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."

A Show About Nothing: Richard Tuttle’s Mindfulness Masterpieces

More than 20 years ago, the sitcom Seinfeld went “meta” and joked that it was “a show about nothing.” But 20 years before George Costanza’s epiphany, artist Richard Tuttle was staging shows about nothing featuring works such as Wire Piece (detail shown above) — a piece of florist wire nailed at either end to a wall marked with a penciled line. But, as Jerry concludes, there’s “something” in that “nothing.” A new retrospective of Tuttle’s art at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Both/And: Richard Tuttle Print and Cloth, dives into the depths, and widths, of this difficultly philosophical, yet compellingly simple artist who takes the everyday nothings of line, paper, and cloth to create extraordinary statements about the need to be mindful of the artful world all around us. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "A Show About Nothing: Richard Tuttle’s Mindfulness Masterpieces."

The Matrix: The Political Dance of Modern Drawing at the MoMA

You can always count on the MoMA for two things: high-concept theme shows and high-concept theme shows that go in directions you didn’t expect. On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, which runs through February 7, 2011, begins as you’d expect with the big boys of modernism. Just as the testosterone threatens to thicken, however, the narrative line turns toward the feminine. The phallic gives way to the “matrixal”—a connective and even curative matrilineal web of associations woven by modern women artists that redefines drawing practice to include all forms of human gesture, even the dance. This dance turns political as artists tango through the minefield of modern life to bring the world a little closer. At times this “matrixal” theme seems almost as esoteric and abstract as The Matrix movies, but ultimately the show brings you back to firm ground and the stars align once more. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "The Matrix."

[Image: Anna Maria Maiolino (Brazilian, born Italy 1942). Desde A até M (From A to M) From the series "Mapas Mentais" (Mental Maps). 1972-1999. Thread, synthetic polymer paint, ink, transfer type, and pencil on paper. 19 5/8 x 19 1/2" (49.8 x 49.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2010 Anna Maria Maiolino.]

[Many thanks to the MoMA for providing me with the image above, press materials to, and a copy of the catalogue to On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, which runs through February 7, 2011.]

Off the Grid

"Artwork is a representation of our devotion to life," Agnes Martin once wrote. "The enormous pitfall is devotion to oneself instead of to life. All works that are self-devoted are absolutely ineffective." Born March 22, 1912, Martin’s paintings, such as White Flower (above, 1960), don’t fit neatly into the narrative of modern American painting, just like the artist herself. A contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists, Martin didn’t connect with that group, devoting herself to life itself rather than herself, which she saw as the “pitfall” of the self-involved, often self-destructive art of Jackson Pollock and others. Like the pencil marks comprising the grid of White Flower, Martin herself floated in a realm of her own making, never really making any connection with the world around her or the currents of culture, content instead to exist in a Zen–like state of being.


Martin called herself a minimalist, but even her minimalism strikes a different chord than that of most artists in that movement. Like a great pianist who knows how to work the silences as much as the notes, she expresses a great deal with little detail, as in her painting Friendship (above, from 1963). Through these grids, Martin longed to create an artistic correlative with the spiritual truths she felt were timeless, such as the value of friendship. Grids hint at geometry and the cold rationality of mathematics and science, but they also speak of the order of the universe, the pattern of reality beneath the surface that we somehow “know” is there but cannot put into words. Wordsworth called them “intimations of immortality.” It’s hard to look at reproductions of her work in a book or on a screen and think that they can address you emotionally or spiritually (it’s just a grid, right?), but in person, these works have a peaceful, calming effect akin to a koan or Japanese rock garden.

Originally trained as a teacher, Martin longed to teach through her art. In the spare beauty of Taos, New Mexico, Martin, like many artists, found her subject. The art business required her to live in New York City for a time, but she soon found herself drawn back to the desert. Like some kind of shaman, Martin grew reclusive, but continued to write books on her theories of the true meaning of art. The grids themselves grew even more evocative of natural beauty, such as the untitled watercolor above (from 1978). Martin wanted her paintings to be open, calling the experience of opening yourself up to them "the simple, direct going into a field of vision as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean." She never owned a television or radio and reportedly didn’t read a newspaper for the last 50 years of her life, which stretched into her nineties. Maybe that’s a lesson to us all to stop listening to all the trivial traffic of our daily lives and to take the time to “cross that empty beach” of serenity and gaze upon the “ocean” of Martin’s significance.