top: The Brices in Greece
middle: Untitled, 1978
oil on canvas, 92 x 68 in.
bottom: Untitled, ca. 1998
color marker
on paper, 3 x 5 in.
Brice sailed with family and friends through the Greek Cycladic islands. The stone ruins and the remarkable light, color, and space of the Aegean’s land and sea were a revelation to Brice. “…nowhere else have I felt so strongly our ephemeral existence, that we are of the earth, and that history lays underfoot.”
Thus, Brice discovered the element missing from his work’s new direction that had eluded him since London. Herostratus‘ representation of the contemporary world, which was effective for Brice in a movie, had become unconvincing to him in his new work. The present, and its literalness, stymied a deeper, more cogent expression for which he had been searching. Greece freed him from these constraints and provided a personal and timeless iconography that the new direction required.
After Greece, Brice and his family traveled to Sicily, visited Peggy Guggenheim in Venice and stayed with the Brody’s in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France.