ status as objects, rather than as flat canvases.
(Jonathan Griffin, “With This MoMA Artist, the Painting Does the Talking,” 12-16-24)
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Interesting to see such confidence with colour and composition. Thanks for another great post Jim.
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I’m glad you found him interesting, Sue. I have a trove of art clippings accumulated which I intend to release from captivity during this holiday. Brace yourself! Haha! I try to highlight things that catch my eye.
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That’s great – I look forward to reading them all. Enjoy the holiday season! cheers Sue
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