Agnes Martin | |
|---|---|
 Martin in her studio, 1954 | |
| Born | Agnes Bernice Martin (1912-03-22)March 22, 1912 Macklin, Saskatchewan, Canada |
| Died | December 16, 2004(2004-12-16) (aged 92) Taos, New Mexico, United States |
| Education | Western Washington University Teachers College, Columbia University University of New Mexico |
| Known for | Painter |
| Movement | Abstract expressionism |
Agnes Bernice MartinRCA (March 22, 1912 – December 16, 2004) was a Canadian-American abstract painter known for herminimalist style andabstract expressionism.[1][2][3] Born in Saskatchewan, she moved to the United States in 1931, where she pursued higher education and became a U.S. citizen in 1950. Martin's artistic journey began inNew York City, where she immersed herself inmodern art and developed a deep interest in abstraction. Despite often being labeled a minimalist, she identified more with abstract expressionism. Her work has been defined as an "essay in discretion, inwardness and silence."[4]
Growing up in rural Canada and influenced by theNew Mexico desert, where she lived for the last several decades of her life, Martin's art was characterized by serene compositions featuring grids and lines. Her works were predominantly monochromatic, employing colors like black, white, and brown with great subtlety. Martin's minimalist approach conveyedtranquility andspirituality, and her paintings often carried positive names reflective of her philosophy.
Her career included numerous exhibitions, totaling over 85 solo shows, and participation in major events such as theVenice Biennale andDocumenta. Martin's work earned recognition for its unique contribution to contemporary art, and she received awards like theNational Medal of Arts from theNational Endowment for the Arts in 1998.[5] She was elected to theRoyal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2004.[6]
Despite personal struggles withschizophrenia, Martin's dedication to her art persisted, and her legacy continues to inspire contemporary artists. Documentaries and films have explored her life and work, shedding light on her artistic process and impact. Beyond the art world, her influence extends to popular culture, as seen in aGoogle doodle and a song dedicated to her. Martin's artistic vision, blending minimalism and spirituality, remains an enduring and influential force in the realm ofabstract art.
Agnes Bernice Martin was born in 1912 to Scottish Presbyterian farmers inMacklin, Saskatchewan, one of four children.[3][4][7] From 1919, she grew up inVancouver.[8]: 237 She moved to theUnited States in 1931 to help her pregnant sister, Maribel, in Bellingham, Washington.[9]:29 She preferred American higher education and became an American citizen in 1950.[10] Martin studied atWestern Washington University College of Education,Bellingham, Washington, prior to receiving her B.A. (1942) fromTeachers College, Columbia University.[11] It was while living in New York that Martin became interested in modern art and was exposed to artists such asArshile Gorky (1904–1948),Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974), andJoan Miró (1893–1983).[6] She took a multitude of studio classes at Teachers College and began to seriously consider a career as an artist.
In 1947, she attended the Summer Field School of the University of New Mexico inTaos, New Mexico.[8]: 237 After hearing lectures by the Zen Buddhist scholarD. T. Suzuki at Columbia, she became interested in Asian thought, not as a religious discipline, but as a code of ethics, a practical how-to for getting through life.[11] A few years following graduation, Martin matriculated at theUniversity of New Mexico, Albuquerque, where she also taught art courses before returning to Columbia University to earn her M.A. (1952) in modern art.[12] She moved to New York City in 1957 and lived in a loft inCoenties Slip in lower Manhattan.[8]: 238 The Coenties Slip was also home to several other artists and their studios.[6] There was a strong sense of community although each had their own practices and artistic temperaments. The Coenties Slip was also a haven for the queer community in the 1960s. It is speculated that Martin was romantically involved with the artistLenore Tawney (1907–2007) during this time.[6][13] A pioneer of her time, Martin never publicly expressed her sexuality, but has been described as a "closeted homosexual."[14] The 2018 biographyAgnes Martin: Pioneer, Painter, Icon describes several romantic relationships between Martin and other women, including the dealerBetty Parsons.[15] She often employed a feminist lens when she critiqued fellow artists' work.Jaleh Mansoor, an art historian, stated that Martin was "too engaged in a feminist relation to practice, perhaps, to objectify and label it as such."[16] It is worth noting that Martin herself did not identify as a feminist and even once told aNew Yorker journalist in an interview that she thought "the women's movement had failed."[6][17]
Martin was publicly known to haveschizophrenia,[18] although it was undocumented until 1962.[6] She even once opted forelectric shock therapy for treatment atBellevue Hospital in New York.[4] Martin did have the support of her friends from the Coenties Slip, who came together after one of her episodes to enlist the help of a respected psychiatrist, who as an art collector was a friend to the community. However, her struggle was a largely private and individual one, and the full effect of the mental illness on her life is unknown.[6]
Martin left New York City abruptly in 1967, disappearing from the art world to live alone.[18] After eighteen months on the road camping across both Canada and the western United States, Martin settled in Mesa Portales, nearCuba, New Mexico (1968-1977).[6] She rented a 50-acre property and lived a simple life in an adobe home that she built for herself, adding four other buildings over the years.[6] During these years she did not paint, until 1971, when she was approached by curatorDouglas Crimp who was interested in organizing her first solo non-commercial exhibition. Subsequently, Martin started to write and lecture at various universities about her work.[6] Slowly Martin's interest in painting renewed as well. She approachedPace Gallery about her work and the gallery's founderArne Glimcher (b.1938) became her lifelong dealer.[6] Finally able to own her own property, she moved toGalisteo, New Mexico, where she lived until 1993.[8]: 240 She built an adobe home there too, still choosing an austere lifestyle. Although she still preferred solitude and lived alone, Martin was more active in the art world, travelling extensively and showing in Canada, the United States, and internationally.[5] In 1993 she moved to a retirement residence inTaos, New Mexico, where she lived until her death in 2004.[8]: 242
Many of her paintings bear positive names such asHappy Holiday (1999) andI Love the Whole World (2000).[4] In an interview in 1989, discussing her life and her painting, Martin said, "Beauty and perfection are the same. They never occur without happiness."[3]
Her work is most closely associated with Taos,[19] with some of her early work visibly inspired by the desert environment of New Mexico.[4] However, there is also a strong influence from her young upbringing in rural Canada, particularly the vast and quiet Saskatchewan prairies.[6] While she described herself as an American painter, she never forgot her Canadian roots, returning there after she left New York in 1967, as well as during her extensive travels in the 1970s.[6] Some of Martin's early works have been described as simplified farmer's fields, and Martin herself left her work open to interpretation encouraging comparisons of her unembellished, monochromatic canvases to landscapes.[6]
She moved to New York City at the invitation of the artist/gallery owner Betty Parsons in 1957 (the women had met prior to 1954). That year, she settled inCoenties Slip in lower Manhattan, where her friends and neighbors, several of whom were also affiliated with Parsons, includedRobert Indiana,Ellsworth Kelly,Jack Youngerman, andLenore Tawney.Barnett Newman actively promoted Martin's work, and helped install Martin's exhibitions at Betty Parsons Gallery beginning in the late 1950s.[19] Another close friend and mentor wasAd Reinhardt.[20] In 1961 Martin contributed a brief introduction to a brochure for her friend Lenore Tawney's firstsolo exhibition, the only occasion on which she wrote on the work of a fellow artist.[21] In 1967, Martin famously abandoned her life in New York. Cited reasons include the death of her friendAd Reinhardt, the demolition of many buildings on Coenties Slip, and a breakup with the artistChryssa whom Martin had dated off and on throughout the 1960s.[15] In her ten years living in New York Martin was frequently hospitalized to control symptoms of schizophrenia which manifested in the artist in a number of ways, including aural hallucinations and states of catatonia: on a number of occasions she received electroconvulsive therapy at Manhattan'sBellevue Hospital.[15] After Martin left New York, she drove around the western US and Canada, settling inCuba, New Mexico for a few years (1968-1977), then settling inGalisteo, New Mexico (1977-1993).[8]: 240–242 In both New Mexico homes, she built adobe brick structures herself.[3] She did not return to art until 1973 and consciously distanced herself from the social life and social events that brought other artists into the public eye.[15] She collaborated with architect Bill Katz in 1974 on a log cabin she would use as her studio.[22] That same year, she completed a group of new paintings and from 1975 they were exhibited regularly.
In 1976 she made her first film,Gabriel, a 78-minute landscape film which features a little boy going for a walk.[23] A second movie,Captivity, was never completed after the artist threw the rough cut into the town dump.[15]
According to a filmed interview with her that was released in 2003, she had moved from New York City only when she was told her rented loft/workspace/studio would be no longer available because of the building's imminent demolition. She went on further to state that she could not conceive of working in any other space in New York. When she died at age 92, she was said not to have read a newspaper for the last 50 years. Essays in the book dedicated to the exhibition of her work in New York at TheDrawing Center (traveling to other museums as well) in 2005 –3x abstraction – analyzed the spiritual dimension in Martin's work.[24] The 2018 biographyAgnes Martin: Pioneer, Painter, Icon was the first book to explore her relationship with women and her early life in substantial detail, and was written in collaboration with Martin's family and friends.
In addition to a couple of self-portraits and a few watercolor landscapes, Martin's early works included biomorphic paintings in subdued colors made when the artist had a grant to work in Taos between 1955 and 1957. However, she did her best to seek out and destroy paintings from the years when she was taking her first steps into abstraction.[20][25]
Martin praisedMark Rothko for having "reached zero so that nothing could stand in the way of truth". Following his example Martin also pared down to the most reductive elements to encourage a perception of perfection and to emphasize transcendent reality.[26] Her signature style was defined by an emphasis upon line, grids, and fields of extremely subtle color. Particularly in her breakthrough years of the early 1960s, she created 6 × 6 foot square canvases that were covered in dense, minute and softly delineated graphite grids.[27] In the 1966 exhibitionSystemic Painting at theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Martin's grids were therefore celebrated as examples ofMinimalist art and were hung among works by artists includingSol LeWitt,Robert Ryman, andDonald Judd.[28] While minimalist in form, however, these paintings were quite different in spirit from those of her other minimalist counterparts, retaining small flaws and unmistakable traces of the artist's hand; she shied away fromintellectualism, favoring the personal and spiritual. Her paintings, statements, and influential writings often reflected an interest in Eastern philosophy, especiallyTaoist. Because of her work's added spiritual dimension, which became more and more dominant after 1967, she preferred to be classified as anabstract expressionist.[2][3]
Martin worked in only black, white, and brown before moving to New Mexico. The last painting before she abandoned her career, and left New York in 1967,Trumpet, marked a departure in that the single rectangle evolved into an overall grid of rectangles. In this painting the rectangles were drawn in pencil over uneven washes of gray translucent paint.[29] In 1973, she returned to art making, and produced a portfolio of 30 serigraphs,On a Clear Day.[30] During her time in Taos, she introduced light pastel washes to her grids, colors that shimmered in the changing light.[31] Later, Martin reduced the scale of her signature 72 × 72 square paintings to 60 × 60 inches,[32] and shifted her work to use bands of ethereal color.[33] Another departure was a modification, if not a refinement, of the grid structure, which Martin has used since the late 1950s. InUntitled No. 4 (1994), for example, one viewed the gentle striations of pencil line and primary color washes of diluted acrylic paint blended with gesso. The lines, which encompassed this painting, were not measured by a ruler, but rather intuitively marked by the artist.[32] In the 1990s, symmetry would often give way to varying widths of horizontal bands.
Since her first solo exhibition in 1958, Martin's work has been the subject of more than 85 solo shows and two retrospectives including the survey,Agnes Martin, organized by theWhitney Museum of American Art, New York, which later traveled to Jamaica (1992–94) andAgnes Martin: Paintings and Drawings 1974–1990 organized by theStedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, with subsequent venues in France and Germany (1991–92). In 1998, theMuseum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico mountedAgnes Martin Works on Paper. In 2002, theMenil Collection, Houston, mountedAgnes Martin: The Nineties and Beyond. That same year, theHarwood Museum of Art at theUniversity of New Mexico, Pandora, organizedAgnes Martin: Paintings from 2001, as well as a symposium honoring Martin on the occasion of her 90th birthday.
In addition to participating in an international array of group exhibitions such as theVenice Biennale (1997, 1980, 1976), theWhitney Biennial (1995, 1977), andDocumenta, Kassel, Germany (1972), Martin has been the recipient of multiple honors including the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the Women's Caucus for Art of theCollege Art Association (2005); Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992);[34] the Governor's Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts given by GovernorGary Johnson, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1998); theNational Medal of Arts[35] awarded by PresidentBill Clinton and theNational Endowment for the Arts (1998); the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement by theCollege Art Association (1998); theGolden Lion for Contribution to Contemporary Art at theVenice Biennale (1997); the Oskar Kokoschka Prize awarded by the Austrian government (1992); the Alexej von Jawlensky Prize awarded by the city of Wiesbaden, Germany (1991); and election to theAmerican Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York (1989).[36]
Exhibitions continue to be mounted since her death in 2004, includingAgnes Martin: Closing the Circle, Early and Late from February 10, 2006 to March 4, 2006 at Pace Gallery.[25] Other exhibitions have been held in New York, Zurich, London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Cambridge (England), Aspen, Albuquerque, British Columbia in Canada.[37] In 2012, The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico, University of New Mexico launched a museum-wide exhibition titledAgnes Martin Before the Grid in honor of her centennial year. This exhibit was the first to focus on the work and life of Martin prior to 1960. The exhibit focused on many, never seen before, works Martin created at Columbia, Coentis Slip and early years in New Mexico. It was also the first to consider Martin's struggle with mental health, sexuality and Martin's important relationship with Ad Reinhardt. In 2015,Tate Modern ran a retrospective of her life and career from the 1950s until her last work in 2004, which will travel to other museums after the show in London.[4][38] At theUniversity of Michigan Museum of Art, Martin was featured in the exhibitionReductive Minimalism: Women Artists in Dialogue, 1960-2014 which examined the two generations ofMinimalist art side by side, from October 2014 through January 2015.[39][40] The exhibition includedAnne Truitt,Mary Corse, and contemporary artistsShirazeh Houshiary andTomma Abts.[39]
She was also featured inWhite on the White: Color, Scene, and Space inHiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. From October 2015 through April 2016, Martin was exhibited inOpening the Box: Unpacking Minimalism at The George Economou Collection in Athens, Greece alongsideDan Flavin andDonald Judd. From 2015 to 2017 she had numerous solo exhibitions, some being at theAspen Art Museum in Aspen Colorado,Tate Modern in London,K20,Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf,Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles,Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side, at thePalace of Governors, The New Mexico Museum of History in Santa Fe. She has featured in the ongoing exhibition Intuitive Progression at the Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City, New York from February 2017 to August 2017.[41]
In 2016, a retrospective exhibition of her works from the 1950s through 2004 was presented at theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.[42] In 2016 she was also featured in theDansaekhwa and Minimalism Exhibition at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles[43] and earlier in the year in the show titledAspects of Minimalism: Selections from East End Collections at the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York.[44]
She was also featured inMaking Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction atThe Museum of Modern Art in Midtown, New York which shined a light on women artists who worked postWorld War II and before the start of theFeminist movement. The exhibition went from April 2017 to August 2017 and featuredLee Krasner,Helen Frankenthaler, andJoan Mitchell,Lygia Clark,Gego,Magdalena Abakanowicz,Louise Bourgeois, andEva Hesse.[41]
In 2018, the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited her work inAgnes Martin: The Untroubled Mind/Works from the Daniel W. Dietrich II Collection.[45]
Martin's work was included in the 2021 exhibitionWomen in Abstraction at theCentre Pompidou.[46]
Martin was a featured artist in the 2024 exhibition 'Friend, A Survey of Op-Art and Minimalism' at the Ki Smith Gallery. The exhibition benefitted Sentebale, a Lesotho based charity co-founded by Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso. Martin exhibited alongside Bridget Riley and Frank Stella, among others.[47][48]
Martin's work can be found in major public collections in the United States, including theNew Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM;Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; TheChinati Foundation, Marfa, TX;Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.;Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art;The Menil Collection, Houston, TX;Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;The Museum of Modern Art, New York;National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.;Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City;San Francisco Museum of Modern Art;Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York;Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford;Walker Art Center, Minneapolis;Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; andDes Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, among others. Her work is on "long-term view" and part of the permanent holdings ofDia Art Foundation, Beacon, New York.[25]
International holdings of Martin's work include theTate, London and Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden.[2][38]
In 2007, Martin'sLoving Love (2000) was sold for $2.95 million atChristie's, New York.[27] In 2015,Untitled #7 (1984), a white acrylic painting with geometric pencil lines, sold for $4.2 million atPhillips in New York.[49] In 2016, herOrange Grove sold at auction for $13.7 million, the same year as the Guggenheim held a retrospective of her work.[50]
Martin became an inspiration to younger artists, fromEva Hesse toEllen Gallagher.[51]
Her image is included in the iconic 1972 posterSome Living American Women Artists byMary Beth Edelson.[52]
In 1994, theHarwood Museum of Art in Taos, part of theUniversity of New Mexico, announced that it would renovate its Pueblo-revival building and dedicate one wing to Martin's work.[53] The gallery was designed according to the artist's wishes in order to accommodate Martin's gift of seven large untitled paintings made between 1993 and 1994.[54] An Albuquerque architectural firm, Kells & Craig, designed the octagonal gallery with anoculus installed overhead, and four yellowDonald Judd benches placed directly under the oculus.[55][56] The gift of the paintings and gallery's design and construction were negotiated and overseen byRobert M. Ellis, the Harwood's director at the time and a close friend of Martin's. Today, the Agnes Martin Gallery attracts visitors from all over the world and has been compared by scholars to theChapelle du Rosaire de Vence (Matisse Chapel), Corbusier'sChapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, and theRothko Chapel in Houston.[57]
ComposerJohn Zorn'sRedbird (1995) was inspired by and dedicated to Martin.[61]
Wendy Beckett, in her bookAmerican Masterpieces, said about Martin: "Agnes Martin often speaks of joy; she sees it as the desired condition of all life. Who would disagree with her?... No-one who has seriously spent time before an Agnes Martin, letting its peace communicate itself, receiving its inexplicable and ineffable happiness, has ever been disappointed. The work awes, not just with its delicacy, but with its vigor, and this power and visual interest is something that has to be experienced."[62]
Poet Hugh Behm-Steinberg's poem "Gridding, after some sentences by Agnes Martin" discusses patterns in the natural world, makes a parallel between writing and painting, and ends with a line about the poet's admiration of Martin's work.[63]
Her work inspired aGoogle doodle on the 102nd anniversary of her birth on March 22, 2014. The doodle takes color cues from Martin's late work which is marked by soft edges, muted colors and distinctly horizontal bands, turned to six vertical bars, one for each letter of the Google logo.[64]
The song "Agnes Martin" by American rock bandScreaming Females, from their albumAll at Once, is an ode to the artist.[65]
PoetVictoria Chang's workWith My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) is in conversation with both Martin's artwork and writings.[66]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Published on the occasion of the exhibition 3 x abstraction: new methods of drawing by Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, and Agnes Martin; Organized by the Drawing Center; The Drawing Center, New York, NY, March 19-May 21, 2005, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, June 10-August 13, 2005, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, January 24-March 26, 2006.
Screening: Parts of a roughcut of the movie are screened until March 6, 2016, at Kunstsammlung NRW Duesseldorf (Germany) as part of the accompanying program of the exhibition.[permanent dead link]
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