Mary Weatherford: The Flaying of Marsyas

This catalog documents an exhibition of paintings from 2021 22 by Mary Weatherford, a daring practitioner of American abstraction and a leading painter of her generation. The series takes its immediate inspiration from Titian s late painting, The Flaying of Marsyas (c. 1570 76), reflecting the artist s enduring fascination with this work. Alluding to the Renaissance painter s subdued palette, while paying tribute to the distinctive light of Venice, Weatherford uses Flashe paint and neon tubing to distill the earlier canvas s affect. She responds to Titian s composition by translating the violent character of its mythological theme into a format that, while more improvisational, also alludes to fate, hubris, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Francine Prose s essay traces the history of depictions of the myth of Apollo and Marsyas in paintings, and places Weatherford s interpretation of the story in the context of contemporary life.