Agnes Martin

 

Agnes Martin “Summer” (1964):

Agnes Martin review from the BBC

There is little doubt that her fragile mental state informed her paintings. She was seeking tranquillity and order among chaos; to create images of beauty and happiness to dispel dark thoughts. She did so with a form of meditation, the purpose of which was to banish the act of thinking entirely. Her mind, once cleared, waited patiently in a semi-trance for an image to appear in her a head - an "inspiration" - which would show her the next painting to make. This is not as bizarre as it sounds, you hear artists of all types talking about a similar process to overcome "writer's block" or waiting for the "creative spark". Novelists speak of a book "writing itself" with them merely the conduits.

The way she achieved a state in which she could receive an inspiration, was to be completely alone with a giant Do Not Disturb sign hanging above her head for all to see from miles around.

That's perfectly normal. What makes her situation different, is the extremes to which she took the notion of seclusion.

Agnes Martin didn't so much get by without mod cons, but without any cons whatsoever. She lived alone on an isolated mesa in New Mexico with no running water or mains electricity. Admittedly, she did own a bath. Not tucked away in a cosy corner of her adobe shack, mind you, but outside in the yard. She would fill it with buckets of cold water at 10am and hope that by 4pm, shortly before the sun went down, it would be warm enough to bathe in.

If inspiration didn't call she wouldn't paint that day, week, or month. On one occasion, after a very successful show of her geometric abstract art in the 1960s, she downed tools completely. For seven years.

 

NYer review of a Agnes Martin show at the Guggenheim: 'A Matter-of-Fact Mystic" here

Friendship (Gold leaf and oil on canvas, 6' 3" x 6' 3")  1963

 

Agnes Martin, who once wrote "Without awareness of beauty, innocence and happiness, one cannot make works of art"