Marian Zazeela, an artist whose abstract drawings and light installations depicted dreamlike states, died at her home in New York on Thursday at the age of 83. The MELA Foundation, the organization he founded with his partner, artist La Monte Young, announced his death on Friday, saying he died of natural causes while sleeping.
Zazeela made works that did not fit neatly into the boundaries of any movement, although he flirted with the aesthetics of Minimalism. By his own admission, he produced “borderline art,” his favorite term for works that “challenged the usual distinction between ‘frontiers’ and fine art, using decorative elements in the tradition of fine art,” as he put it.
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He is the most popular House of Dreams, a sound and light installation created in collaboration with Young. First mounted in 1969 and staged in various forms since then, the installation features drone music by Young and Young. the lightZazeela’s installation, whose lighting, usually in a single shade of magenta, colors the entire space.
version of House of Dreams what can be seen today on New York’s Church Street is beloved by the general public, with visitors regularly venturing there to lie in the installation for long periods of time. “It’s a simple concept,” MH Miller noted in 2020 T: The New York Times Style Magazine Young’s profile, “and yet this harmony between sound and light was the first coexistence of music and contemporary art.”
Working alone, Zazeela produced drawings of intricate calligraphic forms that are alternately hypnotic and dizzying. He is currently the subject of a critically acclaimed exhibition at Artists Space in New York. In Art in AmericaAndy Battaglia wrote of the show, “Drawings like ‘Dream Lines’ tell the story of an artist who awakens different dream states on his own.”
Marian Zazeela was born in New York in 1940. He studied art at Bennington College with artists such as sculptor Tony Smith, graduating in 1960. In the year, he immersed himself in the art scene of Downtown New York, ultimately connecting. Featuring figures such as filmmaker Jack Smith and his most famous works. Flamingo creatures (1963). That same year, she married Young, with whom she had begun to collaborate in 1962.
Jung Hee Choi, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela.
Photo by Will Ragozzino/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
His abstract drawings from this period sometimes distort words and text to create obvious patterns. But it is almost possible to discern meaning from these forms, which resemble cursive pushed to its illegible limits.
As with Young’s work, Zazeela’s output would cross several fields. While making abstract drawings, he also performed as a singer in Young’s Theater of Eternal Music. Meanwhile, he also performed light shows, which he says are deliberately indirect in nature. “My work expands the traditional concepts of painting and sculpture while incorporating elements from each discipline,” he once wrote.
In the 70s, he studied under Pandit Pran Nath, an Indian musician specializing in the Kirana genre. The two would often work together over the years.
Although Zazeela and Young’s collaborative work has gained recognition, it wasn’t until recently that their individually produced work was given significant exposure. Dia:Beacon held a solo show of his work in 2019; the foundation that now runs that museum in New York owns the 2015 version House of Dreams that belongs to Zazeela, Young, and Jung Hee Choi, executive director of the MELA Foundation.
