Look, See

Agnes Martin
March 22, 1912, Maklin, Saskatchewan, Canada -
December 16, 2004, Taos, New Mexico, USA

I learned about Agnes Martin as an undergraduate in the San Francisco Bay Area, around 1976. I had an early, natural attraction to abstract art, even as young as 11 or 12; on a trip to the Oakland Museum with my grandmother around 1968 I was as interested in Albert Bierstadt, as, say, Hassel Smith. I thought that a painting is a painting: they all deserve to be looked at, and they aren't that easy to make. Adults said, “A child can make that,” but I didn't agree; I couldn't make one, and I thought there was something going on there besides the skilled (or unskilled) representation of a person, tree, cow, or table top. I don't know why I knew that so young.

At age 18 I suddenly had access to a college library and freely available back issues of art magazines, which I studied pretty closely in the stacks. I particularly liked Art International and Artforum. This, combined with access to SFMOMA, the de Young and Legion of Honor, the Oakland Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum, were the real foundation of my education, rather than the studio classes I took, where I pretty much ended up doing whatever I wanted to do anyway.

I became really intrigued by what was usually called minimalist painting: Ryman, Marden, Novros, Berthot, Humphrey, etc., in NY; Charlton and Greene in the UK; the Swiss- Lohse and Bill; BMPT in France: Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, and Toroni; as well as many others. I had become interested in a number of questions: What is a painting? How could so little could provoke so much looking? What is the basis for the artist of this kind of work? Is this a reduction or expansion of painting, i.e., is minimalist painting additive (starting from zero) or subtractive (a removing from painting of other subjects, techniques, concerns)? How are decisions made by the artist? What are the differences between similar kinds of work? How does an individual resist the urge to fix things up, beautify, design, and decorate?

The problem was that in the San Francisco Bay Area I found little exposure to this work (this would change around 1979-80 when two SF galleries- Modernism and Shirley Cerf- began actively showing artists like Simpson, Saxon, Hayward, Tchakalian, Marioni, Hafif, Gimblett, Sims, Lawson, and others). I was trying to figure it out through reproductions, all the while still looking closely at artists grouped as Bay Area figurative painters like Diebenkorn, Park, Bischoff, Brown, and Neri.

I recall buying a copy of Art News (vol. 75, no. 7, September 1976!) at the Oakland Museum on a late weekday afternoon in 1976. I still have this issue, buried in a box from our last move. A Rembrandt self portrait is on the cover, and inside is a multi-page article about Agnes Martin. I remember that I bought the magazine because of this article, as I had seen her name somewhere before in one of the magazines in the library that I studied. I remember walking down the street carrying the magazine, eager to read it later. I clearly recall that the sun was out, light was bouncing off the sidewalk, and the air was dry because it was warm and a little windy.

The article detailed Martin's history, described how she quit painting and left New York for new Mexico 1967, touched on the film she made called Gabriel, and discussed the new paintings she began making in 1974, the exhibition of which prompted the article. Interviewed for and quoted in the article, they way she wrote and spoke made an enormous impression on me. I had just read Alan Watts' The Book, and I think I'd also begun Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Martin's thoughts and ideas were in this realm, but she spoke very clearly as a painter, as someone who was working towards visual clarity. I was immediately struck by her statement, "Anyone can look at a waterfall all day." Having read that, I had just then learned a new way to approach a painting and to understand and talk about looking.

I first saw an actual painting by Agnes Martin in 1977. I vividly remember the moment. I walked into a gallery at SFMOMA, at the old building in the Veteran's War Memorial Building near the City Hall; it was one of the inner galleries just around the corner from the elevators. There it hung, and I instantly knew who the artist was. I felt happy, as if I'd discovered something.

Falling Blue, 1963, is six feet square, oil and pencil on canvas which actually looks like coarse, dark linen. Horizontal pencil lines perhaps half an inch apart are ruled to the edges of a framing border of bare canvas perhaps two inches around all four sides. In between the penciled horizontal lines long strokes of dark violet-blue are painted with a small brush from one side to the other. Each blue line is brushed horizontally as far as the paint that the brush carries can lasts, and then the brush is loaded with more paint to continue the line. Each horizontal band of blue paint spanning the painting, then, isn't completely continuous: you can see places in each band where the stroke starts, fades out, and continues with a fresh load of paint. Up close you can see the movement, the labor, the patience in these repeated thin stripes. However, I didn't see these details immediately. I remember first stopping at least ten feet away and seeing and taking in the whole painting. The thin stripes of paint turning thick and thin because of the starts and stops of the horizontal strokes looked something like thin, soft, slowly undulating corduroy, and the painting shimmered and waved. It gave off and took in light.

Multiple kinds of space could be seen. There was a deep space, difficult to pin down, fuzzy, wavy and distant, somewhat like a mirage. There was an intimate space, enveloping and up close, where the painting could be seen as a real thing, handmade in small sections like weaving. Finally, there was a formal space made by the border around the canvas that framed the inner painted area, which made more obvious a kind of architectural space between the painting’s edge and the wall on which it hung.

The dark brown canvas and the dark blue paint were basically the only two colors in the painting, but they simultaneously projected a brilliant image while also collapsing into a mud that couldn't be unmixed by the eye. The painting wavered in and out of sight, not always easy to see, but this process of continual, adaptive looking was a constant and steady experience. Finally, I began to see how so little could do and mean so much. I gave myself to the painting, looking at it at every opportunity on successive visits, and I ultimately learned a lot from Falling Blue: how to look at a painting not only as a critical observer, but also as one who experiences the painting emotionally and intellectually, both consciously and intuitively.

It's much harder to say, however, what I learned about making a painting, because the entire painting is there before me- canvas, pencil lines, strokes of blue paint- and the entire act of its making can be deciphered. Why can't this be easily repeated? I can look at the painting almost as a recipe, but I can't make it.

I also learned from Agnes Martin something to do with intention (having an idea, following through on it, and staring down the results to decide whether or not to keep it) and contrivance (acting on a bad idea, illustrating an idea, losing sight of or failing to follow the idea, or bad editing of work). Falling Blue, and successive paintings by Agnes Martin I've seen, taught me about using materials directly, finding and committing to a vision and voice, avoiding illustration, and the power of distillation. I think these are some of the strengths of her work. Happily, she was able to work for a long time, and I believe her example and body of work is important.