Douglas Witmer
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Monday, December 27, 2004
Thank you Agnes Martin
The painter Agnes Martin passed away this past month at the age of 92. Below is an appreciation I wrote in response to an invitation from the internet gallery MINUS SPACE (to view the complete artists' responses, follow the "texts" link from the homepage).
(Image is Agnes Martin's "Praise")
There was record flooding in south central Pennsylvania, where I grew up, in the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. I was too young to remember the event, but the phrase "flood of Agnes" was often spoken in my childhood. I didn't know Agnes was a woman's name. The sound of it definitely left an impression. This is an aside, though...
I long fancied making a visit to Taos to visit Agnes Martin. I read she took visitors. I never knew what I would ask or say, though. Words tend to drop away for me when it comes to her work.
I believe I did not actually "see" the first Agnes Martin painting I was exposed to. It was likely "The Rose" which sometimes hangs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the time was probably in the late 1980s. It took interacting with the work of my mentor Warren Rohrer, who shared affinities with Agnes, for my consciousness to be opened.
I've begun to think that's how some work is--invisible until its viewer is ready to see.
In my upbringing I was encouraged to "be in the world but not of the world" and this is definitely a feeling I got from Agnes' work. The feeling was bolstered as I learned more about her life and writing.
The story of her move to the desert, building a house by hand (one account made it sound like she began by putting adobe around her camper and worked outward from there) and of her "quitting" painting for the better part of a decade: I find all of that an inspiring example of taking an alternative path. I wrestle personally, though, with the viability of that kind of asceticism for an artist of my generation.
Seeing her early work at Dia Beacon this past fall was a true highlight. Whereas her gridded paintings could at times seem a closed system, cutting themselves off from the world, the early works were incredibly open, humble, innocent, and vulnerable. I could see they came from a special time and place. I am very curious about her decision to revisit some of those images in what was her last exhibition at Pace Wildenstein.
I made a special trip to see those paintings in real life. I'm glad I did, but they made me sad because in them I felt like I could see that Agnes no longer possessed the physical mechanics. The paint quality didn't carry the images like it had before.
Her paintings, like all reductive or distilled work, have such possibility for total failure. In this (our) kind of work, it's a real accomplishment when feel you have made a success. Agnes' work for so long had all the parts in play so beautifully and I am thankful to be able to experience that.
((EXPLORE THE EXHIBITIONS--Agnes Martin @ Dia:Beacon and Agnes Martin: Homage to Life @ Pace Wildenstein))
27.12.04 