anastas, rhea individual and unreal

7/27/2019 Anastas, Rhea Individual and Unreal

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Rhea Anastas

In every person there IS the POSS lb lhty of a small, p ure , new, unreal port ion wh ich IS. withou treference to pe rsonality In the popu lar, soc ial sen se . selL .. When this se rf has been ISOla ted(rom all that i s ImpreSSion and Impurity 01 contact In an indIV idua l, then a "t hing ." a work, occ urs,il is d ischarged from the ind IVIdua l, It IS self, not h is self. bu t self- Laura Riding, )974Behind and before se lr-e :


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do not impose a rational order on the paintings; the paintings consist of an immediatelyapprehensible rational construction.'" Published at the nascence of this line of interpretation, Crimp's account can now be seen to clarify and naturalize the 1960s model of writingabout Martin .

This line of interpretation , which systematizes the perce ived material constnlctionof the paintings into a logic and into a fjeld-specific literature, has been carried forth andcontinues for the most part unbroken. And yet, during a brief period in the first years ofthe 1970s, another, st rikingly divergent re ad ing of Martin 's al1 welled up. An article byKasha Linville of 1971 can be counted among severa l responses to Martin's work thatbrought notions of individuality and subjective experience to the early critical record onthe painter:8

Miss Martin's most important paintings are


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in the form of statements and notes, Delehanty's vo lume situated the artist's ow ncontribution to her work '5 interpretation. Us centerpiece was the composite artist's texl"The Untroubled Mind ," a statement d eve loped from existing notes, recounted nalTa ti ves,and Martin 's notations from a 1972 leerure with an editorial contribution by a l1istAnn WilsonY

Martin's statements reveal that she saw her work as expressive of an innate psychicrealm as opposed to a formalist, rationalist sphere, where critics had so far located it. Sheforegrounded essential notions of crea tivity and inspiration as subjective processes of poeticexpression and implicated a spiri tual imperative not associated with organized religion inher explanation of and reflection on the artist's life, temperament, and working process,13In "The Untroubled Mind," Martin distinguishes subjective expression and the individualpathway of artistic work (always using non-progress-oriented phrasing) from the forces ofsociety, socialization, and influence. 4 For Martin, social formations are not inevitable, andshe insists on independence in the nurturing of an aesthetic: "The education of childrensocial development is contradictory to aest hetic development" and "the wiggle of a wormas important as the assassination of a Such externa1 authorities are und erstood asobstructions to the rea lization o f an " untroubled mind ," which Martin believed to bedefined as a fleeting and changeable capaci ty for expression, a pathway shaped from theartist's best moments in the pursuit of creative work. as in her metaphOl. "To hold ontothe 's ilver cord: that is the artistic discipline."h5

Self-reliant and rife with imperatives favoring the poetic, Martin's writing strucka new independer.t and Cas [ will posit by comparison with the modernist Laura Riding)asocial chord in relation to existing interpreta tions of her art. The possibility of seeingMartin's stance as asocial involves taking seriously her expressions that cast as unnaturalthe usual forms of participation in society and discourse for the modern artist. Martin sunderstanding of the self is further one that eschews civil definitions. Yet the nonconformity of her ideas has never been taken up or accounted for in the critical reception of herwork. The novel task of identi tYing and tracing the negative space of such a reading mustrecognize her writing as representative of an "other" or even oppositional modernism. Inthe process, a distinctive subjec tivist mode l of interpretation that dates to the ea rly 1970sis recovered, as if a non seq uitur from a large ly forgotten early period within the di scourse .This reading, as well as Martin's ow n position, contrasts with the field-spec ific discoursesof the period, which frame con temporaneous as well as present understandings of her

IJS i RHEA ANASTAS


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work. Undeniably, (here are sharp di visions between Martin 's wr itten expression as i( wasintroduced in 1973 and the discourse of her commentators, a schism that cannot be bridged.

The UnrealIn 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 exp la ined that her idea of the unreal hadevo lved li'om "a very difficult percept.ion of the inadeq uacy of existing co ncep tions of thenature of reality . . . the character of the existent."" Riding counterposed the unreal withthe Freudian psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity of her day, and the idea was crucial toher critical project of distinguishing a materialist limit of language and se lf within anotherrealm-th at of poetry. As she expressed it , "this 'unreal' is a use forced on me (in my thenstage of defin ing the nature of this and that) by the actual unreality of the makeshift 'reality' of soc ial sy nthesis or philoso phical (special intellectual soc iety) synthesis."" As shehad earlier claimed, in Jocas ta":

Self is poetic self. Nature, mathemC!.l.ical life , is the become, the eternaJly grown-up; H i ~ t o r y ,logical life, is the becoming, the eterna lly child ish.

The time-advocate, whom I shall ca ll the philosopher, does not see, or is afraid to see,that the become and the becoming are both mutually illu sory Worlds of reality: that theyare se lf-cr ea ted refutations of individuality to which the individual succumbs from imperfection. He forgets, that is, that the individual is an unbecoming and that the categories"becoming"and "become" are re


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reli ance upon definitions of things delivered from soc ially cons tructed o r philosop hi ca llysystematized frame s of


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field ." " Alloway saw in Martin's paintings a posi tion th at he un ders tood to be "a lwaysattached to a concept of inwa rdness, and even landscape refere nces imply st,ltes o f mind ,psychic spaces," an "o ther" to fo rmalist mo derni st aesthe tics.

In April 1973, a special section of Ar tfonlnl devoted to M art in 's wo rk, publish ed inco njunctio n wit h Delehanty's exhibitio n (the show tra veled to th e Pasadena Art Mu seumthat sp ring), highlighted Alloway's writing about th e artist, s ince it included a revised andexpand ed version of the crit ic's catalogue essay. 25 As in th e ca talogue, Mar tin 's own writingwas represe nted in Ar tforum by an original sta tement (transcribed with the assistance ofthe young critic Lizzie Borde n. who also wr ote for the section) . !6 The statement by Martin ,"Reflections," doc umented the pain te r's vo ice in two poe mlik e co lumn s:

('d like to talk about the perfec tio n underlying lifewhen the mind is cove red over wilh perfectionand the heart is fi lled with delighthu t I wi sh not to deny th e resl.In o ur minds there is awa reness ofperfec(io n.wheo we look with ou r eyes we see it,and how it fun cti ons is m ys te rious to us dnd unava ilableY

The section on Martin co nstituted the most extensive coverage a woman artist had receivedfrom the Ne w York magazin e, a gestu re toward the bu rgeo ning co ntext of m i n jStill, as seen in "Reflec tions," Ma rtin 's disqu isition involved a "game of con cea lment," toborrow Se rge Guilbaut 's Co ld Wa r-specific phrasing, since it both turned away from herpaintings and at th e sam e time spoke direc tly fro m the interior- "but I wish no t to denythe res t. "29 (Re fl ec tion s" is preoccupi ed with reframing th e "inner ex pe riences of mind" o r" living the inner life," and with fortitude Martin includes disturbance to mind" as essential and inherently va luable to the process of ar t making:

To feel co nfident and successful is nOI natu ral to the artist.To fee l insufficient,to expe rience disappo intme nt and defeat in wa iting for in spir a tio nis lhe natural state of mind of a n artist.As a result , praise to most artists is a little embarrassi ng.They can no t take cre elit for inspiratio n,for we Ciln see pe rfectly bu t we c


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"Reflections" unfolds within a rhetorical structure of transformation and redemption:"Whe n we live our lives it's something like a race -o ur minds become concerned andcovered over and we get depressed and have to get away for a holiday. And then sometimesthere are moments of perfection and in th ese moments we wonder why we ever thoughtlife was difficult. We think that at last o ur feet are o n the right path."

Martin applies the "we" of artists, between artists, complexJy, as it is not intendedto be received (so much) as a universal bu t rather as an individual form of address- "Butyour interest and mine is really 'the work'-works of art";32 "I will go on to inspirationand perhaps you will see what is possible."33 In this sense, Martin's rhetorica l mode is firstand foremost that of a pra cticing artist speaking to other artists. It is by association withartists that nonartists may place themselves among her receivers. Alloway described a parallel structure in Martin's paintings as the "sense of contact which occurs when the artist'sand spectator'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 nly necessary for them torecognize inspiration o r to represent it," Martin refrains from making assumptions orjudgments about the artist and her work: " inspiration is really just th e guide to the nextthing and may be what we call success or failure.""

Martin's preoccupations with absorption and psychic formations of an aestheticlink 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 illustrations for Linda Nochlin's landmark article for Art News, "Why Have There Been No GreatWomen Artists'''''' One of the lasting contributions of Nochi in's elegant polemic remainsits critique of heroic constructions of authorship: "The Great Artist is, of course, conceivedof as one who has 'Genius'; Genius, in turn, is thought of as an atemporal and mysteriouspowe r somehow embedded in the person of the Great Artist. . . . To encourage a dispassionate , impersonal, sociological. and institutionally oriented approach would reveal theentire romantic, elitist, indi vidual-glorifying, and monograph-producing substructureupon which the profession of art history is based."" Noc hlin's gesture toward her owngeneration in her choice of illustrations is meaningful, for it provided an opportunity tohighlight the unconventional 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 byadopting, however covertly, the 'mascu line' attributes of singlemindedness. concen tration,

139 I RHEA ANASTAS


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ten aciousness, and abso rp tion in ideas an d crafts manship fo r their own sake, tha t womenha ve s ucceeded, a nd continue to succeed . in th e wo rld o f a rt."J! T hat Nochlin ob se rvesco ncea lment am o ng t.he exceptional qu alities th at successful pos twa r wom en a rtists pu tin to prac ti ce reso nates with the qu alit ies of Ma rt in 's perso nalism and persona.}Y Furth er,Nochlin's remarks all ow us to speculate on the necessity for Martin to exp ress her uncon ventional cho ices in a "cloclked" lan guage of individualistic, even idiosyncratic-instead ofsocially recognizable-meaning.

In this regard , Linville 's reading of Martin's wo rk suggests a sim ilarly gend eredstructu re of subterfuge: " IMa rtinl isn 't int erested in th e way objec ts loo k but in th eir feel.She doesn't exp lo it na tu re as sub jec t matt er; she evokes i t-intimately fo r eac h viewe r.And her mea ns are so refined . th ey do n 't intrude. O nce you are ca ught in one o f her paintings, it is an nlmost pai nful effor t to pull back from the pr ivate experience she triggers toexamine the way th e picture is made."


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mate to the Color Field or "whole" Image paintings of the 1960s: "They a re visible, bu tth ey function without the rhetorical devices of the paintings that see m to resemble h e r s . " ~ 4

Th e problem of resemblance and th e divergent universes of mea ning that visualsimilitude might co ncea l had preoccupied Alloway at least since 1966, when, as curatorof the we ll-known Minimalist painting exhib itio n "Systemic Painting" at th e So lomon R.G uggenheim Mu se um, New York, the critic bad articulated his doubts about formalistm ethodologies in their wholesale truncatio n of the vclfious mea nings and subjects intrinsicto art ists' pos itions. In the introduction to the accompanying catalogue, Alloway venturedan ea rly ce nsure: W hat is missing from a forma list approach to painting is a serious desireto stud y meanings beyond the pureJy visual n f j g u r a t i o n . " 4 ~ His introduction reviewed theleading criticClI perspectives on the painters included in the exhibition and su pplementedthe se ideas with prim ary research, leading him to reach a meas ur ed but insistently va riantconcludin g position: "The approach of formalist cr itics splits the work of ar t into separateelements, isolating the syntax from aU its echoes an d consequences. The exercise of formalanalysis, a t the expense of ot her properties of art, might be called formalistic positivism.Formal analysis needs the iconographical an d experiential aspects, too , which can no longer be dismi ssed as ' litera ry' except on the basis of an archaic estheticism."46 Marrin wasam ong the painters Alloway included in "Systemic Painting," and his keen sense of empirica l attention would lead him to arrive at


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Crucial to the development o f th is asp ect of Alloway's writing mu st have beenDelehanty's exhibition, arguab ly evident as an inOuence within the critic's thinking:"Suzanne Delehan ty's choice of pain tings and d rawings, from 1957-67, is disc riminatingand exact. Her hanging, which included 15 of the 72" x 72" paintings in the larger ga lleryof the Institute. and six wh ite paintings in a row in the smaUer ga llery, was an exemplarydemo nst ration of the way in which hanging like paintings toge ther leads to their indi-vidu atio n,"'Y Devoting the last sectio n of his catalogue essay to a first attempt, the earl iestev iden ced in th e critical record , to bring Martin 's id eas into th e domain of the crit icismabout her wo rk, Alloway cites unpublished manuscripts by the artist. 50 "There is in herstatements, th en, an id ealist ic belief in inspiration and innate ideas and, at the same time,a reluctance to be thought religious o r mystical. She wishes to rid herself of pride and thesmall rectangles or lines of her pictures imply the hu mble in their modest scale a nd becausethey a re simple mea ns."" Mart in had emphasized the late 1950s as the interval in her work"when I got o n the right track,"Sl though thi s trajec tory wa s understood by the an ist tobe individu al rather than soc ial or collecti ve. (In 1973 Martin stated, " I don't believe ininfluence / Unless it 's yo u yourself foll owing your own track. ")53 Martin 's association ofthis aspect of ber pai nting with a place as well as a tim e reveals the intertwinement ofbio -grap hica l) art istic,


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complaint about objects as such, only about th ei r escalation. This is nOI an argument for"demateria li za tion," only for restraint. An artist like Mal1in can fill the house wilh a whisper. 51

The co ncreteness th


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di vergence between catalogue tex t and m1icie ma y be attributable in part to the editorialcontext of each, for it is worth noting that in hi s ca talogue essay Alloway seems ultimatelyless convinced by any contention for Martin's place among her contemporaries or herinfluence, while his argument for the Ar(forum audience settles on a compa rative contextwithin which Martin is grouped with LeWitt and Carl Andre (still , with the suggestion thatLeWitt "extrapo lates" some aspects of Martin's work). Martin , for her part, would tell aninterviewer in 1974: "The point is, that if you work by yourself, rather than in some socialgroup, that ' s very different , and it takes se lfrecognition to do iL "sI

Painting Is No t Making PaintingsIt IS there fore only In the studiOthat th e 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 fromthe assumption , widely held at the time , that Martin's las t painting wo uld be the veil-likeTundra. A feminist sense of overdue recognitio n suffuses th e piece, as Linville reminds LI Sthat Martin was age fifty-nine at the time of her writing and had been painting for thirtyyears. Still . the factors that led to Martin's decision during the summer of 1967 to moveou t of her Coen ties Slip studio, to give away her ar t supplies, and, further, to embark ona period of travel throughout the western United States an d Canada remain little under-stood. Linville narrated this decisive departure from New York this way: "Tundra, thelast painting she did before she stopped wo rkin g and left New Yo rk . opened entirely ne wground for her. She knew it bu t decided no t to pursue it. (By one accoun t . she sa id shehad painted all th e pictures she needed to an d yo unger paiuters wo uld paint wo rks sub sequent to T,wdra for heL)"" That was 19 71, an d by the beginning of 1973 the exhibitionand monograph Agnes Martin would appear. Barbara Haskell dates the invitation thatDelehanty extended to Martin for the Philadelp hia retrospective to 197 1 an d documentsthat. it arrived at more or less the same moment as an invitation from Robe rt Feldmanof Parasol Press to work on a print project (the result was the important portfolio ofscreen prints On a Clear Day of 1973). From these circumstances, a certa in ca usal think-ing has pervaded th e scant recep tio n of Martin's writing, as exemp lifi ed by Kristine St iles'sabrupt co m men t in the anthology Th.eories and Documents o!COfllemporQ/Y Art: " [Martin[

144 {nd,vlt!ul1! (/III-I Urllr'al


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stopp ed painting to write between 1967 and 1973, but later returned to th e s tyle that hadcharac te rized her geometric abstraction in the 1960s."62 Martin's exhibitio n hi sto ry co mplica tes th ese co nstruals, for the arti st co nti n ued to sho w works ma de up to 1967 throughoutth e fo ur-to-five- year period betwee n 1968 and so metime during 19 72 to which no know nworks by her can be attributed .bJ

In "Th e Untroubled Mind," Ma rtin a lluded to what sh e called " th e invo lved life":

To a d e tached person the complicatio n of th e invo lved life is like chaos If you don't like the chaos yo u' re a cl llss icist If you like it you're a romanticist Someone said all human em o ti o n is an idea Painting is no t about ideas o r perso na l emo tio n When I was painting in New York I W:l S not so clear about that Now 1'01 very clear that the obj ec t is fr eedo m &!

Th e explanations Martin would offer th a t da te mos t closely to the period o f th e exhibitio na nd publica tion of her writing say little a bo ut he r li fe; instead they chert a co urse th ro ugh acrea tive process that is inclusive of un ce rtain ti es, obs tacles, and moments when th at "path_way" clea rs:

I suppose you could say I wasn ' t lip to th e demands and everything of the life I h tl d to live,there. But there was something else. . . . I ca me to a place of recognition of co nfu sio n thathad to be solved. I had to have time tl nd nobod y's going to give you time wh ere I W ls. So Ihad to leave. But r also think, it's just like pai n ting; r waited patiently fo r th e, I do n ' t kn ow,ju st something like permission to leave. Beca use r certainly felt I sho uld stay a od do m ywo rk. But when I had completed a show fo r Los Angeles I suddenl y felt that I co uld leaveand I did

The Philadelphia exhibition suppo rted an d deepened narrati ves about the first phase ofM artin 's work, but Martin 's writings curio usly do no t- they reject notion s of influence, o fpro gress, o f competition. What Martin describes as egolessness counters the achievem ent cenl ered culture of North American and , m o re generally, Western art history, as d o th efacts o f h er career: on "the right track" during her fifties, Martin arrived at a turning po inta decade later, in 1967. Ho w this s tructure of ar tistic production was presented by Ma rtin's

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galleries and gro up exhibitions, how it was made to look by an exhibition system, was infact far mor e o r d i n ~ r y

Martin's departure from New York in 1967 was a social disappearan ce. The artistictext that emerged from this period and was articulated as a philosoph y in Martin's artist's s tatements in 19 73 was an "unreal." In 1973, independence from th e "group mind"was Martin 's creed, but it was decidedly neither psychological nOr individualisti c in theAmerican ideological se nse . Martin 's absolute was creativity in its own (poetic) right.She used her earl y writing to express her idea o f it to other artists and as an extension o fher own thinking, without any goal of social authority or pos terity. (The publication of herwriting would eventually create both, and its continued publication after the 1970s wouldstart to al ter the valence that J have read as other and an unbecoming of field-spec ificdi scourses .) In the paintings) we witness this poeti c figure as "th e work" ("Painting is notmaking paintings; it is a development of awareness"66), the work from wh ic h Martin me antfor soc ial understanding or " the logical life," in Riding's words, to re cede.

146 I JlJ(iillidlin/ an d U I/ real


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NOTESI use the word image1ess In reference\0 efillC Lawrence Alloway'S ",mage 01wholeness." See Lawrence Alloway,

A 8 n e s Marlin ." Artforum 11, no. 8 (April1973), pp . 32 - 37 . Thi s (elates La an earlier argument aboul One Image" art orpainting that Alloway made In the essay(or the calalogue that accompanied thegroup exhibition "SystemiC Painting:which Included Martin 's WOrk . SeeSystemic Pamflng (New York, Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum . 1966). In 1971 ,Kasha li nvil le a lso employed Imagecless. See Linville. "Agnes Martm: AnAppreciation, Anforum 9 , no. 10 (June19711. pp. 72-73.

1 See System ic Pa iming.3 Suzanne Delehanty. foreword to Agnes

Man lo (Ph ilade lphia: Falco n Press . andInstitute of ContempOrary Art , UnJVersilyOf Pennsylvania. 1973). p. 5.

4 ThiS IS Lynne Cooke 's phraS ing. 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 ArtFoundation. 20011). n.p.Anne tte Miche lson. "Agnes Martin:Recent Paintings," Artforum 5 . no. 5(January 1967 ). p. 46. Beyond themaUer of deSCription Ihat she takesup , Michelson's text situates Mart ln 'sexample within a very nch diSCUSSIOn ofthe cri tical or methodological prob lemthai she poses: "There IS a very parIlcular sense in which the composItionaldynamics of Amencan sculpture andpainting Invoke hlstoflca l prececJents . onlyto braCket or negate them In the In terestof freSh departures (p. 116). Pertainingto an understa(l(hng of di fference thatdeve loped In writing on Ma rtin dUring the1970s IS the moment In Michelson'stext when the limits 01 an analytic modelare subtly acknowledged: "Cu rrent criti cism stili navigates a bit uneasily withinthe Slralts defined by an ImpresSioniststyle and an analytiC approach; neither.

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of course, seems 10 render account ofa wor1< whose ulti mate ineffabi lity ISdetermined by the flgor of ItS anthme1icrationale" (p . 46 ).

6 Douglas Cnmp. "AgneS Martin: Numero.Misura. p p o r t o Data 3, no. 10 (Winter1973). p. 83. CrimpcontlOued. "Furtherdescription of the palntmgs Invites theuse 01 numbers (of lines, InterstICes andrectangular units). units of measuremen t(between lines ). and ratiO (01 honzontal to vertical lines. of unit rectangleheight to width)." a propoSit ion thathe tested with a summary of the 1967work Tundra (I ' , 83 ). ThiS ted repnsesremar1


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Martln's who ass isted with the recordIng, tranSCription, and editing of herstatements for the 1973 publica tion (anattribution that Dieter Schwarz's anthol-ogy does not maintain). The Phil adelphiapublica tion was reprinted In 1976. Anexhi Cltion that opened In MUnich laterIn 1973 was accompanied Cy a catalogue containing a further selection ofMartin 's writ ings and ear ly notes. as wellas a facSimile o f the handwritten manu$Cnpt for the lecture -On th e Perfec tionUnderlying l i fe. - (Agnes Martin (Munich:KUnstraum, 1973), PI'. 35-60.) Th oughthe Munich exhibition was distinCt fromthe Institute of Contemporary Art SuNey,Its ca talogue stands as a second aCLto [he Philadelphia puCllcatron Since Itsmatenals derrve from the notes. le llers.and man uscrrpts collected from Mart inby Delehanty during the research andpreparation for her exhibition and editorialendeavor. And these pUblica t ions werenot all. In Apnl1973, an onglnal artiSt'ssta tement was presented In the Amencanart magazine Artforu m In a speCial sectlon about Martin's work, "Reflec tions"(Arrforu m 11 , no. B [April 1973 1. p. 38).Th e ce ntral text from the Phil adelphiaca talogue, "The UntrouCled Mind." wasre pnnted Widely, first in June In the Mllan based Flash Arr (Flash Arr, no. 41 [June1973\. pp. 6-8). A third ca talogue onMartrn 's work. conforming to the modetof the 1973 catalogues, was pubhshedby the Arts Counci l of Great Britain toaccompany an exhibition of paintings anddrawings In 1977 and Included the textof a lecture delivered at Yale Unive rsityIn 1976, "We Are In the Midst of Rea lityResponding With JOy.'" In 1992, nearly allof Martin's known writings were collectedIn lh e anthology Agnes Marrm: Writlngs/Sc/lflften, ed. Dieter Schwan (Ostfr ldernRUII, Germany: Cantz, and KunstmuseumWinterthur. 1992 ). Hereafter referencedas Wfitmgs.

148 I frldl 'idul7il7nd Unreal

II l ynne Cooke acknowledged the capacityof Manln's wntlngs of 1973 to -counter.as well as shape . the cr itica l interpretation that, alongside publIC appreCiation.would ineVitably ensue."' Cooke's inSightappears In an essay on the painter's workand critical reception dunng the perrodMartin spent in New Yo rk, from 1957 to1967. Cooke, in ". . . going forward mrounknown terf/lOry .. . Agnes Mal lin 'sEarly Pailltings 1957 - 67 , ex h,Citronbrochure (New Yo rk: O a An Foundatron,2004 ), ,. n.p.

12 Wilson's contrrbutlons as editor and interlocutor have been Importanl \0 the presentaLion of Martrn 'S writing. and, thoughW,lson's role has not been studied , shealso authored cntlca l t ex ts aCOUt Martrn'swork. Her style and Ideas, some of whichare notably drawn from her intimateknowledge of Martln 's own discourse ,separates Wjlson 's perspect ive from mostother wntrng on Martin. See Ann WIlson,"' l inear Webs, Art anO Art/S IS 1, no. 7(Oc tober 1966). pp. 46-49, and Wi lson,"Agnes Martin: Th e Essential FOrm, theCommitted life, Art In!ernalional lB ,no. 10 (December 1974), pp. 50-52 .

13 In "The Untroubled Mind ," Martindeclared, "You don't have to ce religiousto have insplrallons and "Th e ideaIS independence and soili ude I nothIng religIOUS In my re l lremenV Martin,"The Untroubled Mind." In Agnes Martm(1973). p. 20.

t4 MarlIn wrote In "The Untroubled Mlnd-" I don' t believe ,n In fluence I Unless Irsyou yourself follOWing your own track.'Ibid ., p. 19. In another sta tement of1973 Martin wrote, "We think at last weare on the rrght path and th aI we Will notfalter or fSII. " See "R eflections.' p. 38.

15 Martin. "UntroUbled Mind," Pl'. 17 , 24.In Agne s Martin , "What Is Real?" (1976),

in W(I{ings, p. 93. Martin'S IIIle for herled "The Untroubled Mind" reflects herreadings 0Eastern religious traditions.her interpretations are often attnCuted


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to D. T. Suzukl's lectures at ColumbiaUniversity dunng the mld-1950s. wh ichwere popular among her peers. Art histonans and wnters whose work exploredth e tran scend ental. Eastern and Ea slAsian traclltlons In art. culture. and re ligion and whose aesthetic be liefs I wouldcompare with Martm'S Include AnandaKentlsh Coomaraswamy and Alan Watts,as well as John Cage . whose 1961 bookSilence ma y have prov ided Martin withan example of artist's statements andlec tures. As Lynne Cooke has shown.Ad Remhardt IS the contemporaneousartlstwnter whose model appears to havebeen a touchstOne fo r Martin (COOke, m

. . gomg forward 10/0 unknown lemlOl'y. . . "J. But my account IS not a study otthe sources or mfluences to be foundwnhln Martin's discourse. ThiS wouldInvolve a Sgnificant und ertakmg of carefullextual exegesis and primary research .As a matter or style. Martin never citesand only rarely names another artist.thinker. or wnter. and when she does, itIS most often In her mtervl ews. nOI In herpubl ished slatements or lec tures: IlluS,preserving authentiCity and an individualVO ice appears to be Wholly important toher . For an early and sound treat ment ofnon-Wes tern traditions and models forMartln 's thought, see Tho mas McEvllley ." 'Grey Geese Descending': The Art ofAgnes Martin . Arrforum 25, no. 10(Summer 1987). pp. 94-99.

17 Laura Riding as cited by Lisa SamuetsIn the f.rst publlCalJon of Laura (Riding)Jackson's leUer Of 19 74. "Appendix II .Author to Critic: Laura (Riding ) Jackson on"Anarchism IS Not Enough," 10 AnarChismIs NO! EnOUgfl , ed . Lisa Sa muels(Berkeley: Unive rsity of Cali forn ia Press.200 1 ). p. 262.

18 Ibid .I Ridi ng. "Jocasta ," In Anarchis m Is Not

EflOiJgh. pp. 73-7 4.20 Art hlstonan Blfglt Pe lzer wrote Of Martin:

-She sees her wOI1


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socially without disturbance 10 mmd, butothers must hve the Inner experiences ofmmd, D solitary way of (P . 38).

211 A byline reve als lhe ex tenl to whichreVewing. Publishing. and exhibltmgcoalesced In this Instance. and theInstitute of Contemporary An 's publica,tlon 0 1 Manm 's wntmg comes Into focusas an edito rial event: "In the catalogue ofthe eXh ibition, Ann Wilson has collectedoral and wnlten statements by Maltin,and l izzi e Borden pIlOtS another sta te-ment here : Alloway, A g n e s M a n mArtfoftlm. p. 36 . Alt hlstonan and CfltiCAmy Newman cites this 1973 sec llonon Martin as among the examples of ashift that COuld be observed betweenOc tober 1971 and December 1974 In themagazine 's proportion of critical attentiongiven to women arti sts. Amy Newman.Challenging An: Art(orum, 1962-19 74(New Y o r ~ Soho Press. 2000). pp. 325.522 - 23, n. 120.

29 Serge GUllbaul. How New York Stoleme Idea of Modern An : Absc ractExpr eSSIonism, FreedOm, and {he Cold War(Chi cago: UniverSity 0 1 Chi ca go Press.198 3 ). p. 2.

:\0 Manln. -Reflect ions: p. 38 .31 Ibid. l ynn e Cooke compared Martm'S

wfltlngs to those 01 Saint Teresa of AVila ."In thell fU Sion or the ethical an d spinlu alwith the aesthetiC. these fre Quently hona-tory, po etic pronouncements reflec tedher Close study of t.he wfilings of SamtTeresa of AVila .' l yn ne Cooke, -Dis tantlight,' Anforum 43, no . 6 (Februa ry2005 ), p. 27.

32 Agnes Martm, "le c tu re It Cornell~ r s l t y , In W';l",gs, p. 61 . Thi S text

was first present ed as pa rt of "Th eUntroubled Mmd. - With a note Indicatingthat It was taken from Martin's notesfor a lecture at Cor nell 10 January 1972.Agnes Man", (1973), p, 24 ,

33 Martin, "lec tu re at Cornell UniverSity:p. 61.Alloway, 'Agnes Martm: Art/orum, p, 36,

150 I Individua l (It/CI Un real

3S Mar1in. "Reflections ," p. 38 .36 linda Nochlin. Why Have The re Been No

Great Women Artists?" Art News 69 . no. 9(Janu ary 1971). pp. 22-39, 67-71. TheIIluslfalions In Nochhn 's anicie featuredonly three artists bom in the twentiethCen tury: Martin, Soptlle TaeuberArp. andl ouise BourgeOIs.

37 Ibid. pp. 25-26.38 Ibid . p. 39 .39 Cooke observes. "Such wnungs and Inter-

VewS would not only Innect and shapesubsequent apJ)fecialion of her art butalso provide the basis for the media'sconS truChon of her artistic persona: theimage of an exemplary artiSt. even atO le model. whose deep commitment toher wot1l required ex tended penods ofsolitude and the renunCiation of material1St rewa rds as prerequisites to a highlydiSCiplined search fOf an 'unlroubledmmd.' " Coo ke, in To lhe Islands: AgnesManln 's Palfllings. 1974-79, exhibitionbrochure (New York: Dia An Foundation,2005), n.p.

40 linville's text was also wntlen under theinfluence of an exhibit ion, one organizedby Douglas C(lmp In 1971: "A small show ofher work trom the 1960s at the Schoolof Visual Arts Gallery In New York thiSspnng moved me more profoundly thanany of the stnpped-


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Martln 'S Intel'lliews show her re)eCtJoo ofmost art -


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cn tlcal pos Itions- usually held apart asdIS tinct chapters In the history of con-temporary art. critiCsm- suggest not-yet11s tonCIzed Questions for both .

59 Ag nes Martin. In Gruen, Agn es Mart in.Everythlng. everything IS abovl feeling.(eellng and recogn lt lon ,, - Art News 75,no. 7 (September 19 76), p. 94.n 6U Oan lel Buren, "Th e FunClion of theS t u d I O , October. no. 10 (Fall 1979).p. 53. Though this was ItS first publicatlon, thiS lext was onginally written inFrench as "Fonc lion de !"ateller."

6 1 Linville . 'Agnes Martin .' p. 73 .fo2 Kristtne Stiles. "Geometnc Abstraction,"

in Theories and Documents ofCon tempOl3ty Art : A Sourcebook o(Artists Wr itings, ed. Stiles and Peter Selz(8er1l:e ley: UnIVersi ty o f California Press,1996). p. 70.

6;} Th e leng'lll o f lime that Martin spentWithout producing has been va riouslyapproximated. from rOV( to six years.based on 100 scam eV idence and scholarship . Thcrc ilre works dated 1967 andworks dated 1974, though Mar11n wasInVited to 1971to work on th e pnnts thatbecame On a Clear Day. WhiCh suggestswork may have begun on the suite before1973 . Some SIX years ' IS Cooke's determmation based on the present s tate ofscholarship (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 in1975: ' Al that ume , I had QUite a common compiamt of arl1sts--especlally InAm enca. It seemed to have been something that happens to all of us. From onoverdeveloped sense of responSibility, wesort Of cave tn . We surfer terrible conlvsion . YOu see, It' S the presSure 10 theart fi eld In Amenca . I thlOk (hey mus t nothave these pressures In Eu(ope, becausethe (irtls tllves so much longer over there.They have a ClsSS (here Iha t conSIders Itto be their buSiness to support cultlKe .Anyway. I leh New Yo f1-( and trave led for

152 I ' 1IC/il/idud l a lld Ull rt ,,1

about a year and a half, wal\lng lor someInspl(at ion . . . And SO I left New York .I went on a ca mpmg IfiD. . I had thiSproblem. you see, and I had to haye mymind to myself. When yo u're With otherpeople, yOur mlOd Isn' t your own." Gruen ."Agnes MartlO ,' p. 93.

66 Agnes MartlO . 'On Art and Arlists, ' p. 1.