Agnes Martin: Art is Pure Process

The first time I saw Agnes Martin's artworks was in 2018, at SFMoMA. Her paintings are mostly grid-like, repetitive (though not manufactured), and either monochrome or with reserved color. There were three large paintings in an open room, each occupying a wall. I don't remember at all what they looked like but I will never forget how I felt. I couldn't put it to words at the time, but something about it deeply stirred me. A beacon of truth, something unexplainable that made sense, a glowing seed sown in the recesses of my mind. I was for the very first time in my life responding to art.

6 years later, I would by pure chance Chance? Maybe fate? A friend I had very recently met in China (also by pure chance/fate) had asked me for book recommendations the day before. Not knowing how to answer, it lived in the back of my mind. The next day I went on a rare shopping day with my sister who was visiting. We had finally found the sweaters she was looking for, and while I was waiting I found the book underneath some merchandise. Or maybe the book came to me. discover The Distillation of Color (2021), a book centered around Agnes Martin's life and art. In the introduction, Marc Glimcher reflects on his time with Agnes at her home in New Mexico, and reveals that none of her paintings hung in her house. The book goes on to explain that Agnes Martin was an artist of pure process, whose work "depended on her giving up everything". At some point in her career she began using color, but "where color had laid itself out for her, she could uncover something more by giving it up / Her return to the undulating rhythm of her gray paintings demonstrates a peaceful, harmonious mastery - this purely recieved knowledge didn't require any embellishment."

I want to share a particularly beautiful passage from the introduction, the one that finally explained her art for me:

One unforgettable visit, my eldest asked, "Agnes, what are your paintings of?" The older artist pulled a rose out of the table bouquet and said, "Isabelle, is this beautiful?" Isabelle replied, "Yes, Agnes." She then put the rose behind her back and said, "Is it still beautiful?" And my daughter responded, "Yes, Agnes." Gently waving her hand in the air where the rose had been, Agnes explained, "My paintings are of this." Although I had read her story in her book of writings about the beauty of a rose persisting after it dies, at that moment, it truly hit home. And both my daughters also understood exactly what she meant. It was so clear: the little patch of air she gently waved her hand through lit up as the essence of beauty, the essence of everything we yearn for, feel happy about. That it exists independent of the object felt abundantly clear.

That it exists independent of the object felt abundantly clear.

I felt this was revealing a great truth. It so precisely laid out bare what I felt back then. That beauty exists and persists, independent of the object. That the end result is never an end, it is just a point in time. Memories and feelings and the ethereal that cannot be explained, the mystical, that lives on in our minds and hearts and in the minds and hearts of those we affect, as beauty. A beauty that swells to the forward march of time. To earnestly build and live a true life devoted to its pursuit, that to me is what art is all about. A pure process.

Since my recent trip to Jingdezhen, I've felt a renewed restlessness. It exists in the background, a force that keeps me afloat, keeps me moving. Somehow, I've been reoriented in the right direction. Agnes Martin, I discovered, also wrote. In her anthology Writings, there is a section titled WHAT WE DO NOT SEE IF WE DO NOT SEE. It discusses the importance and method of living a "true life", centered around a theory of the effects of obeying or disobeying the conscious and unconscious mind. A short excerpt that touched me:

Life is an adventure and adventures are difficult. They are hard work and one does not know how they will go on or how they will end. Nevertheless we have a tremendous appetite for the adventure of life. We are continually restless if we are not moving forward according to our potential.

The path of the true life, one that is true to identity and potential, is obvious to the conscious mind. I think this newly-gained restlessness of mine is a manifestation of the conscious mind's awakening. Agnes explains:

The conscious mind is awareness of the sublime and it tells us what to do by showing us when we are off the track. Obedience to the conscious mind carries us forward to greater awareness. Disobedience of the conscious mind carries us backward to less awareness. With more accurate obedience we become rapidly more aware of the sublime: of beauty and happiness in life. We become more devoted to life. With disobedience we become less and less aware with less respect for life.

I think the conscious mind appears when we have a sense of identity, and what is then left to do is our choice: whether or not to obey it. Not obeying it is easy; comfort is easy. But the interim between knowing and doing is the space where suffering thrives. Something I've been thinking about recently is that we are what we do; how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. It seems so obvious, and hauntingly true. When I chose to waste away to several hours of Youtube and Instagram every day, as a person I was exactly nothing more than that. Now I often cannot even bear to look at the screen. Agnes dictates: "Until you can clear up your true identity you will be tied to a repetition of this life."

Even if you aren't sure about an identity, I think there is nothing more important than then act of moving around in the world. Moving constantly forward, trying new things, searching. Slowly orienting your sails towards a more certain direction. Seeing and noticing what moves you, what your conscious mind feels as beauty.

Because if you stop moving even for just a second, you will dissappear without a trace.