Agnes Martin: Life and Work

Life

Disappearance from the art world

Event's info View Timespace 1967/01/01 00:00:00

"I didn't know where to go," Martin says.
"So I drove around for a year and a half through America and the north of Canada."

—Benita Eisler, on her 1993 New Yorker profile of Agnes Martin

In the summer of 1967, she left New York so suddenly that many friends were unaware that she had gone. A few days before she set out, she appeared, unannounced, at the old Pace Gallery, at 9 West Fifty-seventh Street. The director, Arnold Glimcher, has been Martin's friend and dealer now for eighteen years, but he did not represent her at the time. Glimcher was surprised to see her and astounded to learn why she had come. "She had brought all her art materials she could carry—brushes, canvases, strechers—and asked me to give them away to young artists," Glimcher recalls. "Then she just disappeared."

—Benita Eisler, on her 1993 New Yorker profile of Agnes Martin

Life Lines, by Benita Eisler


So in 1968 she called me one day and she said, ‘You’re a young gallery and you have a lot of young artists and I’d like to give you my brushes and my paints and you can give them to young people, and I have some rolls of canvas.’ So she put them in her truck, bought them to the gallery, and took off for New Mexico. She said, ‘I’ve finished painting I’m never painting again.’ I didn’t see her for five years. (...) She had a very bad psychotic episode, and was in the hospital for a while. She felt that she had painted everything that she could paint. And I think she needed to go back to New Mexico, to that kind of space and solitude. New York was not good for her. I don’t think she could cope with it, and more than anything I don’t think she could cope with the notoriety that she was starting to gain. One of the things that she always said was that one of the worst sins — not in a religious sense — was the sin of pride, and I think she became slightly prideful, of the community embracing her, and she couldn’t cope with it.

—Arne Glimcher, her friend and biographer, talking about Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin: philosopher, artist, pioneer, recluse


When she was later asked, "Were you aware that the art world considered you to have spent a decade in New York making masterful paintings?" Martin replied, "Yes, I thought I had, too... I thought I had already made them so I could leave."

—Nancy Princenthal, on her book Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art

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Agnes Martin: Life and Work

This timespace tells the story of the life and art of Agnes Martin.

Destroyed artworks New Mexico Mountain Landscape, Taos Untitled (Landscape South of Santa Fe, NM) Nude Untitled Personnages Untitled The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden The Bluebird Mid-Winter Untitled Dream of night sailing Autumn Watch Window Harbor I Wheat Desert Rain Untitled Untitled Night and Day Kali The Laws The Spring Untitled Untitled Untitled Lamp Earth Untitled Cow Untitled White Flower Mountain Untitled Untitled This Rain The Islands Little Sister The Wall #2 Tremolo The Wave Milk River Friendship Night Sea Wood I Stars The Tree White Stone Stone Wood Red Bird The Beach Garden Red Bird The Peach Petal Morning Drift of Summer The Harvest The City Play Mountain I The Field Tundra The Untroubled Mind On a Clear Day Lecture at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania Untitled #12 Untitled #5 Gabriel Untitled Untitled Untitled #14 Rubber Stamp Portfolio Untitled #5 Untitled Untitled #1 Untitled #9 Fiesta Untitled #5 Untitled #6 Untitled 1990 series Untitled #5 Untitled #5 Untitled #10 Untitled #9 With My Back To The World Untitled #7 Writings Where Babies Come From Loving Love Happy Holiday I Love The Whole World Faraway Love Innocent Love Perfect Happiness Innocent Happiness Happiness Innocent Living Contentment Love Benevolence Gratitude Untitled #20 Untitled #16 Untitled #17 Homage to Life The Sea Untitled
First New York exhibition Exhibition at Betty Parsons Section Eleven gallery Final exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery First exhibition in Robert Elkon's gallery Kunstmuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland Whitney Museum retrospective Tate Modern retrospective Guggenheim Museum retrospective
Foundation of the Cornish School of Music John Cage taught at Cornish Abstract Expressionism Betty Parsons opens her gallery Pollock's earliest drip paintings Newman's first zip compositions D.T. Suzuki's lectures at Columbia Ad Reinhardt Betty Parsons visits Taos Lenore Tawney exhibition Chryssa's first solo exhibition
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2024 ® All rights reserved - Relevant Episode LDA - NIF 514 730 927 - Timelinefy.com
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2024 ® All rights reserved - Relevant Episode LDA - NIF 514 730 927 - Timelinefy.com