Painting that could cure diseases – At 6.15pm on a drizzly Monday, dozens of people are queuing in front of Tate Modern in London. Above, the rainclouds are swelling to a brooding, luminous pewter not dissimilar from the shade used by Brice Marden for his early monochrome paintings. Exhibited in mid-1960s New York, they set Marden on the road to becoming, in the words of New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl in 2006 “the most profound abstract painter of the past four decades”. Certainly, he is an artist for whom you willingly wait in the rain. He is at Tate to launch the American Artist Lecture Series, a three-year cycle of talks organised by Tate and the US Art in Embassies programme, which borrows artworks to adorn those buildings. Hosting a crowd that ranges from art students to the US ambassador, Louis Susman, and his wife Marjorie, a collector of Marden’s work, the packed auditorium is a snapshot of the art world at its most eclectic. To view the full article, follow this link.