"Happiness is being on the beam with life—to feel the pull of life."
— Agnes Martin, whose early work is on view through May 12 in Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957)
"Take advantage of the awareness of perfection in your mind. See perfection in everything around you. See if you can discover your true feelings when listening to music. Make happiness your goal. The way to discover the truth about this life is to discover yourself. Say to yourself, ‘What do I like and what do I want?’ Find out exactly what you want in life. Ask your mind for inspiration about everything."
— Agnes Martin, whose early work is on view through May 12 in Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957)
"We make artwork as something that we have to do not knowing how it will work out. When it is finished we have to see if it is effective. Even if we obey inspiration we cannot expect all the work to be successful. An artist is a person who can recognize failure."
— Agnes Martin, whose early work is on view through May 12 in Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957)
"There are two parts of the mind. The outer mind that records facts and the inner mind that says ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you think of something that you should do the inner mind says ‘yes’ and you feel elated. We call this inspiration."
— Agnes Martin, whose early work is on view through May 12 in Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957)
Today is Agnes Martin’s birthday. Celebrate by coming to see Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957) this afternoon or weekend.
Martin was one of the few women to stand out during a revolutionary period of American art in the 1940s and 1950s. Her meditative paintings, drawings, and writings have influenced generations of artists interested in abstraction.
IMAGE: Mildred Tolbert’s Untitled (Agnes Martin in Her Studio), ca. 1955. Collection of The Harwood Museum of Art, Courtesy Mildred Tolbert Archives.
"The goal of life is happiness, and to respond to life as though it were perfect is the way to happiness. It is also the way to positive artwork."
— Agnes Martin, whose early work is on view through May 12 in Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957)
"We respond to life as though it were perfect. When we go into a forest, we do not see the fallen rotting trees. We are inspired by a multitude of uprising trees. We even hear a silence when it is not really silent. When we see a newborn baby we say it is beautiful—perfect."
— Agnes Martin, whose early work is on view through May 12 in Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957)
"All artwork is about beauty; all positive work represents it and celebrates it. All negative artwork protests the lack of beauty in our lives."
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Agnes Martin, whose early work is on view through May 12 in Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957)
"When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in the mind. In our minds there is an awareness of perfection."
— Agnes Martin, whose early work is on view through May 12 in Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957)
Agnes Martin: The New York–Taos Connection (1947–1957), on view January 26–May 12, reexamines some of the influential painter’s earliest representational and abstract work: landscapes and seascapes, portraits and biomorphic configurations, precursors of the delicate grid paintings for which she is best known. Offering a glimpse into Martin’s creative process as it unfolds over the course of a decade, the works are the backstory to a sensibility aspiring to purity and innocence through the most minimal of means.
IMAGE: Mildred Tolbert’s Untitled (Agnes Martin in Her Studio), ca. 1955. Collection of The Harwood Museum of Art, Courtesy Mildred Tolbert Archives.
