Agnes Martin

Until very recently I had not heard of the American artist Agnes Martin (1912-2004). And yet, having now twice visited the Tate Modern’s retrospective* of her work, there is no doubt that she was a major modern artist. Her paintings are stunning, and her overall body of work must surely claim to be among the greatest art of the second half of the twentieth century.

At the most basic level it is easy to describe an Agnes Martin piece. Most of her best work consists either of grids, or of bands of washed out colour, repeating in patterns horizontally or vertically. There is nothing approaching ‘representation’ in any of this: the grids or the bands of colour, sometimes both, are, it might be said, all there is to see. But that would be to miss the point entirely. For there is in fact so much to see in Martin’s work, and not only with the eyes. 

A good place to start is with Martin’s own words (as quoted in an essay by Nancy Doyle) about how to view her work: ‘You just go there and sit and look.’ It is worth reflecting on the three parts of this guidance. First: ‘go there’. The actual painting itself has to be viewed. Martin is an extreme example of an artist whose work defies reproduction. Second: ‘sit’. What she means, I think, is that her paintings require time. The experience of viewing a Martin painting cannot be hurried. Third, ‘look’. Martin’s work requires attention, but attention of a particular kind. It needs to be ‘open’, careful not to judge or to overthink or to grasp at meaning. As befits an artist for whom Zen Buddhism and Taoism were influences, her work is best looked at without thought, with as clear a mind as possible. 

Consider a painting such as Morning (1965).

Agnes Martin, Morning (1965), Acrylic paint and graphite, 182.6 cm x 181.9 cm

Initially, if merely glancing at this painting, one may feel perplexed, perhaps even dismissive. It is simply a grid drawn in graphite on a large canvas painted in off-white. But the longer one looks, the more one sees. Viewed from a distance the painting has a hazy effect, rather like mist or fog. The grid is indistinct, even to the point of being barely visible. Approach closer and the grid takes on detail. At a certain distance the grid appears to have the perfect regularity of graph paper. Move in closer still, right up to the canvas itself, and one can see the irregularities in the lines: some are stronger than others; there are small kinks as the lines respond to variations in the artist’s hand or the variations in the texture of the paint. If distance is akin to viewing a mist, then closeness is like seeing the defined, fine droplets that constitute the mist. Morning is typical of Martin’s work in its invitation to observe and reflect on this relationship between minute detail and the whole.**

The painting is evidently not representational. Or, rather, it does not represent an objective world. Instead, in so far as the concept of representation has any meaning here, Morning is attempting to portray a feeling, an emotion, perhaps a truth or reality that transcends the visible world. Martin said of Morning: ‘I was painting about happiness and bliss and they are very simple states of mind I guess. Morning is a wonderful dawn, soft and fresh.’ In short, the painting is trying to capture the nature of a morning’s beauty, but the beauty that is felt and experienced—it is not attempting to define the ‘seen’ beauty as it may reside in the object, but rather the inner feeling of beauty we may have when experiencing the morning.

The majority of Martin’s paintings are untitled, but they are all doing something similar to Morning: they are trying to convey what lies behind the visible, and our inner responses to that, the feelings and emotions that defy verbal articulation or traditional representation. It comes as no surprise that, as well as eastern philosophy, Martin was influenced by, among others, Calvinism, William Blake and Platonism. The latter, in particular, seems everywhere evident: the grids, the geometry and the ‘mathematics’ of Martin’s work can be thought of as a sustained meditation on the Platonic theory of ideas, the perfect forms that exist, real but hidden, beyond the visible world.

There is a sublime sense of calmness and silence in Martin’s best work—indeed, to the point that the experience of viewing her paintings has often been described in religious or spiritual terms. Perhaps the most extraordinary example of this is Islands (1979), a set of twelve paintings intended to be displayed as a group.

Agnes Martin, Islands (1979)

From a distance they appear to be no more than white canvases. Again, close viewing is repaid, as faint lines and bands of pale blue emerge. As a whole, meditation is perhaps the best way of viewing them—Islands, as a work which depicts nothing, in so far as they are ‘about’ anything it is the intimate experience between the work of the art and the viewer. But beyond that, articulation is almost impossible: as Martin said, just sit and look.

There is a singularity of discipline and purpose throughout Martin’s work that amounts to an extraordinary body of work. Painting after painting (as well as an outstanding portfolio of screenprints entitled On a Clear Day) sticks resolutely to the same styles and themes. Yet each individual painting rewards long attention on many levels. (And it is worth noting she was a superb colourist, with a distinctive use of washed out blues and reds, as well as a fine period in which she painted predominantly in grey.) The simplicity of her art is only apparent. For Agnes Martin was a profound artist.
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* 3 June to 11 October 2015

** It also reminds me of the earliest experiments with the microscope, recorded by Robert Hooke in Micrographia (1665). One of the most wondrous discoveries—captured in the remarkable illustrations to Micrographia—was how objects that appeared perfect in form, such as a pinhead or a printed full-stop, were full of numerous imperfections when viewed through the microscope.

The long way

I’ve been exploring writings on solitude and silence. Sara Maitland’s Book of Silence (2008) is a wonderful reflection on the subject, thoughtful, profound and based on extensive study of the literature and experience of silence. Among the examples she considers are the experiences of solo yachtsmen, for whom solitude and the silence that solitude brings are intense.

A notorious episode in the history of solo yachting was the 1968-9 Golden Globe race.* Around this time various sailors were progressing with plans to make the first non-stop solo circumnavigation of the world. Sponsored by the Sunday Times, the race was designed to award a prize to the first sailor to accomplish this achievement, with a further prize for the fastest time (since the competitors were setting off at different dates). Anyone embarking on such a voyage within the timescale was entered by default, whether they wished to compete or not, without any other qualification or eligibility criteria.

Nine sailors set out, but only one, Robin Knox-Johnston, returned. Several competitors were forced to retire, their boats or themselves unequal to the task; Nigel Tetley, who was finishing after Robin Knox-Johnston but was well placed to take the fastest time prize, was only a few days from finishing before his boat fell apart and he had to be rescued at sea. But the two most remarkable stories were those of Donald Crowhurst and Bernard Moitessier.

Crowhurst set out with limited experience in a boat that soon proved badly ill-suited to the challenge. He drifted around in the Atlantic before hatching an intricate plan to fake his log book and return to claim the fastest time prize. But the gradual realization that he would never get away with it (and perhaps guilt too at Tetley’s sinking, since Tetley had been pushing his boat hard to keep ahead of Crowhurst, supposing the latter to be in close contention for the prize) resulted in what appears to have been deep psychosis. Giving up entirely, he devoted his last few days at sea to writing a strange, deranged metaphysical treatise, before committing suicide by stepping into the ocean.**

Moitessier was an experienced French sailor with a fine yacht; he was considered one of the favourites to win the fastest time prize. But he had had initial misgivings about the competitive nature of the race, and it was only with reluctance that he agreed to participate. He made solid progress towards the Cape of Good Hope; in the Indian Ocean his spirits were low, so he took up yoga to revive them; by the time he was past Australia and into the Pacific he was deeply in tune with the sea and increasingly reflective about the purpose of the voyage. It seems he was facing a kind of spiritual crisis, one that loomed ever larger as he closed in on Cape Horn. His dilemma was this: should he return to Plymouth to complete the race? Or should he keep going, past Good Hope again and on into the Indian and Pacific oceans to Tahiti or the Galapagos?

On 28 February 1969, by now in the Atlantic again, he wrote in his log that he was ‘giving up’—by which he meant that he was intending to complete the race. What he had decided to abandon was what he most wanted to do: to stay on the ocean where he felt happiest and most free, avoiding any return to European civilization. The next day, however, his spirits revived: he changed his mind and resolved to sail on. Shortly afterwards he wrote a letter to his publisher:

Dear Robert: The Horn was rounded February 5, and today is March 18. I am continuing non-stop towards the Pacific Islands because I am happy at sea, and perhaps also to save my soul.

And so Moitessier circumnavigated the globe, solo and non-stop, one and a half times, before eventually touching land once again, ten months after he had first set sail, in Tahiti.

Moitessier’s own account of his voyage, The Long Way (1971; English translation 1973), is a fine book. Engagingly written and appropriately exciting, it is also movingly reflective. It conveys the intense calm and joy that Moitessier felt on the ocean, his sense of connection to the sea, to the elements, to the seasons, to the birds, fish and dolphins that he encountered, his freedom, and his sense that he was in close contact with the beauty of life, the world and the universe. It also captures his acute dismay at the impoverished nature of ‘civilization’, its obsession with money and its destructive impact on the environment. To have returned to Europe, to western society and civilization, would have been to imperil his soul—the only way to save it, and to stay in touch with what was really important in life, was to sail as far away as he could.

The decision he took seems so right. I admire him for it—even to the point of envying his clarity and strength of purpose in following his heart. He turned away from the fame and wealth that could have been his (he signed away all royalties from his book to the Pope in the hope that the Church would take action to save the environment) because he was questing after something that transcends the superficial values and priorities that prevail throughout most of society. He comments that his wife and children would understand. They probably did. I understand.  

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* Peter Nichols, A Voyage for Madmen (2001) is an excellent account of the race.

** Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst (2003) is a detailed account of Crowhurst’s participation in the race. In a subsequent twist, a couple of years later Tetley also killed himself, perhaps unable to adjust to life after the race.