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Agnes Martin Quotes
1912–2004 United States
Agnes Bernice Martin (22 March 1912 – 16 December 2004), born in Canada, was an American abstract painter. Although she is often considered or referred to as a minimalist artist like Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist artist.
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When I cover the square surface with rectangles, it lightens the weight of the square. Destroys its power.
..the function of art work is.. ..the renewal of memories of moments of perfection.
To live truly and effectively the idea of achievement must be given up. Put unsentimental piety first, turn your back on the world, and get on with it.
I am staying unsettled and trying not to talk for three years. I want to do it very much.
Inspiration comes from a clear mind. Right straight through. We have nothing to do with it.
My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in art work which is also wordless and silent.
You can't make a perfect painting. We can see perfection in our minds. But we can't make a perfect painting.
Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings. That's the end [of the interview].
When we realize that we can see life we gradually give up the things that stand in the way of our complete awareness. As we paint we move along step by step. We realize that we are guided in our work by awareness of life.
Martin wrote this at the bottom of her notes, 1974; as quoted in 'AGNES MARTIN' by Mira Dayal, Artseen Nov. 2016
I used to pay attention to the clouds in the sky.. .I paid close attention for a month to see if they ever repeated. They don't repeat. And I don't think life does either. It's continually various. That's the truth about life.
When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision.
Pollock was terrific. I think he freed himself of all kinds of worry about this world. Ran around and dripped, and then he managed to express ecstasy.
Inspiration is pervasive but not a power.
There's no indication or hint about the material world in my painting. No, I don't paint about the world. Everybody else is painting about the world. That's enough.
It was so flat, you know, you could see the curves of the earth. And when a train came into vision at nine o'clock in the morning, it was still leaving at noon.. ..it took that long to get across the prairie.
In Mary Lance's intimate documentary 'With My Back to the World (2002)
Some things fail and others succeed. Well, then you get quite desperate, and you think: 'I am going to work and work and I'm not going to have any failures.' But then you find out that failures are inevitable; you can't even draw a straight line, you know that.
The adventurous state of
The Minimalists were nonobjective. They just recorded beauty, I guess, without the emotions - or at least without personal emotions. My work is a little more emotional than that.
It is commonly thought that everything that is can be put into words. But there is a wide range of emotional response that we make that cannot be put into words. We are so used to making these emotional responses that we are not consciously aware of them till they are represented in art work.
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