ART-PRESENTATION: Agnes Martin a Retrospective
One of the preeminent painters of the 20th Century, Agnes Martin created subtle and evocative canvases frequently inscribed with penciled lines and grids, which significantly influenced artists of her time and subsequent generations. Often associated with Minimalism yet kindred with the Abstract Expressionists, she was one of the few prominent female artists to emerge from these prevailingly masculine art movements of the late 50s and ’60s.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Collection
The retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York featuring 100 works, traces Agnes Martin’s career from her early experiments of the ‘50s through her mature oeuvre and final paintings, making it the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work from her lesser-known work of the 50s to her final canvases of early 2000s. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and a film, celebrating the scope of Martin’s practice. Arranged chronologically, and with works on paper interspersed with paintings, the exhibition features over 15 works that are unique to the New York presentation of the retrospective. Among these is “White Flower” (1960), which was acquired by the Guggenheim in 1963 and was the first work by the artist to enter any Museum Collection. In the ‘40s and early ’50s, Agnes Martin lived and studied periodically in the northwestern United States, New Mexico, and New York City. In 1957, she settled in Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan alongside fellow artists Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. She established her career as an artist, earning her first solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1958. By the late ’50s, Martin supplanted the landscape and figurative watercolors and surrealistic oils from her formative years and began experimenting with different mediums, including the use of found materials and the painting of large simplified abstractions. Her mature works began in 1960 and marked a crossroads in the history of Abstract painting, are distinguished by square formats, grids, penciled lines drawn on canvas, and compositions with subtle variations in shade and hue. Martin left the New York art scene and abandoned painting in 1967 despite the growing interest in her work. In search of solitude and silence, she traveled across the U.S.A. and Canada for almost two years before finally settling in New Mexico, where she lived the rest of her life. After a hiatus of several years, Martin published “On a Clear Day” (1973), a portfolio of 30 screenprints of differently proportioned grids and parallel lines. She began painting again in 1974, continuing to explore and refine her spare style until her death in 2004. She often chose titles that suggest a preoccupation with the natural world, such as “White Stone” (1964) and “White Flower” (1960), and throughout her career she maintained a particular interest in using art to evoke the experience of nature. She was steadfast in her denial of any representative elements in her work, however, and said about her subject: “It’s really about the feeling of beauty and freedom, that you experience in landscape. I would say that my response to nature is really a response to beauty. The water looks beautiful, the trees look beautiful, even the dust looks beautiful. It is beauty that really calls”. The Guggenheim also presents regular screenings of Martin’s only completed film, “Gabriel” (1976). Loosely following the wandering of a ten-year-old boy in rural New Mexico, the film is a contemplative and fragmentary depiction of nature and the American landscape.
Info: Curators: Tiffany Bell & Tracey Bashkoff, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, Duration: 7/10/16-11/1/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed, Fri & Sun 10:00-17:45, Sat 10:00-19:45, www.guggenheim.org
