Art. Happenings.: Robert Ernst Marx: Printer, Painter, and Sculptor

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Robert Ernst Marx: Printer, Painter, and Sculptor

" Robert E. Marx is part of a small group of important American figurative artists who comment on what it means to be human in an inhuman age. A kindred spirit with such great but often overlooked social protest artists like Leonard Baskin and Leon Golub, Marx's work speaks only to those who wish to be challenged by an artist's idea -- those who seek an intense and enduring dialogue with works of art. One of America's most important exponents of the north European expressionist tradition that goes back to Bosch, Grünewald, and Bruegel, Marx's work explores the futility of trying to bring universal order or give conclusive meaning to the human condition." From the Davidson Gallery

Robert Ernst Marx may live in western NY but his work reaches far beyond Rochester. His etchings, paintings, and sculptures have been exhibited in museums, galleries, and rare book rooms both here in the United States and in other countries. Marx has a BFA in painting and an MFA in printmaking. He has taught at many institutions including SUNY Brockport before he retired in 1990. Brockport is where I met him and studied printmaking under him.

Now I am an Art Librarian at the Central Library in Rochester and develop our art collection in many areas including printmaking. I have wanted to bring his work to the attention of our library patrons and to other members of the Rochester art community. When I studied with Marx he was doing etchings with very dark backgrounds known in the etching world as an aquatint. He is now doing figurative oil paintings on linen and also doing sculpture.

As I find many critiques about the way an artist works or what they meant to convey inaccurate, I am not going to try and interpret Marx’s work except to say what he has said, that he is interested in the human condition and the abuse of power. Some have described his work as haunting some see references to painter Francis Bacon, others to Leonard Baskin, still others see Mennonite, Puritan, or Victorian images.
Read his artist statement here and below.

Marx shared how he works on another site. He works on 20 - 25 paintings at a time, often taking years to complete. He walks into his studio each morning, and looks through the unfinished canvases and pulls one out. He says most paintings are 4-5 layers of paintings, because he sands them down quite often. He says it took him 20 years to figure out what he wanted to do with figures.

When I studied printmaking he was doing figures with tall oval shaped hats on a very dark aquatint background. He called many of the results that were returned after he pulled a print, “gifts.” Working on an etching or any type of print process is very different than working on a painting. You can see what you are painting and how it will look. Not so with the printing process, you never know if a scratch, a blotch, or a beautiful line will show up after you roll the plate through the press. These are the “gifts” Marx was referring to and these gifts are one of the many reasons I’m drawn to printmaking.

Robert E. Marx is part of a small group of important American figurative artists who comment on what it means to be human in an inhuman age. A kindred spirit with such great but often overlooked social protest artists like Leonard Baskin and Leon Golub, Marx's work speaks only to those who wish to be challenged by an artist's idea -- those who seek an intense and enduring dialogue with works of art. One of America's most important exponents of the north European expressionist tradition that goes back to Bosch, Grünewald, and Bruegel, Marx's work explores the futility of trying to bring universal order or give conclusive meaning to the human condition.