Pure emotion: Agnes Martin 

Title 

Pure emotion: Agnes Martin 

Introduction

“In the summer of 1967, Martin left New York and went off-grid before reappearing in New Mexico. The art she made there – with its buoyant bands of colour – offer no clues to the turbulent life of an artist who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.”

Agnes Martin once said “she thinks about nothing but painting”  her best place or source of power was always in the studio painting. Most people see Agnes Martin artwork,  think it's just a grid or simple lines and shapes. But to truly understand Agnes Martin work you need to understand Martin as an individual who was part of the movement of abstract expressionism. I would like to talk about the previous work of Agnes Martin and also discuss Untitled #2. the artist,philosophers and writers that inspired her.

Agnes Martin before Untitled #2

Agnes Martin was Born in Canada, she moved to the USA  in 1932 to become an art teacher. during her time in the United States After studying at Western Washington University College of Education and earning  B.A  from Columbia University. Agnes Martin moved to New Mexico that is when she started creating her own artwork.

 After she moved to New York, she got inspired by New York Modern Art. and after suffering from mental illness, she moved back to New Mexico. Agnes Martin was inspired by artists such as Mark Rothko, an American painter,  Arshile Gorky a Armenian-American painter, Adolph Gottlieb a American abstract expressionist painter , and Joan Miró a Spanish painter, and Lao Tzu's teachings on Taoism. She wasn't religious but she was inspired by religious texts in Christianity and Buddhism. After moving back to New Mexico she started to write a lot and meditate. She started to paint again in 1972. Agnes Martin started making grids in 1964. “Martin often described a painting from 1964, The Tree, as her first grid”.

 Untitled #2

“She was introduced to Western philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) during her training as a teacher, and he continued to have a powerful influence on her. She shared Dewey’s beliefs that art is not an object but an experience that arises in the mind of the viewer or artist.” Looking at this painting ( Untitled #2) it does not include figures or shapes that would normally be recognised from other painting’s of Agnes, Martin in the early 1957.

 In 1992 when she painted  Untitled #2 At this point of her life Agnes, Martin was painting from imagination or intuition. painting without using any worldly references figures, and landscapes buildings, she was quoted that “I paint with my back to the world,” she declared, and what she wanted to catch in her rigorous nets was not material existence, the Earth and its myriad forms, but rather the abstract glories of being: joy, beauty, innocence; happiness itself.”  

Arnold "Arne" Glimcher is an American art dealer once said that agnes-martin described her paintings as full of emotions. She uses the words “pure emotion”.

Agnes Martin was always searching for this pure emotion in her art work which is brought together by having  “Beauty and Perfection in Art” which in the end you get happiness which is one of  pure emotion She wanted for the observer and herself. 

She destroyed a lot of her early work. She was very self critical. Untitled #2 This painting doesn’t have a lot of details.  When you’re standing far away from the painting, it looks completely blank which makes me think that Agnes Martin paintings are meant to be a substitute or represent a human figure in Abstract Expressionism, close to her earliest artwork before the Grid. 

Just the way you can’t tell how someone looks or feeling from a far, but when you come close you see what they look like and other details. Also you can start to work out what a person is feeling without saying much and also with the muted colours of this painting, you can tell what kind of mood or emotion. That's what I am taking away and understand that this painting is a representation of the human being completely detached from the world experiencing very calm emotion judging from the colour palette and the muted colours and the lines of the painting represent the different lines. They make up the human soul or the human figure. This could also be a self portrait of Agnes Martin. Just like her earlier painting The Expulsion of Adam

and Eve from the Garden of Eden, 1953,

This could be her representing herself in this artwork and others similar to this. and telling us viewers or observers that we don’t know who she is, and the only people who know who she is are those people who are close to her. who can see her close up. Agnes Martin said “I believe in living above the line. Above the line is happiness and love, you know. Below the line is all sadness and destruction and unhappiness. And I don’t go down below the line for anything.”

 Also when you’re close up you get to see the  lines which might represent her character traits,  or philosophy/ principles. And the more colours you see the more  of her soul is on display and the beauty and calmness of the muted colour palette, , which might represent the emotions of Agnes, Martin which she was experiencing  near the end of her life. “Towards the end of her life, even the strictures began to dissolve. As she aged, Martin became happier and more social, as well as considerably more wealthy.”

 The untitled one and two are one of the few paintings Agnes Martin painted before she got sick with bad health and eventually passed away in 2004. 

Agnes Martin never wanted anything to influence her work. She never wanted any outside world, or anything decorative to influence her work. She always talked about this pure emotion in her artwork, always searching for this pure emotion, she never tried to search for pure emotion from outside influences, she was always looking inside her. This makes me think that her last paintings from 1990 to 2004 was her finally finding happiness. and as a way of a self portrait as a way of documenting her feelings or painting her feelings during her final years at the age of 80. After moving into the community home, agnes martin started to paint shapes again and enjoying life and being more social and happy.

Agnes Martin process

Agnes Martin will normally sit in a rocking chair waiting for inspiration.

She would make mathematical calculations, after getting inspiration like the size of a postcard then she normally draws on a small scale then after she begins painting to a large surface. 

“Untitled #2, 1992: five blue bands separated by four repeating runners of white, watery orange and salmon pink. Up close, the pencil lines wobbled over the weave like an ECG. There were two hairs stuck to the canvas; five peach splatters the size of fingernails. The eye seized on these small details, on the infinitesimally darker patches where two brush strokes had collided, because there was nothing else to grasp: no view, no closure, just a radiant openness, as if the ocean had come into the windowless room.”  Agnes Martin's last six-by-six-foot painting was painted in 1992 This is a very large painting which hangs at art exhibitions at the PaceGallery. Untitled 2 still has lines like her previous paintings  but this  painting and Untitled 1 have  BrushStrokes and are filled with colour. 

very different from her previous grey paintings. The colours are very muted, you have a repeat pattern of three Rolls with colour going vertically. I also can see she used a grey pencil to mark out the lines horizontally . She paints in a translucent way where if you come close you can see through the colours that make up the pattern. Untitled 2 even though this painting is very different from her previous work we can still see similar themes (motifs). The pencil marks, the minimalist approach and the repetition of the line.

Conclusion

In this essay I have shown that before Untitled #2, Agnes Martin was living a hard life experiencing evictions lonisness, And mental health issues. moving from Canada to the United States searching for belonging. I talked about her previous work like The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, 1953, how this work which was created during her early stage of art career started to return and have an influence on her during her happy and prosperous years. 

i discuss Untitled #2 Agnes Martin last six-by-six-foot painting which was painted in 1992 which signode Agnes Martin shift away from the grid and  going back to  her earlier roots. I also talk about those artists,philosophers and writers that inspired her and shaped some of her worldview. The conclusion from listening and reading about Agnes Martin is that she was always searching for happiness, the pure emotion in Beauty and Perfection in art. “It is commonly thought that everything that is can be put into words. But there is a wide range of emotional response that we make that cannot be put into words. We are so used to making these emotional responses that we are not consciously aware of them till they are represented in art work”.

Agnes' work demands a response from the public. Those who hate or love her work  and those who are intrigued by her work. You don’t really need to have a context to understand her work. You just need to be open-minded. And  ready to experience it. The take away from her work is this self-confidence, the power, and the belief in her ability to do exactly what she wants, and the journey of her story of getting to this point of creating work that is truly her without outside influence.