“Rather than being overlooked by critics, Martin’s quiet technique caused them to look all the more thoroughly, just as we may be impelled to lean forward and concentrate more intensely when a speaker’s voice is exceptionally soft.”
A breathtaking exemplar of Agnes Martin’s mesmerizing artistic practice, Untitled #11, from 1997, embodies the minimal yet sublime expressiveness that underscores her remarkable contribution to twentieth-century painting. Consistently working within the methodical conceptual program of a square canvas segmented into grids or bands, Martin has established an indubitably prodigious visual lexicon. In Untitled #11, washes of soft blue and pristine white flow across the canvas, gently separated by lines of graphite pencil, the painting nearly glowing with a radiance that seeps out of the two-dimensional canvas and scatters into the atmosphere. Her hazy hues and subtly irregular brushstrokes give rise to a palpable sensuality while her geometric compositions impart a graceful elegance. Test.mes nt to the significance of Martin’s lyrical abstraction, 60 inch paintings from the 1990s reside in sixteen esteemed museums such as the Tate, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and the Solomon R. Guggeheim Museum, New York; among others.
“The value of art is in the observer. When you find out what you like, you’re really finding out about yourself. Beethoven’s music is joyous. If you like his music, you know that you like to be joyful. People who look at my painting say that it makes them happy, like the feeling when you wake up in the morning. And happiness is the goal isn’t it?”
While not immediately visible at first glance, a rewarding element of this canvas is Martin’s emblematic pencil marks. The horizontal bands stacked atop each other look repeated, straight, and precisely uniform from a distance. Upon closer inspection, it is revealed that Martin’s meticulous process lends way to each ruling being slightly irregular and entirely unique. Martin’s rigorous yet profoundly personal process begins with brushing layers of white primer across the canvas. Rather than meticulously stretching out the priming coat to get a uniform surface one would expect from gesso, she never shied away from leaving her brushstrokes visible and embraced the subtleties of the canvas itself. It is upon this surface that the artist pares down composition to the most fundamental forms with her graphite pencil, the hand tracing the straight lines of the ruler or masking tape she uses, slight irregularities in the pencil lines invoking the artist’s hand grazing along the bumpy primer and skipping from peak to peak, recording where the artist picked up her pencil, paused, and then resumed. The bands of paint traverse the monochrome canvas from left to right, their path at t.mes s discreetly diverted by the gentle bumps in the gessoed canvas, vibrating with a quiet humming energy that is such a celebrated feature of Martin’s oeuvre. The resulting work oscillates between the conceptual rigor of her drafting and her deeply human imprecision, trotting along hairline pencil markings to a steady but variegated rhythm, immersed in the graceful elegance of Martin’s signature aesthetic vocabulary.
Another essential facet of Martin’s contemplative experience presented in Untitled #11 is the stunning colors of the work. Thin layers of acrylic paint shimmer with a resplendent vitality as the bright primer underneath absorbs and reflects light. The airiness of the tinges makes them nearly indescribable, even as they emanate a liveliness that almost takes physical hold of the viewer, all the while eluding understanding. Upon closer inspection, the hushed tonalities of white and blue reveal a more painterly fluctuation as the paint, built up with countless applications of thin brushstrokes, discreetly wavers from the tactile materiality of pigment to the diaphanous ethereality of scattering light. While the artist resisted critics’ comparisons of her compositions with natural imagery, it is easy to imagine how the unencumbered horizontal stripes are reminiscent of the expansive azure skies and billowing white clouds of Taos. Much like the seemingly limitless horizons in the vistas of New Mexico, where the sky meets earth in a gentle embrace, Untitled #11 marries the artist’s conceptual depth with spiritual power into a painting breathtaking in its sophisticated brilliance.
“I want to draw that quality of response from people who leave themselves behind, often experienced in nature, an experience of simply joy… My paintings are about.mes rging, about formlessness… A world without objects, without interruption.”
Rhythmical and regimented yet simultaneously tranquil and joyfully serene, the present work is a superb example of the ebullient beauty that characterizes Martin’s mature career. As the viewer walks towards the painting, the present work envelops them with its misty luminescence, the artist’s iconic striated facture radiating with the human touch and meditative process behind every canvas. Untitled #11 elicits a distinct sensation of peacefulness, one pursued throughout Martin’s storied career: “I want to draw that quality of response from people who leave themselves behind, often experienced in nature, an experience of simply joy… My paintings are about.mes rging, about formlessness… A world without objects, without interruption.” (the artist quoted in: An Wilson, “Linear Webs: Agnes Martin,” Art and Artists, New York, 1966, pp. 48-9)
