A Beautiful Mind: Agnes Martin, Minimalism, and the Feminist Voice

“When I think of art, I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life,” minimalist artist Agnes Martin once explained. “It is not in the eye; it is in my mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.” In the first comprehensive survey of her art at the Tate Modern, in London, England, the exhibition Agnes Martin strives to guide viewers to that “awareness of perfection” Martin strove to embody in her minimalist, geometrically founded art. Rather than the cold, person-less brand of modernist minimalism, Martin’s work personifies the warm humanity of Buddhist editing down to essentials. At the same time, surveying Martin’s art and thinking allows us to revisit the feminist critiques of minimalism and shows how Martin’s stepping back from the bustle of the New York art scene freed her to find “a beautiful mind” — not just for women, but for everyone. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "A Beautiful Mind: Agnes Martin, Minimalism, and the Feminist Voice."

All You Need Is Love

Born Robert Clark on this date in 1928 in the town of New Castle, Indiana, the artist better known as Robert Indiana created some of the most memorable images of the 1970s, including his iconic LOVE image. Every true Philadelphian knows the LOVE Statue (above) in LOVE Park, famous for the statue and the skateboarders that formerly surrounded it. Indiana’s work represents the last stage of Pop Art, taking the same path as artists such as Peter Max but with fewer psychedelic props and a greater sense of art history.

Eat (above) from 1978 seems like a stylized advertisement, riffing on the pervasive nature of commercial design in America. However, the series of fives at the center alludes to Charles Demuth’s work The Figure 5 in Gold, a seminal abstract “portrait” alluding to William Carlos Williams’ poem “The Great Figure” that describes the sight of a fire engine (“Engine No. 5”) roaring through the streets on a mission. Indiana’s work’s deceptive simplicity belies a finer appreciation of art history, specifically American art history and the often torturous relationship America has had with abstract art. In works such as Eat, Indiana reawakens us to the abstract elements in the commercial designs all around us, showing us just how artful our everyday world is without making those symbols seem banal.

In 2003, Indiana painted a series of works called Peace Paintings as his response to the events of September 11, 2001 and the resultant conflicts with Afghanistan and Iraq. Four Diamond Peace Diamond (above), from the Peace Paintings series, asks multiple questions: “Where Oh Where Flees Peace?”; “Whither Has Peace Gone?”; “Whereabouts Hides Peace?”; and “Why Oh Why Has Peace Fled?” Indiana reproduces and interweaves the classic peace symbol throughout the painting. With its discordantly bright colors and 1960s visual language of pacifism, Indiana’s work may strike some as archaic, a reaching back into an unrecoverable past. I prefer to see it as a renewal of hope, an always relevant call for idealism, and a visual lesson that, indeed, in the end, all you need is love.

Far Out, Man

Having been born in the Summer of Love of 1967, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the new exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York titled Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era. The show consists of paintings, photos, and sculptures from the period, as well as multimedia installations, videos, and even album covers and concert posters. Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? poster appears above. (Dislcaimer: My parents never were and never will be hippies. I was not conceived at Woodstock or anything remotely like that. In the 1960s, they were still listening to music from the 1950s.)

The press release from the Whitney gives a full run down of what the show is about. The Tate Liverpool hosted the show previously and their web site has a great rundown as well , including cool psychedelic screensavers to download. Very grooooovy…

The great thing about the art they’ve selected is that it really tries to capture all the contradictions of the age. Here was a culture full of hope and openness, especially sexually, right next to a culture of warfare and (soon-to-be Nixonian) repression. For every Jimi Hendrix riff, there was an indelible image of Vietnam. I haven’t seen the show yet and don’t know exactly what’s involved, except for a mention of a rare watercolor by Jimi Hendrix himself, but I hope that they included Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room—Love Forever (still image above), her mind-boggling installation room which I’ve only seen in stills but can only guess is like tripping without the LSD.




Robert Indiana’s work also appears in the show, and no true son of Philadelphia can think of Robert Indiana without thinking of the LOVE statue (above) in LOVE Park near Philadelphia City Hall. Indiana’s LOVE statue stands as a reminder of the Summer of Love for Philadelphians, and I hope that this exhibit reminds people of the promise that the Summer of Love held 40 years ago and could hold again today. As the song says, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of…”