t t 6 [ I I S 8 U l 1 1 . l M S , U l J .

l V W S J u 8 V
I v a . I U D p u v / v n p ! t t l p u I
Rhea Anastas
In every person there IS the POSSlblhty of a small , pure, new, unreal portion which IS. without
reference to personali ty In the popular, social sense. sel L .. When this serf has been ISOlated
(rom all that is ImpreSSion and Impurity 01 contact In an indIVidual, then a "t hing." a work, occurs,
il is discharged from the indIVIdual, It IS self, not his self. but self
- Laura Riding, )974
Behind and before selr-e:<presslon IS r1 developing awareness In the mind that effects tli e work
This developing awareness I wil l also Cd!! "the work " It IS a most Important part of the work.
There IS the work In our minds, the work In our hands and the work as a result
- Agnes Martin, "On the Perfect ion Underl yill g Life ," 1973
During the 1960s a nd ea rl y 1970s, a line of interpretati o n for Agnes Martin's singular
ca nvases-no niULI sionistic fields of quieti), mut ating drawn and brushed lines, rows, and
rectangles- cohered among reviewers who had seen them in exhibiti ons in New York si nce
1958. One of t.he signal narratives of th is line, continuing until now, was Martin's develop
ment of an " imageless'" allover grid, full y rea li zed in paintings of 1964 thr ough 1967. At
this moment, writing on Martin's work for the most part situated the paintings as legible
materii'tl constructions, enlisting such descriptors as "graph paper" and such structural
words as "systemic"2 or "syntax."3 Annett e Mi chelson) who in 1967 contributed an ea rly
review of Martin 's 1966 "precisely, almost sharply, drawn grids with larger interstices,"'i
employed one passage twice: "All these c" nVuses measure 72" by 72" and are prepared with
an acryli C base, Against white, off-white a nd buff grounds, verti cal s and horizontals are,
for the most part, ruled in penciL'" In a limned phrasing that reso nated with Martin' s
paintings, the critic demonstrated the importance of a materialist description to thi s
emerging discourse.
In 1973 , Douglas Crimp wrote from a parallel perspective, extending the argu
ment: HWith minor exceptions, these paintings are 6-foot-square canvases whose sur faces
are painted evenly and overlayed with hori zontal and vertical coordinate lines
penc il ed On with the aid ofa straightedge." Pressing for the interpretive lIses of such a
"summary arti culation," Crimp found the economy of hi s sentence to "sugges[t] that we
have paintings which can be concretely described without that description appearing irre l
evant" and "that the paintings reveal precisely how they were made. "t> He cont inued: "We
IJJ I
'
,
do not impose a rational order on the paintings; the paintings consist of an immediately
apprehensible rational construction.'" Published at the nascence of this line of interpreta
tion, Crimp's account can now be seen to clarify and naturali ze the 1960s model of writing
about Martin.
This line of interpretation, which systemati zes the perceived material constnlction
of the paintings int o a logic and into a fjeld- specific literature, has been carried forth and
continues for the most part unbroken. And yet, during a brief period in the first years of
the 1970s, another, st rikingly divergent read ing of Martin 's al1 welled up. An article by
Kasha Linville of 1971 can be counted among severa l responses to Martin's work that
brought notions of individualit y and subjective experience to the early critical record on
the painter:
8
Miss Martin's most important paintings are <III-over grids pencilled on monochrome oil or
acrylic-covered, square ca nvases, usually 72 by 72 inches. This fact is totally misleadi ng as
to the nature of her art , since the idea of a grid implies rationally calculated painting that
might have been devised in the early 19605 ro break in upon art history with a radical new
loo k. Nothing could be more wrong. Miss Martin seuled on her hori zontal and vertical
mode intuitively in 1959 or 1960.... Instead, her grid paintings came into being almost as
natural objects, the products of her own private, creative well spring.')
All at once, Linvill e's account dismisses the rational model for Martin 's grids and installs
the idea of a private understanding, a'Testing the reader with its difference.
Martin's writings were published for the first time in January 1973 in a mono
graphic catalogue edited by Suza nne Delehanty." Here entered an original voice in pos
session of a broad to redirect the ways in which Martin's art was being positioned
within cri ticism and the modernist pictorial canon.
11
The publication Agnes A1arlin accom
panied the first museum presentalion of the artist's work, which had been organized by
Delehanty at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The catalogue featured
a new essay by the curator and critic Lawrence Alloway. But it was Martin's own writ
ing and ils tonality that lent the catalogue, dense with the artist's statements, an essenti al,
self-expressive quality. The book design privileged the intimacy of Martin' s work by pre
senting close-ups of paintings and drawings, some illus tr ated to scale, and pairings of this
work with quotations, enlarged and therefore brought into a kind of parity with the repro
ductions. Drawing on primary research conducted with the artist and based on manuscri pts
134 I Individual al1d Unreal
in th
cant]
"Th,
and
Ann
realr
fore!
expr
her t
In H_
path
SOCl f
she i
as in
obst
defi.
artis,
the ':
asoc
Mar
the 1
und!
mit)
worl
reco
the I
IS re

oftt
\3:
in the form of statements and notes, Delehanty's volume situated the artist's own
contribution to her work '5 interpretati on. Us centerpiece was the composite artist's texl
"The Untroubled Mind," a statement developed from existing notes, recounted nalTati ves,
and Martin's notations from a 1972 leerure with an editorial contribution by al1i st
Ann WilsonY
Martin's statements reveal that she saw her work as expressive of an innate psychic
realm as opposed to a formalist, rationalist sphere, where critics had so far located it. She
foregrounded essential notions of crea tivity and inspiration as subjective processes of poetic
expression and implicated a spiri tual imperative not associated with organized religion in
her explanation of and reflection on the artist's life, temperament, and working process,13
In "The Untroubled Mind," Martin distinguishes subjective expression and the indi vidual
pathway of artistic work (always using non-progress-oriented phrasing) from the forces of
society, socialization, and influence.
'4
For Martin, social formations are not inevitable, and
she insists on independence in the nurturing of an aesthetic: "The education of children
social development is contradictory to aest hetic development" and "the wiggle of a worm
as important as the assassination of a Such externa1 authorities are understood as
obstructions to the reali zation of an " untroubl ed mind," which Martin beli eved to be
defined as a fleeting and changeable capaci ty for expression, a pathway shaped from the
artist's best moments in the pursuit of creative work. as in her metaphOl.- "To hold onto
the 'silver cord: that is the artistic discipline."h5
Self-reliant and rife with imperatives favoring the poetic, Martin's writing struck
a new independer.t and Cas [ will posit by comparison with the modernist Laura Riding)
asocial chord in relation to existing interpretations of her art. The possibility of seeing
Martin's stance as asocial involves taking seriously her expressions that cast as unnatural
the usual forms of participati on in society and discourse for the modern artist. Martin ' s
understanding of the self is further one that eschews civil definitions. Yet the nonconfor
mity of her ideas has never been taken up or accounted for in the critical reception of her
work. The novel task of identi tYing and tracing the negative space of such a reading must
recognize her writing as representati ve of an "other" or even oppositional moderni sm. In
the process, a di stinctive subj ecti vist model of interpretation that dates to the earl y 1970s
is recovered, as if a non sequitur from a largely forgotten early period within the di scourse.
This reading, as well as Martin's own position, contrasts with the field-specific discourses
of the period, which frame contemporaneous as well as present understandings of her
IJS i RHEA ANASTAS
work. Undeniably, (here are sharp di visions between Martin's written expression as i( was
introduced in 1973 and the discourse of her commentators, a schi sm that cannot be bridged.
The Unreal
In the essay ".Iocasta" of 1928, poet and critic Laura Riding pinpointed a concept of the
"unreal. " In a collection of comments from 1974 on Anarchism Is NOl Enough ( 1928),
the book in wh ich "Jocasta" appea red, Riding explained that her idea of the unreal had
evolved li'om "a very difficult percept.ion of the inadequacy of existing conceptions of the
nature of reality ... the character of the existent."" Riding counterposed the unreal with
the Freudian psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity of her day, and the idea was crucial to
her critical project of distinguishing a materialist limit of language and self within another
realm-that of poetry. As she expressed it , "this 'unreal' is a use forced on me (in my then
stage of defining the nature of this and that) by the actual unreality of the makeshift 'real
ity' of social synthesis or philosophical (special intellectual society) synthesis."" As she
had earli er claimed, in Jocasta":
Self is poetic self. Nature, mathemC!.l.ical life, is the become, the eternaJly grown-up;
logical life, is the becoming, the eternally childish.
The time-advocate, whom I shall call the philosopher, does not see, or is afraid to see,
that the become and the becoming are both mutually illusory Worlds of reality: that they
are self-created refutations of individuality to which the individual succumbs from imper
fection. He forgets, that is, that the individual is an unbecoming and that the categories
"becoming" and "become" are re<l ll y a derivation from him. a historical recons truction.
Unbecoming is the movement <lway from rea lity. the becomjng llilTea l.
19
The "unre.I" cleaves social roles from individuals and expressions of the self from the self,
appearing thus in the work. vVithin the Martin literature, a notion like Riding's reveals art
history's monographic models and Great Ar ti st constructs to n.rrate myth and biography
weakly, blurring person, persona, and work, rather than bringing for analysis the kinds
of expressive subjectivities that appear within the material and linguistic structures of art
works and artists' statements.'" That self, the self of the individual artist, is fundamentaUy
independent of mind , as Riding explained: "The nature of the person who seeks to treat of
main things of being, in tho ught & expression from a position of self-reliance as against
136 'lldi,/i dl.ltll (Ind Unreal I
reli(lnc
system
eviden
tion 0 1
with
"The \
your c
made
is goir
Ridin:
far 1
Marti
sense
Ma rti
(whe1
reviel
Thro
critic
isr an
revie
1
Greet
sculp
such
acutl;
137
reli ance upon defi niti ons of things delivered from socially cons tructed or phil osophi ca ll y
systematized frames of <lUtho rity." l ' Whil e neither an artisti c or histori c(l i context nor any
evidence of contact can be named to connect Ri ding wi th Martin. the poet-criti c' s desc rip
tion of the art istic life and creative reiCltionship to language as an "unbecoming" is resonant
with Marti n's less ri gorously logical (and less lingu istic ) notion of creati ve self- expression.
"The work of art ists is <In in vestigClt ion into truth and you're go ing to see it in your mind,
your own mind . You' re not going to see it looking at otber people. That 's the great mist ake
made in this worl d; a lot of peopl e will say that soc ial unde rst anding or something like tha t
is going to lead us to the truth, but it isn ' t. It is the understanding of yourself.""
A Whisper in tlze H otlse
The group mmd tries to prevent (he Individual . . from realizing rts unreali ty, Its It s
unnaturalness (by] hYi ng to make SOCi al Insti tutIOns seem ineVitable
-Lauro 11idi ng, 1974
Riding understood self-reliance as the fundament al phil osophical positi on of the artist. Thus
fa r 1 have argued that, conside red through Riding's precise framework for the self in art,
Mortin's ideas can be seen less as naturali zing or psychological in the Abstract Expressionist
sense (in comparison with those of her critics) and more deliberate, arising from a hard
won, inna te philosophy.
Alloway was the single criti c o f the early 1970s to develop a critical model for
Martin' s work that struck a positi on inde pendent both of the reaso ned, Min imali st line
(where [located Mi chelson and Crimp ea rlier on), which dominated Mart in's ea rliest
reviews, and of the particularl y fe minist advocacy that characterized LinviHe>s wri ting.
Through hi s wri ting about Martin' s work, AJ loway refined hi s own growi ng opposition to
criti cal ort hodoxy, specifi cally to that o f Clement Gree nherg's and Michael Fri ed's fo rmal
ist analyses. " Alloway observed in his second text of 1973 abo ut Martin' s work, an extended
review of the Philadelphi a exhibit ion, "Opticali ty is the property ascribed to Cle ment
Greenherg-approved painters, the supposed special province of painting as opposed to
sculpture or drawing . . . {and I can be recogni zed as an artist's aim by a co mbination of
such prope rties as intensity of color, the rel ation of one color to another (which includes
acute edge control), and the absorpti on o f posit ive and nega tive for ms int o a unifi ed
\3 7 I RHEA ANASTAS
,
l
'
field ."" All oway saw in Martin' s paintings a posi tion that he unders tood to be "always
attached to a concept of inwa rdness, and even landscape refere nces imply st,ltes o f mind,
psychic spaces," an "ot her" to formalist moderni st aesthetics.
In April 1973, a special secti on of Artfonlnl devoted to Mart in's wo rk, published in
conjuncti o n wit h Delehanty's exhibiti on (the show traveled to the Pasadena Art Museum
that spri ng), highlighted Alloway's writing about the artist, s ince it included a revised and
expanded version of the crit ic's catalogue essay. 25 As in the catal ogue, Mar tin 's own writing
was represented in Artforum by an original statement (transcribed with the assistance of
the young critic Lizzie Borde n. who also wrote for the section) . .!6 The statement by Martin,
"Reflections," doc umented the painte r's voice in two poemlike columns:
(' d like to talk about the perfectio n underlying life
when the mind is covered over wilh perfection
and the heart is fi lled with delight
hut I wish not to deny th e resl.
In o ur minds there is awa reness ofperfec(io n.
wheo we look with our eyes we see it,
and how it functi ons is mys terious to us dnd unava ilableY
The section on Martin constituted the most extensive coverage a woman artist had received
from the New York magazine, a gesture toward the burgeoning context of
Still, as seen in "Reflecti ons," Ma rtin 's disquisiti on involved a "game of concealment," to
borrow Serge Guilbaut 's Cold Wa r-specific phrasing, since it both turned away from her
paintings and at the same time spoke directl y fro m the interior- "but I wish not to deny
the rest. "29 (Refl ec tions" is preocc upi ed with reframing the "inner expe riences of mind" o r
"li ving the inner life, " and with fortitude Martin includes disturbance to mind" as essen
tial and inherentl y va luable to the process of art making:
To feel confident and successful is nOI natural to the artist.
To feel ins ufficient,
to experience disappointment and defeat in wa iting for inspiration
is lhe natural state of mind of a n artist.
As a result, praise to most artists is a little embarrassi ng.
They can not take creelit for inspiration,
for we Ciln see perfectly but we c<\onot do perfectly:lo
138 I /"divinllGl ann Unreal
"Ref!
"Wh
COVel
there
life
to b,
you r
and I
and:
arti sl
all el
and
"It
recoi
judg
thinl
link
Mar
tion!
Wor
il s CI
of
pow
sion
ent il
upo
gem
high
insti
"Ra
IJ
"Reflections" unfolds within a rhetorical structure of transformati on and redemption:
"Whe n we live our lives it' s something like a race-our minds become concerned and
covered over and we get depressed and have to get away for a holiday. And then sometimes
there are moments of perfection and in these moments we wonder why we ever thought
life was difficult. We think that at last our feet are on the right path."
Martin applies the "we" of artists, between artists, complexJy, as it is not intended
to be received (so much) as a universal but rather as an individual form of address- "But
your interest and mine is really 'the work'-works of art";32 "I will go on to inspiration
and perhaps you will see what is possible."33 In this sense, Martin's rhetorical mode is first
and foremost that of a practicing artist speaking to other artists. It is by association with
artists that nonartists may place themselves among her receivers. Alloway described a par
allel structure in Martin's paintings as the "sense of contact which occurs when the artist's
and specta tor's minds converge, despite their indifference to one another." H In writing,
"It is not necessary for artists to Jive the inner life" and "it is o nl y necessary for them to
recognize inspiration o r to represent it, " Martin refrains from making ass umptions or
judgments about the artist and her work: "inspiration is really just the guide to the next
thing and may be what we call success or failure.""
Martin's preoccupations with absorpti on and psychic formations of an aesthetic
link her discursive model with period feminist understandings of creativity. In 1971,
Martin's painting The Tree (J 964) had been included in an exemplary selection of illustra
tions for Linda Nochlin's landmark article for Art News, "Why Have There Been No Great
Women Artists'''''' One of the lasting contribut ions of Nochi in's elegant polemic remains
its critique of heroic constructions of authorship: "The Great Artist is, of course, conceived
of as one who has 'Genius'; Genius, in turn, is thought of as an atemporal and mysterious
powe r somehow embedded in the person of the Great Artist. ... To encourage a dispas
sionate , impersonal, sociological. and institutionally oriented approach would reveal the
entire romantic, elitist , indi vidual-glorifying, and monograph-producing substructure
upon which the profession of art history is based."" Nochlin' s gesture toward her own
generation in her choice of illustrations is meaningful, for it provided an opportunit y to
highlight the unconventi onal role women artists played in the extremely challenging social,
institutional, and cultural conditions of the post-World War 11 period. Nochlin writes:
"Ratber than submitting to the socially approved role of wife and mother. ... It is only by
adopting, however covertly, the 'masculine' attributes of singlemindedness. concen tration,
139 I RHEA ANASTAS
l
tenaciousness, and abso rp tion in ideas and crafts manship for their own sake, tha t women
have s ucceeded, and continue to s ucceed. in the world o f a rt."J:! That Nochlin observes
concealment among t.he exceptional qualiti es that successful postwa r women a rtists put
into prac ti ce reso nates with the qualit ies of Ma rt in' s personali sm and persona.}Y Further,
Nochlin's remarks all ow us to specula te on the necessit y for Martin to express her uncon
venti onal cho ices in a "cloclked" language of individualistic, even idiosyncratic-instead of
socially recognizable-meaning.
In this regard , Linville's reading of Martin's work suggests a simil arly gendered
structure of subterfuge: " IMa rtinl isn't interested in the way objec ts look but in their feel.
She doesn' t explo it nature as subject matt er; she evokes it-intimately for each viewer.
And her mea ns are so refined . they don't intrude. Once you are ca ught in one of her paint
ings, it is an nlmost pai nful effor t to pull back from the private experience she triggers to
examine t he way the picture is made."<lo The degree to which Linvill e's analysis performs an
identifica ti on be tween her own positi onality, which she structu res as the viewer's, and the
arti st's, while registering that response within a vocabul ary of privacy, was new to wri ting
on Ma rtin in 197 1. Interestingly, Ma rtin's own words belied a hesit a ncy towa rd artist and
viewe r iden ti fica tio ns. Ma rtin was skeptica l as well abo ut int erfema le identificationsY In
"The Untroubled Mi nd," she emphasized self-rel iance between artist nnd audience:
People gel whdt they need from a pClinting
The pCli nt er need not die because of responsibility
When yo u have inspiration and represen t inspiration
The observer makes the p.l inting.
The pain ter has no responsib ili ty to sti mulate his needs
41
Martin's reject io n of models o f influence in a rt and o f ce rtain means of persuaslo n in both
her visual and written expressions counter the mascul inist, professional modes of social
authori ty that dominated the aesthet ic discourse attached to Color Field and Minimal
work. Alloway wo uld also insist that th ere is a discontinuity between Mart in' s work and the
dominant critical model of Greenbergian forma lism, for reasons of address as well as what
he understood as Mart in's subject ma tter, as expressed thro ugh a psyc hi c, interi or space
clnd the pa rticula r of her work. "Mart in's works thri ve in t.he abse nce o f o pti
calit y."" The writing that Alloway produced about Ma rtin's work duri ng a foc used peri od
betwee n 1972 and 1973 fo und in her paint ings a parall el b ut di vergent expression, proxi
140 I Ilid lYldual al/ d U I/real
matE
they
simi.
of th
Gug
metl
to J(
an e:
to st
lead.
com
elerr
anal
Forr
gel" I
nmo
cal a
peri
vie......
lang
vase
opti
wi tl,
ofN
in tf
indi
on f
chm
evid
14
mate to the Color Field or "whole" I mage paintings of the 1960s: "They a re visible, but
they function without the rhetori cal devices of the paintings that see m to resemble
The problem of resemblance and the di verge nt universes of mea ning that visual
similitude might conceal had preoccupied Alloway at least since 1966, when, as curator
of the well-known Minimalist painting exhibiti o n "Systemic Painting" at the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York, the critic bad articulated hi s doubts about formalist
met hodologies in their wholesale truncatio n of the vclfious mea nings and subjects intrinsic
to art ists' pos itions. In the introduction to the accompanying catalogue, Alloway ventured
an ea rly censure: What is missing from a formali st approach to painting is a serious desire
to study meanings beyond the pureJy visual His introduction reviewed the
leading criticClI perspectives on the painters included in the exhibition and supplemented
these ideas with primary research, leading him to reach a measured but insistently va riant
concluding position: "The approach of formalist critics splits the work of art int o separate
elements, isolating the syntax from aU its echoes and consequences. The exercise of formal
analysis, a t the expense of ot her properties of art, might be called formalistic positivism.
Formal analysis needs the iconographical and experiential aspects, too, which can no lon
ger be dismi ssed as ' litera ry' except on the basis of an archaic estheticism."46 Marrin was
among the painters Alloway included in "Systemic Painting," and his keen sense of empiri
cal attention would lead him to arri ve at <l truly independent reading of her work of the
peri od from 1958 to 1967.
Quit e apart from his argument with the formalism of the period, AJloway's
vi ew was assiduously built upon his predisposition to listen to the arti st's own ideas and
languages through which to discern another way of seeing the materiality of Martin's can
vases. "The 'humbleness' and the physicality of her means differ fundamentally from the
opti cal. painterly criteria," he wrote, distinguis hing Martin from the two artistic contexts
with which she would most often be associated, that of Betty Parsons Ga ll ery and that
of Martin's immediate artistic circle. a diverse younger group of paint ers living together
in the Coenties Slip area of Lower ManhattanY Alloway' S descriptions focused on
individuating mark, lined fieJd, and ca nvas, "the roughl y drawn marks and bare textures
on fine brown ca nvas that Martin used ... si mple means conferred on her work a craft
character which is given as both s tructure and image. The directness of its making is
evi de nt and connotes a kind of
14) I RHEA ANAS TAS
Cruci al to the development of th is aspect of Alloway's writing must have been
Delehanty's exhibition, arguably evident as an inOuence within the critic's thinking:
"Suzanne Delehanty's choice of paintings and drawings, from 1957-67, is disc riminating
and exact. Her hanging, which included 15 of the 72" x 72" paintings in the larger ga llery
of the Institut e. and six white paintings in a row in the smaUer gallery, was an exemplary
demonst ration of the way in which hanging like paintings together leads to their indi
viduation,"'Y Devoting the last section of his catalogue essay to a first attempt , the earliest
evidenced in the critical record, to bring Martin's ideas into the domain of the criticism
about her work, Alloway cites unpublished manuscript s by the artist.
50
"There is in her
statements, then, an idealistic belief in inspirati on and innate ideas and, at the same time,
a relucta nce to be thought religi ous or mystical. She wishes to rid herself of pride and the
small rectangles or lines of her pictures imply the humble in their modest scale a nd because
they are simple mea ns."" Mart in had emphasized the lat e 1950s as the interval in her work
"when I got o n the right track,"Sl though this trajectory was understood by the an ist to
be indi vidual rat her than social or collecti ve. (In 1973 Martin st ated, " I don't beli eve in
influence / Unl ess it 's yo u yourself foll owing your own track. ")53 Martin 's associ ation of
this aspect of ber pai nting with a place as well as a time reveals the intertwinement ofbio
graphical) art istic, <md art -hi storical narrati ves during the decade she spent in New York
Ci ty, from 1957 through 1967, a union upon which Delehanty based the contours of the
Institute of Contemporary An show, whose selection of works bega n in 1957 and contin
ues through the last painting Ma rtin made in New York, Tundra , of late 1967.
Alloway' s reading of Martin's position against the grain of what Nochlin under
stood as a heroic, masculinist mode is remarkable for its moment:
American postwar art is distinguished by its ostentatioll s physical presence. The elabora
tion of gest ure by the Abst ract Expressionists, the lateral expansion of color by the field
painters, the stepping up of hue by the h-ud-edge painters, and the st ress on the abjectness
of sculpture in Minim<11 Art are all cases of artists accepting the mutu ally supportive goal s
of concreteness and h;mdsomeness. Comparatively few American artists withhold their art
from this competiti ve mode but, as it happens. g rids are conspicuous in the case of three
artists who do. Martin's square canvases are reserved in appe.. rance and unassuming in their
mea ns. .. . fn all three artists, the pleasure of synonymity and the discipline of restraint are
essent ial 10 achievi ng a reserved <Ht on a large sca le. It should nol be thought that this is a
142 I j"dil'idlJaf (lnd U nreal
The c(
"comf
idea 0
A!J OWl
shows
tions <'
singul:
Lucy I
ists an
yet als
femini
' 43 I
complaint about objects as such, only about thei r escalation. This is nOI an argument for
"demateriali zation, " only for restraint. An artist like Mal1in can fill the house wilh a whi sper.
51
The concreteness th<lt Martin's critics had so admired is here isolat ed from post wa r art's
"competitive mode." Martin defined her classicism against the cutthroat, individu<llisti c
idea of self typically associated with the American West:
The ideal in America is the natur al man
The conqueror, the one Ihat can accumul ate
The one wbo overcomes disadva ntages, strength, courage
Whereas inspiration, classical art depends on inspirati on
The Sylphjdes. I depend on the m u s e s ~ 5
Alloway concludes hi s ArtforLlm piece in a different way than his catalogue essay. The latter
shows a not-insignifi cant homology) as Pi erre BOllrdieu would put it) between hi s theori za
tions and Nochlin's femini st anal yses. Each offered alternat.e ways of interpreting Martin's
singularit y and opposition to the professional, "competitive" mode.
Synonymity of fo rm can be achi eved either by the use of grids or by the accretion of small
forms, and to the extent that women artists use grids Martin is a probable influence on their
practice. There may be a fact or special to women ,1lld that is thejr recent willingness to use
domestic techniques, such <1 S sewing and pl eat ing, in the conslruction of searching works of
a rlo Martin, too, implies thi s kind of technique by repetitive forms that resemble stitching
and by occasional reminiscences of the motifs on Indian textiles. On the other hand. there
is the fac t that Ma rtin' s series of square canvases, starting in the lat e ' 50s, not only antici
pates Ad Reinhardt' s se ries of black squares from 1960 to '66, but rivals him in the pursuit
of a subversive equilibrium. Sol LeWitt 's pencil drawings on th e wall may be an extrapola
tion of Mar tin's inco rporal ion of the pencil into painting; the va riable interpretation of his
instructions on what to dr aw function in the sa me way as varieties of manual pressures do
in Martin's work.
56
Lucy Lippard was cited by Alloway as a SOllrce for his association between women art
ists and the use of the grid;" he explores her theory of the "factor special to women"
yet also questions it in this text on Martin, as well as in his innovative 1976 survey of
feminist organizing, exhibitions, and critical acti vities, "Women's Art in the '705."58 Thi s
l43 ) RHEA ANASTAS
:
di vergence between catalogue text and m1icie may be attributable in part to the editorial
context of each, for it is worth noting that in hi s catalogue essay Alloway seems ultimat el y
less convinced by any contention for Martin's place among her contemporaries or her
influence, while his argument for the Ar(forum audience settles on a comparative context
within which Martin is grouped with LeWitt and Carl Andre (still , with the suggestion that
LeWitt "extrapolates" some aspects of Martin's work). Martin, for her part, would tell an
interviewer in 1974: "The point is, that if you work by yourself, rather than in some social
group, that ' s very different , and it takes se lfrecognition to do iL "s'I
Painting Is Not Making Paintings
It IS therefore only In the studi O that the work may be said to belong.
- Daniel BUrell, 1971
60
Subtitled " An Appreciat ion, " Linville' s piece derived its elegiac tone in no small part from
the assumption, widely held at the time, that Martin's last painting would be the veil-like
Tundra. A feminist sense of overdue recognition suffuses the piece, as Linville reminds LI S
that Martin was age fifty-nine at the time of her writing and had been painting for thirty
years. Still . the factors that led to Martin's decision during the summer of 1967 to move
out of her Coen ties Slip studio, to give away her art supplies, and, further, to embark on
a period of travel throughout the western United States and Canada remain little under
stood. Linville narrated this decisive departure from New York this way: "Tundra, the
last painting she did before she stopped working and left New York. opened entirely new
ground for her. She knew it but decided not to pursue it. (By one account . she sa id she
had painted all the pictures she needed to and younger paiuters would paint works subse
quent to T,wdra for heL)"" That was 1971, and by the beginning of 1973 the exhibition
and monograph Agnes Martin would appear. Barbara Haskell dates the invitation that
Delehanty extended to Martin for the Phi ladelphia retrospective to 197 1 and documents
that. it arrived at more or less the same moment as an invitation from Robe rt Feldman
of Parasol Press to work on a print proj ect (the result was the important portfolio of
sc reen prints On a Clear Day of 1973). From these circumstances, a certain ca usal think
ing has pervaded the scant receptio n of Martin's writing, as exemplifi ed by Kristine St il es's
abrupt comment in the anthology Th.eories and Documents o!COfllemporQ/Y Art: " [Martin[
144 {nd,vlt!ul1! (/III-I Urllr'al
SlOt
cha
c a t ~
the
wo,
Th,
anc
ere
W8;
Th,
Ma
pre
cer
fac
ad
stopped painting to write between 1967 and 1973, but later returned to the styl e that had
characterized her geometric abstracti on in the 1960s."62 Martin's exhibiti o n hi sto ry compli
ca tes these construals, for the arti st conti n ued to show works made up to 1967 throughout
the fo ur-to-fi ve- year period betwee n 1968 and sometime during 1972 to which no known
works by her can be attributed .
bJ
In "The Untroubled Mind, " Ma rtin alluded to what she called " the involved life":
To a detached person the complication of the involved life
is like chaos
If yo u don't like the chaos yo u're a cl llssicist
If you like it you're a romanti cist
Someone said all human emoti o n is an idea
Painting is not about ideas o r personal emo ti o n
When I was painting in New York I W:l S not so cl ear about that
Now 1'01 very clear that the objec t is fr eedom&!
The explanations Martin would offer that date most closely to the peri od of the exhibition
a nd publi ca tion of her writing say littl e abo ut he r life; instead they chert a course thro ugh a
crea tive process that is inclusive of uncert ainti es, obstacles, and moments when that "path_
way" cl ears:
I suppose you could say I wasn' t lip to the demands and everything of the life I htl d to live,
there. But there was something else .... I came to a place of recognition of confusio n that
had to be solved. I had to have time tl nd nobod y' s going to give you time where I Wtls. So I
had to leave. But r also think, it's j ust like painting; r waited patiently fo r the, I do n' t know,
just something like permission to leave. Because r certainly felt I sho uld stay aod do my
work. But when I had compl eted a show fo r Los Angeles I suddenl y felt that I could leave
and I did l e a v e . 6 ~
The Philadelphia exhibition supported and deepened narrati ves about the first phase of
Martin 's work, but Martin' s writings curi ously do not- they reject notions of influence, of
progress, of competition. What Martin describes as egolessness counters the achi evem ent
cenl ered culture of North American and, mo re generally, Western art history, as do the
fact s of her career: on "the right track" during her fifties, Martin arrived at a turning po int
a decade later, in 1967. How this structure of artistic production was presented by Ma rtin' s
145 I RHEA ANASTAS
galleries and group exhibitions, how it was made to look by an exhibition system, was in
fact far more
Martin's departure from New York in 1967 was a social disappearance. The artisti c
text that emerged from this period and was articulated as a philosophy in Martin's art
ist's statements in 1973 was an "unreal." In 1973, independence from the "group mind"
was Martin's creed, but it was decidedl y neither psychological nOr individualistic in the
American ideological sense. Martin's absolute was creativity in its own (poeti c) right.
She used her earl y writing to express her idea of it to other artists and as an extension o f
her own thinking, without any goal of social authority or posterity. (The publication of her
writing would eventuall y create both, and its continued publication aft er the 1970s would
start to al ter the valence that J have read as other and an unbecoming of field-specific
di scourses.) In the paintings) we witness this poeti c figure as "the work" ("Painting is not
making paintings; it is a development of awareness"66), the work from wh ich Martin meant
for social understanding or " the logical life," in Riding's words, to recede.
146 I JlJ(i illidlin/ and UI/ real ).
NOTES
I use the word image1ess In reference
\0 efill C Lawrence Alloway' S ",mage 01
wholeness." See Lawrence Alloway,
Marlin." Artforum 11, no. 8 (Apri l
1973), pp. 32- 37. Thi s (elates La an ear
lier argument aboul One Image" art or
painting that All oway made In the essay
(or the cal alogue that accompanied the
group exhibition "SystemiC Painting:
which Included Martin's WOrk. See
Systemic Pamflng (New York, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum. 1966). In 1971,
Kasha linville also employed Imagec
less. See Linville. "Agnes Martm: An
Appreciation, Anforum 9, no. 10 (June
19711. pp. 72-73.
1 See Systemic Paiming.
3 Suzanne Delehanty. foreword to Agnes
Manlo (Phil adelphia: Falcon Press. and
Institute of ContempOrary Art , UnJVersily
Of Pennsylvania. 1973). p. 5.
4 ThiS IS Lynne Cooke' s phraSing. deSCrt[).
ing Martin's paintings of that year. in ",
going forward imo unknown {emtoty .
Agnes Martin's Early PamOngs, 195 7- 67.
exhil)ltlon brochure (New York: Ola Art
Foundati on. 20011). n.p.
Annette Mi chel son. "Agnes Martin:
Recent Paintings," Artforum 5. no. 5
(January 1967). p. 46. Beyond the
maUer of deSCription Ihat she takes
up, Michelson's text situates Mart ln's
example within a very nch diSCUSSIOn of
the cri tical or methodological problem
thai she poses: "There IS a very par
Ilcul ar sense in which the composItional
dynamics of Amencan sculpture and
painting Invoke hlstoflcal prececJents . only
to braCket or negate them In the Interest
of freSh departures (p. 116). Pertaining
to an understa(l(hng of di fference that
developed In writing on Martin dUring the
1970s IS the moment In Michelson's
text when the limits 01 an analytic model
are subtly acknowledged: "Current criti
cism stili navigates a bit uneasily within
the Slralts defined by an ImpresSionist
styl e and an analytiC approach; neither.
147 I RHEA ANASTAS
of course, seems 10 render account of
a wor1< whose ulti mate ineffabi li ty IS
determined by the flgor of ItS anthme1ic
rational e" (p. 46).
6 Douglas Cnmp. "AgneS Martin: Numero.
Mi sura. Data 3, no. 10 (Winter
1973). p. 83 . CrimpcontlOued. " Further
description of the palntmgs Invites the
use 01 numbers (of lines, InterstICes and
rectangular units). units of measurement
(between lines). and ratiO (01 honzon
tal to vertical lines. of unit rectangle
hei ght to width)." a propoSit ion that
he tested with a summary of the 1967
work Tundra (I' , 83). ThiS ted repnses
remar1<s Cnmp made In pnnl earli er that
year on the occaSi on of Martin' S Institute
of Contemporary Art exhibi tion. when
he linked her paintings to drawmg and
connected her ShOw to ot hers on view
In New York, Crimp. Yor1< Lener,"
An International 17, no. 4 (Apri l 1973),
p. 57.
Crimp. "Agnes Mart in: p. 83.
8 Simon Watney artlCL" ated In the very dl f
ferent cont ext of the WOrk of the criti C
Craig Owens. "It is Important \0 remem
ber the Significance of the emphasis on
SUbjectiVity and theOri es ollhe subjec t In
the Intellectual work of the sevent ies and
eighties. since It opened the door to the
more nUld forms of contemporary post
modern poflIlCs." Simon Watney. 'Craig
Owens: 'The Indigni ty of Speaklllg l or
Others.' introduction \0 Owens. Beyond
Recognition: RepreseniatiOf'l, Power, and
C\Jllure (Berkeley: UniverSity of Cahfornla
Press, 1992), p. Xli.
9 LinVIlle, "Agnes Mart in," p. 72.
10 Agnes Martin (1973). The table of
content s 01 thiS eXhibiti on catalogue
revealed a "pamphlet " Of the artist's
contributi ons . In acldltlon to the major
tex.t "The Untroubled Mind." two parable
like oral narratives were Included. In
Ihe Philadelphi a catal ogue. authorship
IS aUrlbuled 10 both Agnes Martin and
Ann Wils()(l. a younger arti st friend 01
Martln' s who assisted with the record
Ing, tranSCription, and editing of her
statements for the 1973 publi cati on (an
attribution that Dieter Schwarz's anthol-
ogy does not maintain). The Phil adelphia
publi cati on was reprinted In 1976. An
exhi Clti on that opened In MUnich later
In 1973 was accompanied Cy a cata
logue containing a further selection of
Martin's writ ings and early notes. as well
as a facSimile of the handwritten manu
$Cnpt for the lecture -On the Perfection
Underlying life. - (Agnes Martin (Munich:
KUnstraum, 1973), PI'. 35-60.) Though
the Munich exhibition was distinCt from
the Institute of Contemporary Art SuNey,
Its catalogue stands as a second aCL
to [he Philadelphia puCllcatron Since Its
matenals derrve from the notes. lell ers.
and manuscrrpts coll ected from Mart in
by Delehanty duri ng the research and
preparation for her exhibition and editorial
endeavor. And these pUblicat ions were
not all. In Apnl1973, an onglnal artiSt' s
statement was presented In the Amencan
art magazine Artforum In a speCial sec
tlon about Martin's work, "Refl ecti ons"
(Arrforum 11, no. B [April 1973 1. p. 38).
The central text from the Phil adelphia
catalogue, "The UntrouCled Mind." was
repnnted Widely, first in June In the Mllan
based Flash Arr (Flash Arr, no. 41 [June
1973\. pp. 6-8). A third catalogue on
Martrn's work. conforming to the modet
of the 1973 catalogues, was pubhshed
by the Art s Counci l of Great Britain to
accompany an exhi bition of paintings and
drawings In 1977 and Included the text
of a lecture delivered at Yale Uni versity
In 1976, "We Are In the Midst of Realit y
Responding With JOy.'" In 1992, nearly all
of Martin's known writings were coll ected
In lhe anthology Agnes Marrm: Writlngs/
Sc/lflften, ed. Dieter Schwan (Ostfr ldern
RUII, Germany: Cantz, and Kunstmuseum
Winterthur. 1992). Hereafter referenced
as Wfitmgs.
148 I frl dl l'idul7il7nd Unreal
II l ynne Cooke acknowledged the capacity
of Manln's wntlngs of 1973 to -counter.
as well as shape . the criti cal interpreta
tion that, alongside publIC appreCiation.
would ineVitably ensue."' Cooke's inSight
appears In an essay on the painter's work
and critical reception dunng the perrod
Martin spent in New York, from 1957 to
1967. Cooke, in "... going forward mro
unknown terf/lOry ... ~ : Agnes Mallin's
Early Pailltings 1957- 67, exh,Citron
brochure (New York: Ola An Foundatron,
2004), ,. n. p.
12 Wilson's contrrbutlons as editor and inter
locutor have been Importanl \0 the pre
sentaLion of Martrn'S writing. and, though
W,lson's role has not been studied , she
also authored cntl caltexts aCOUt Martrn's
work. Her style and Ideas, some of which
are notably drawn from her intimate
knowledge of Martln's own discourse,
separates Wjlson's perspecti ve from most
other wntrng on Martin. See Ann WIlson,
"' l inear Webs, Art anO Art/SIS 1, no. 7
(October 1966). pp. 46-49, and Wilson,
"Agnes Martin: The Essential FOrm, the
Committed life, ' Art In!ernalional lB,
no. 10 (December 1974), pp. 50-52.
13 In "The Untroubled Mind," Martin
declared, "You don't have to ce religious
to have insplrallons and "The idea
IS independence and soili ude I noth
Ing religIOUS In my rel lremenV Martin,
"The Untroubled Mind." In Agnes Martm
(1973). p. 20.
t4 MarlIn wrote In "The Untroubled Mlnd-
" I don' t believe ,n Infl uence I Unless Irs
you yourself follOWing your own track.'
Ibi d ., p. 19. In another statement of
1973 Martin wrote, "We think at last we
are on the rrght path and th aI we Will not
falter or fSII. " See "Refl ections.' p. 38.
15 Martin. "UntroUbl ed Mind," Pl'. 17, 24.
In Agnes Martin, "What Is Real?" (1976),
in W(I{ings, p. 93. Martin' S IIIl e for her
l ed "The Untroubled Mind" reflects her
readings 0' Eastern religious tradi tions.
her interpretations are often attnCuted
to D. T. Suzukl's lectures at Columbia
University dunng the mld-1950s. which
were popular among her peers. Art his
tonans and wnters whose work explored
the transcendental. Eastern and Easl
Asian traclltlons In art. culture. and reli
gion and whose aestheti c beli ef s I would
compare with Martm' S Include Ananda
Kentlsh Coomaraswamy and Alan Watts,
as well as John Cage . whose 1961 book
Silence may have provided Martin with
an example of artist's statements and
lectures. As Lynne Cooke has shown.
Ad Remhardt IS the contemporaneous
artlstwnter whose model appears to have
been a touchstOne for Martin (COOke, m
. . gomg forward 10/0 unknown lemlOl'y
. . . "J. But my account IS not a study ot
the sources or mfluences to be found
wnhln Martin's discourse. ThiS would
Involve a Significant undertakmg of careful
lextual exegesis and primary research .
As a matter or style . Martin neve r cites
and only rarely names another artist.
thinker. or wnter. and when she does, it
IS most often In her mtervl ews. nOI In her
publ ished slatements or lectures: IlluS,
preserving authentiCity and an individual
VO ice appears to be Wholly important to
her . For an early and sound treat ment of
non-Western traditions and models for
Martln's thought, see Thomas McEvlll ey.
" ' Grey Geese Descending': The Art of
Agnes Martin. Arrforum 25, no. 10
(Summer 1987). pp. 94-99.
17 Laura Riding as cited by Lisa Samuets
In the f.rst publlCalJon of Laura (Riding)
Jackson's leUer Of 1974. "Appendix II .
Author to Critic: Laura (Ridi ng) Jackson on
"Anarchi sm IS Not Enough," 10 AnarChism
Is NO! EnOUgfl , ed. Lisa Samuels
(Berkeley: Uni versity of Cali fornia Press.
2001). p. 262.
18 Ibid.
I ~ Ridi ng. "Jocasta," In Anarchism Is Not
EflOiJgh. pp. 73-74.
20 Art hlstonan Blfglt Pelzer wrot e Of Martin:
-She sees her wOI1<. as an expenment of
149 I RHEA ANASTAS
t he Splflt: Perfe<:tion IS absent In nature.
It IS a thing of the SPirit. Abstract art has
no residue If'I eKleriOrily" [my emPhasis).
Pelzer. " Ideali ties ," in 3 K Abstraction:
New Methods of Drawing by Hilma af
Klint, Emma Kunz, and Agnes Martin. ed.
Catherine de Zegher and Hendel Teicher
(New Haven. CT: Yal e University Press.
and Drawing Center. New York, 2(05).
p.80.
21 Riding. Cited m Li sa Sa muels. "C reating
Cntlclsm: An Introduction to Anarchism Is
NO! Enougfl . in Ridmg. Anarchism Is NO/.
Enoogh. p . ""11 .
n Agnes Martin, "On Art and Anlsts: Agnes
Martin. Interview by Kale Horsfi eld,
ProliJe 1, no. 2 (March 1981), p. 2 .
2J Alloway, "Agnes Martin," Artforum, p. 33.
Alloway was early m recognIZIng some o(
this vital difference between Martin' s diS
course and that of her critical contexts,
and hi S displ acement of her worn out or
formalism resonates With his deSCriptions
of Martln's artists ' wrltmgs as ,ndepen
dent, whl CIl he associated With her ideal
Ism and located as IOnate (while suggest
Ing poSSible re lationships With American
transcendentalism): "ThiS complex of
Ideas, Involvmg nonmstltutlonal revela
lion. personal modesty, links between
the one and the many. the great and the
small, seems distinctly American- (p. 36).
l ~ Alloway. ~ A g n e s Martin," Artforum. p. 33.
2S The (,rst essay to be publi shed was
Alloway' s "Agnes Martin: In Agnes Martin
(1973). pp. 9-12. This essay was repnnted
as "Formlessness Breaking Down Form :
The PalntJOgs or Agnes Martin.' SlUdlo
JmernaltOnal 185. no. 952 (February
1973). pp . 61-63. In Ap."'d, an ex panded
and revised version was presented In
the special secti on on Martln's worn that
appeared In Art forum 11, no. 8 (April
1973). pp. 32- 37.
26 See Lizzie Borden. "Earl y Work," Arlforum
11. no. B {Nm I 1973!. pp. 39-<1<1.
27 Martin. "Reflections. ' p. 38. In the same
tex.t, Martin expressed: "Many artists live
socially without disturbance 10 mmd, but
others must hve the Inner experiences of
mmd, D solitary way of (P. 38).
211 A byline reveals lhe extenl to which
reViewing. Publishing. and exhibltmg
coalesced In thi s Instance. and the
Institute of Contemporary An 's publica,
tlon 01 Manm's wntmg comes Into focus
as an editorial event: " In the catalogue of
the eXhibition, Ann Wilson has collected
oral and wnlten statements by Maltin,
and l izzi e Borden pIlOtS another state
ment here: Alloway,
Artfoftlm. p. 36. Alt hl stonan and CfltiC
Amy Newman cites this 1973 secllon
on Martin as among the examples of a
shift that COuld be observed between
October 1971 and December 1974 In the
magazine' s proportion of critical attention
given to women arti sts . Amy Newma n.
Challenging An: Art(orum, 1962- 1974
(New Soho Press. 2000). pp. 325.
522- 23, n. 120.
29 Serge GUllbaul. How New York Stole
me Idea of Modern An: Abscract
Expr eSSIonism, FreedOm, and {he Cold War
(Chi cago: UniverSity 0 1 Chi cago Press.
1983). p. 2.
:\0 Manln. - Reflections: p. 38.
31 Ibid. l ynne Cooke compared Martm' S
wfltlngs to those 01 Saint Teresa of AVila .
"In thell fUSion or the ethical and spinlu al
with the aesthetiC. these freQuentl y hona
tory, poetic pronouncements refl ected
her Close study of t.he wfilings of Samt
Teresa of AVila.' l ynne Cooke, - Distant
light ,' Anforum 43, no. 6 (February
2005), p. 27.
32 Agnes Martm, "lecture It Cornell
In W';l",gs, p. 61. Thi S text
was first prese nted as part of "The
Untroubl ed Mmd. - With a note Indicating
that It was taken from Martin's notes
for a lecture at Cor nell 10 January 1972.
Agnes Man", (1973), p, 24 ,
33 Martin, "lecture at Cornell UniverSity:
p. 61.
Alloway, 'Agnes Martm: Art/orum, p, 36,
150 I Individual (It/CI Unr eal
3S Mar1in. " Reflecti ons," p. 38.
36 linda Nochlin. Why Have There Been No
Great Women Artists?" Art News 69. no. 9
(January 1971). pp. 22-39, 67-71. The
IIluslfalions In Nochhn's anicie featured
only three artists bom in the twentieth
Century: Martin, Soptlle TaeuberArp. and
l ouise BourgeOIs.
37 Ibid. pp. 25-26.
38 Ibid .. p. 39.
39 Cooke observes. "Such wnungs and Inter
ViewS would not only Innect and shape
subsequent apJ)fecialion of her art but
also provide the basis for the media' s
conStruChon of her art istic persona: the
image of an exemplary artiSt. even a
tOle model. whose deep commitment to
her wot1l required extended penods of
solitude and the renunCiation of material
1St rewards as prerequisites to a highly
diSCiplined search fOf an 'unlroubled
mmd.' " Cooke, in To lhe Islands: Agnes
Manln's Palfllings. 1974-79, exhibition
brochure (New York: Dia An Foundation,
2005), n.p.
40 linville's text was also wntlen under the
infl uence of an exhibit ion, one organized
by Douglas C(lmp In 1971: "A small show of
her work trom the 1960s at the School
of Visual Arts Gallery In New York thiS
spnng moved me more profoundly than
any of the stnpped-<lown, M,nimal,st or
lytiC colOr painllng of the last decade that
I have seen. Somehow her paintings from
1960 Lo 1967 incorporate the appeal of
both approaches In a unique, image less
way : linVille, "Agnes Martin: p. 72.
See also Douglas Cnmp, "Back to the
Turmoil," 10 this book, pp. 58-77.
'I I In a l ext of 1992. Anna C. Chave offers
whaL IS. to my the very first
reading based enllrely upon a SOCial
"01 henng" through gender for Martin's
abstract work. Martin- not unlike many
modernists formed dUring the 1940s,
1950s, and 1960s- would reject asso
CIations With feminism and what she saw
as bei ng typecast as a woman artist, but
Martln'S Intel'lliews show her re)eCtJoo of
most art-<: ritical and art-historical readings
In favor of her authenlJcally poSitioned.
personal . and transcendental discourse.
Anna C. Chave. "Agnes Marlin: Humllity.
the Beautiful Daughter. .. AU of Her
Ways Are Empty,'" in Agnes Manin. ed.
Barbara Haskell (New York: Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1992),
pp. 131- 53.
42 Martin. -Untroubled Mind." p. 17, Barbara
Haskell observes Manln's distast e tor
prescriptive wflllng, "They do not propose
specific preSctlptlons for IlVlrlg: each per
son, ManlO fell, has 10 find hi S or her
own way. They do. however, set down cer
tam things she leels block the IlIumtna
tlon of indiVIdual paths. - Haskell. "Agnes
ManlO: The Awareness of Perfecti on," m
Agnes M8Tt1n (1992). p. 114.
~ 3 Alloway, "Agnes Martin: Art(OftJm, p. 32.
1.;/ Ibid.. pp. 32-33.
4 ~ Alloway, In Syslemlc Painvng, p. 16.
~ ( j Ibid., p. 20.
47 All oway, "Agnes Martin," Artfortlm. p. 33.
<Ill Ibid.
~ 9 Ibid.. p. 32. The cfltlQue 01 the Institut e
of Contemporary Art exhibition contains
only the rare comment on the .nstalla
tion . An observation by Douglas Cnmp
.s notable: "Because Martin stopped
painting 811 the height Of her powers In
1967. the body of (ully realized works
.s relatIVely small ; the Slle of this show
could therefore be somewhat m.sleading
as It tends to favor numencally the work
before 1964, work which is less sure.
perhaps e-..en ecx:entnc when compared
wllh .....hat foll owed." Cr.mp, " New Yorl<
Leller," p. 57.
50 All oway gained acx:ess Lo thiS malenal
from Suzanne Delehanty. who collected It
during her eXhibiti on researCh and prepa
rattOns for the catalogue.
51 All oway. "Agnes MartiO ,' Artforum, p. 34.
52 Martin, quoted In Delehanty. fore .....ord
to Agnes Martm (1973). p. 5. "I don' ,
know when yev can say anybody began
15 1 I RHE A ANASTAS
patntlng: everybody's always worked as a
Child, I st aned al the age of 25. to pa.nt.
Bull dldn't show any paintings unlill was
about 40. " Martln. -On Art and ArtiSt s,"
p. l.
53 Martin. " Untroubled Mind. - p. 19. Two
decades laler, Mart in similarly expressed
10 an InleNl ewer thaI " 11 was a proces s. "
and named lIs lurning pOint as the real
i1al ion Of nonobjectIVe work: ~ I painted
for twenty years Without patnll ng a paint
Ing thaI I liked . I never painted a painting
I liked until I got to New York, and they
were completely nonobJectIVe, Ihen I liked
them." Manin, Inle(V1ew by tM ng Sandler
(July 1993), In Agnes t\-1artm: Pajnttngs
and DrawlOgs, 1977- 1991, ed. Emma
Anderson (London: Serpentine Gallery.
1993), p. 13, ThiS interview was preVI
ously published In Art Monrhiy, no. 169
(September 1993). pp. 3-11.
S4 All oway, "Agnes Martin," Artforum. p. 36.
The other two artists Alloway Includes al e
Sol LeWitt. whose drawmgs he describes
as "diagrammatic In lorm and undogmatiC
in thel( permutations" and Call Andre,
whose noor sculptures "occupy space
firmly but Without any drama of protuber
ance and vOid " (p. 36).
55 The partiCular way that Martm means
'classlCal' end "claSSICism" is represented
In her l ext "The Untroubled Mmd. Two
excellent theonzalions and understand
Ings are Lynne Cooke, "... in tile classic
tradition . ," In thiS book. pp. 11-24.
and Cnmp, .n "Back to the TurmOil.'
56 Alloway. - Agnes Mart in, - In Agnes A1artin
(1973), p. 12.
57 LuCy R. Uppard. "Top to Boltom. Left
10 Righi, ' III Gnds gridS gods gridS grids
grids 8f1dS grrds (Philadelphi a: Institute
of Contemporary An . UniverSity of
Pennsylvania, 1972). n.p.
58 La.....rence Alloway. "Women ' s An 10 the
'70s," Art /0 Amenca 64 , no. 3 (May-June
1976). pp. 64- 72. The resonances .....Ith
and parallelism that can be wrt nesSed
here bet.....een artists' wri hng and femin,st
cntlcal posItions- usually held apart as
dIStinct chapters In the history of con
temporary art. criti Cism- suggest not-yet
111s tonCIzed Questions for both.
59 Agnes Martin. In Gruen, Agnes Martin.
Everythlng. everything IS abovl feeling.
(eellng and recognltlon,, - Art News 75,
no. 7 (September 1976), p. 94.
n 6U Oanlel Buren, "The FunCli on of the
October. no. 10 (Fall 1979).
p. 53. Though this was ItS first publica
tlon, thiS lext was onginally writt en in
French as "Fonclion de !"ateller ."
6 1 Linville. 'Agnes Martin .' p. 73.
fo 2 Kri sttne Stiles. "Geometnc Abstraction,"
in Theories and Documents of
ContempOl3ty Art: A Sourcebook o(
Artists ' Writings, ed. Stiles and Peter Selz
(8er1l:eley: UnIVersi ty of California Press,
1996). p. 70.
6;} The leng'lll o f lime t hat Martin spent
Without producing has been variously
approximated. from rOV( to six years.
based on 100 scam eVidence and scholar
ship. Thcrc ilre works dated 1967 and
works dated 1974, though Mar11n was
InVited to 1971to work on the pnnts that
became On a Clear Day. Whi Ch suggests
work may have begun on the suite before
1973. Some SIX years' IS Cooke's deter
mmation based on the present state of
scholarship (To tile ISlands).
6.04 Marlin, Untroubled MlOd, - p. 19.
65 Marlin. 'On Art and ArtiSts, p. 9. Martin
recounted a verSion for John Gruen in
1975: ' Al that ume, I had QUite a com
mon compiamt of arl1st s--especlally In
Amenca. It seemed to have been some
thing that happens to all of us. From on
overdeveloped sense of responSibility, we
sort Of cave tn. We surfer terrible conlv
sion. YOu see, It' S the presSure 10 the
art fi eld In Amenca. I thlOk (hey must not
have these pressures In Eu(ope, because
the (irtls tllves so much longer over there.
They have a ClsSS (here Ihat conSIders It
to be their buSiness to support cultlKe ..
Anyway. I leh New Yof1-( and traveled for
152 I ' 1IC/il/idudl all d Ull rt ,,1
about a year and a half, wal\lng lor some
Inspl(at ion . . .. And SO I left New York .
I went on a campmg IfiD. . I had thiS
problem. you see, and I had to haye my
mind to myself. When you're With other
people, yOur mlOd Isn' t your own." Gruen.
"Agnes MartlO,' p. 93.
66 Agnes MartlO. 'On Art and Arlist s,' p. 1.