Described as ‘startlingly fresh’ in her New York Times obituary last March, Marcia Marcus’ work from the 60s to the 90s – now at Olney Gleason Gallery – is immediately attractive for its flat, realist style and intense, confident engagement with the viewer. In a piece from the ‘60s, Marcus stands at a distance from her young daughters and husband as if belonging only loosely to their world; later, in 1980, we see her blond head posed behind a large sculpture of a Greek deity, as if for protection. In the painting pictured here, created as part of a print commission for the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Marcus looks like a19th century literary heroine with her romantic pose before a flowery field, and is again nestled intimately with an ancient sculpture. Wearing a dress emblazoned with an ancient head, and standing before a Greek ruin, Marcus blends past and present to question contemporary attraction to and involvement in history. (On view through Feb 14th).
