When Asked If She Was Friendly with the Avant-Garde Composer John

Agnes Martin ( American, born Canada. 1912–2004) / Romy Silver

When asked if she was friendly with the of detachment and quieting the mind.4 In her The Tree (1964, no. 1) epitomizes the avant-garde composer John Cage, Agnes early career she moved from representational balance between visibility and invisibility in Martin answered that she was, “But I don’t images to biomorphic shapes and eventually Martin’s use of the grid. Her subtle use of agree with him.”1 When prodded, she offered, to geometry, having been influenced by the color gradations makes the delicate pencil “Well for one thing, he wrote a book called ancient Greeks, who she felt recognized the lines seem almost to disappear. Martin’s Silence and in the very first line he said ‘there impossibility of finding perfect circles and self-effacing and spare compositions led is no such thing as silence.’ But I think there straight lines in nature but, like her, strove many to view her work within the context of is. When you walk into a forest there are all for perfection nonetheless.5 Martin blended the emerging Minimalist movement, but her kinds of sounds but you feel as though you these varied influences into a highly personal interest in metaphysical experience allied have stepped into silence. I believe that is perspective which informed her work her more with Abstract Expressionism’s spir- silence.” This brief analysis speaks volumes throughout her career, especially as she itual ambitions. At the same time, she rejected about Martin’s artistic philosophy and her moved toward full abstraction. the self-indulgent, egocentric aspects of oeuvre. Martin’s work, which takes the grid Martin took up the grid in 1960, while living Abstract Expressionism, whose practitioners as its organizing principle, reflects a belief in New York City, in an effort to express her used color, texture, and scale to create that opposites can simultaneously coexist own emotional experiences, particularly, she emotionally expressive canvases that came within a whole. Her intricately executed said, abstract conditions like “happiness and to stand for American individuality and paintings and drawings are imbued with a innocence and beauty.”6 Untitled (no. 2), a who were often known for their bravado and sense of liminality, meaning they exist on drawing from that year, is an early example self-importance. Instead, Martin sought to a threshold between two states and reflect of the way in which her work employs both express her emotions as experienced “when a position in which one’s identity becomes standardization and variation. The undulating our minds are empty of ego and the distrac- barely perceptible.2 Her work strikes a balance sides contrast with the grid’s quiet interior, tions of the everyday world.”8 Martin’s focus between binaries, between uniformity and creating the appearance that the drawing on egolessness sets her apart from many of difference, visibility and invisibility, and is measuring something, such as sound or her male peers.9 The somewhat anonymous materiality and spirituality, which has allowed movement. A strong tension exists between nature of the grid, which reveals nothing viewers to see what they want in her work the strict regularity of the lines and the indi- about the artist’s biography, gave her the and has contributed to her consistently viduality stemming from the artist’s hand. freedom to succeed without being marginal- wide appeal. This is evident at the edges of the horizontal ized because of her gender. The often barely Martin’s artistic philosophy was shaped by lines, where the ink is often darker, and in perceptible nature of her presence in the a combination of her Presbyterian upbring- those lines which come so close together work provided her with a shroud of invisibility ing, particularly her belief in predestination;3 that they merge. The tiny boxes of the grid, that focused attention on the work itself. the writings of Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, moreover, vary slightly in height and length. In 1967, frustrated with the distractions Chinese philosophers associated with Martin’s interest in such infinitesimal of New York and caught in a “confusion that Taoism who focused on humility; and Zen differences may be explained by her belief, had to be solved,” Martin got into her pickup Buddhism, which teaches the importance inspired in part by Christian theology, that truck, drove across the United States and one should imagine oneself as a grain of Canada, and settled near the village of Cuba, sand or a blade of grass; each at first looks New Mexico.10 She stopped making art until 1. The Tree. 1964. Oil and like every other, but in reality they are always 1971, when Parasol Press invited her to create pencil on canvas, 72 x 72" unique. Like so many other paradoxical posi- a series of prints, which, titled On a Clear Day, (182.8 x 182.8 cm). The tions in her work, Martin’s strict repetition was exhibited at The Museum of Modern Museum of Modern Art, New York. Larry Aldrich achieves something totally unexpected, an Art in May 1973. She returned to painting Foundation Fund almost infinite variety of difference.7 soon thereafter.

242 243 2. Opposite: Untitled. 1960. Ink on paper, 11 7/8 x 12 1/8" (30.2 x 30.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired with matching funds from The Lauder Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts

3. Untitled. 1978. Watercolor and colored ink on transpar- entized paper, 9 x 9" (22.9 x 22.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift

Martin’s work reflects her fascination with those dangerous and often messy spaces in between opposing sides. In her canvases and drawings we can see individuality or unifor- mity, the artist’s presence or her absence, the spiritual realm or the concrete world, or all of the above, because they are all present in some way. Some critics try to categorize Martin as a Minimalist or an ascetic artist- monk; her work, however, consistently shakes off these constraints. It helps us to realize that silence can exist in sound; all we have to do is clear our minds and listen.

1. Agnes Martin, quoted in 3. Martin once said that American Art, 1992), p. 95. In Drawing: Agnes Martin’s work, but they sought to Irving Sandler, “You Have to “everybody grows up to be the late 1940s Martin attended Infinity,” in Carol Armstrong achieve different aims, to do Do What You Have to Do,” in what they were born to be.” free lectures by D. T. Suzuki, and Catherine de Zegher, away with emotion completely. Patricia Bickers and Andrew Holland Cotter, “Like Her who is known for bringing the eds., Women Artists at the 10. Haskell, “Agnes Martin,” Wilson, eds., Talking Art: Paintings, Quiet, Unchanging teachings of Zen to much Millennium (Cambridge, Mass.: p. 111. The work Martin made in the next phase suggests both containment and boundless- of the surface, and produce the illusion of Interviews with Artists since and Revered,” New York Times, broader audiences in the MIT Press, 2006), pp. 177–78. 11. These “empty” rectangles of her career, which lasted until her death in ness. Indeed, like the “empty” rectangles movement. The composition, like her other 1976 (London: Art Monthly, January 19, 1997, Sect. 2, p. 45. United States. 8. Haskell, “Agnes Martin,” have been called “a visual 2004, is marked by horizontal or vertical created between the lines in her earlier grid work from this period, at once suggests Ridinghouse, 2007), p. 423. 4. On Martin’s study of 5. Ibid., p. 102. p. 93. equivalent to the emptiness bands of translucent color as well as a ten- works, the blank horizontal bands provide a a higher realm and brings us back to our 2. On the liminal, see Victor Buddhism, see Barbara 6. Cotter, “Like Her Paintings, 9. Like Martin, artists associated of the mind” necessary to Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Haskell, “Agnes Martin: The Quiet, Unchanging and with the Minimalist movement perceive “the absolute.” Ibid., sion between spirituality and materiality, as quiet space, crucial to meditation.11 At the own bodies, making us aware of ourselves in Aspects of Ndembu Ritual Awareness of Perfection,” in Revered,” p. 45. often used the grid as well as p. 106. exemplified by Untitled (1978, no. 3). This same time, the alternating bands of light and relation to the work of art and our physical (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Haskell, ed., Agnes Martin 7. On Martin’s infinite variety, industrial techniques to efface drawing, done in watercolor and colored ink, darker orange highlight the soft materiality environment. Press, 1967), pp. 95–99. (New York: Whitney Museum of see Briony Fer, “Drawing their own individuality in their

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