Edited by Frances Morris, Tiffany Bell. Text by Marion Ackermann, Rachel Barker, Jacquelynn Baas, Tiffany Bell, Christina Bryan Rosenberger, Briony Fer, Lena Fritsch, Anna Lovatt, Frances Morris, Maria Müller-Schareck, Richard Tobin, Rosemarie Trockel.
The critically acclaimed, indispensible illustrated monograph on Agnes Martin, published to accompany the major retrospective exhibition organized by the Tate and on view in 2016 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Guggenheim
This groundbreaking survey provides an in-depth account of Martin's artistic career, from lesser-known early experimental works through her striped and gridded grey paintings and use of color in various formats, to a group of her final pieces that reintroduce bold forms. A selection of drawings and watercolors and Martin's own writing are also included.
Edited by the exhibitions's co-curators Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell, and with essays by leading scholars that give a context for Martin's work—her life, relationship with other artists, the influence of South-Asian philosophy—alongside focused shorter pieces on particular paintings, this beautifully designed volume is the definitive publication on her oeuvre. Frances Morris places Martin's work in the art historical context of the time; art historian Richard Tobin analyzes Martin’s painting "The Islands"; conservator Rachel Barker offers the reader a close viewing of "Morning"; curator Lena Fritsch provides a visual biography by comparing photographic portraits of Martin from different periods; and art historian Jacquelynn Baas delves into the spiritual and philosophical beliefs so present in Martin's art, including Platonism, Christian mysticism, Zen Buddhism and Taoism.
Agnes Martin was born in Maklin, Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1912, and moved to the US in 1932, studying at universities in Oregon, California, New Mexico and New York. She painted still lifes and portraits until the early 1950s, when she developed an abstract biomorphic style influenced by Abstract Expressionism. Her first one-woman exhibition was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1958. Partly through close friendships with artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Ad Reinhardt, Martin began to experiment with symmetrical compositions of rectangles or circles within a square, then from around 1960–61 to work with grids of delicate horizontal and vertical lines. She left New York in 1967, shortly after the death of Reinhardt, and moved to New Mexico, where she lived until her death in 2004.
Portrait of Agnes Martin in her studio in Taos, New Mexico, c. 1954, is by Mildred Tolbert.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The Telegraph
Alastair Sooke
Martin’s cool geometric abstractions are butterfly nets for emotions.
Evening Standard
Ben Luke
A near-perfect guide of breath-takingly beautiful work.
The New York Times Book Review
Patricia Albers
Not to be missed...indispensable.
London Review of Books
Nicholas Spiece
The paintings ask that we look, look and keep looking. They beckon us into an attitude of attention, a willingness to take time.
Artnews
Roger Atwood
This exhaustive survey of painter Agnes Martin’s career shows how she spent decades modulating the basic form of a gridded or banded square to achieve a vast range of aesthetic and emotional effects, from severe to sensual.
The New York Times
Holland Cotter
...Linear abstract paintings that are balanced and personal, precise and hand-touched. Many are so subtle as to be barely photographable, yet they look gorgeous in the catalog (edited by Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell) for her recent Tate Modern show, "Agnes Martin," which travels to the Guggenheim Museum in October 2016.
Los Angeles Times
Christopher Knight
Survey of Agnes Martin's powerful yet meditative work draws a straight, vibrant line to Zen.... Once you've nestled into her seemingly simple, initially inscrutable, finally profound vision of art, it's like enveloping your mind's eye in a soft, methodical, determined but exalted radiance.
New York Review Of Books
Hilton Als
Some of the more significant creations about spirituality, beauty, and painting itself that modernism has ever known… She used the grid as a forum for belief- a space where the viewer as well as the artist could contemplate the hand making the thing being observed.
The New York Times
Holland Cotter
[Martin’s] art has a lift that makes other art, even closely related, feel earthbound.
The New Yorker
A deep, and deepening, sense of the artist’s singular powers…a sort of secular pilgrimage, on which you may feel your perceptual ability to register minute differences in tone and texture steadily refined, and your heart ambushed by rushes of emotion.
Hyperallergic
Robert C. Morgan
...a strong message emerges from Martin’s magnificent works, whether paintings, drawings, prints, or even sculpture: to become a serious artist requires a choice, a willful rite of passage that precedes the course one will follow.
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FROM THE BOOK
"To progress in life you must give up the things that you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you like. The things that are acceptable to your mind."
Below is Agnes Martin's 1989 essay, "Beauty is the Mystery of Life," reproduced from our essential monograph, published to accompany the critically-acclaimed touring retrospective. Reviewing our book for the New York Times Book Review alongside Nancy Princenthal's aptly-timed new biography, Patricia Albers made special note of this particular text, asserting that it is "not to be missed." continue to blog
Below is Agnes Martin's 1989 essay, "Beauty is the Mystery of Life," reproduced from our essential monograph, published to accompany the critically-acclaimed touring retrospective. Reviewing our book for the New York Times Book Review alongside Nancy Princenthal's aptly-timed new biography, Patricia Albers made special note of this particular text, asserting that it is "not to be missed." continue to blog
This week, we release the most important monograph ever published on the great twentieth century painter Agnes Martin, whose name and work are so much in the news because of the definitive retrospective on view at Tate Modern (for which this book was published), and the new biography by Nancy Princenthal. Below is the Introduction to our book, written by co-curators Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell. continue to blog
"Inspiration and life are equivalents and they come from outside
Beauty is pervasive
inspiration is pervasive
We say this rose is beautiful
and when this rose is destroyed then we have lost something
so that beauty has been lost
When the rose is destroyed we grieve
but really beauty is unattached
and a clear mind sees it"
So wrote Agnes Martin in her 1972 text, "The Untroubled Mind," excerpted here from the unparalleled survey copublished this year by D.A.P. and Tate Modern and one of our top Holiday Gift Books for Art Connoisseurs. Featured image is Untitled (1959). continue to blog
"When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees," Agnes Martin said in 1989, "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." This definitive volume is a glorious, beautifully produced yet finely detailed overview of one of the most important painters of the twentieth century. Featuring exquisite reproductions of drawings, watercolors and paintings from across Martin's half-century career accompanied by top art scholarship, a selection of Martin's writings (and notes on her writings), an illustrated chronology and a rich selection of documentary photographs and portraits, this Tate/D.A.P. co-publication is a book that no art library, private or public, should be without. continue to blog
The monumental traveling retrospective, Agnes Martin, opened today at the Guggenheim, and already it has been called "the most out-of-this-world-beautiful retrospective I’ve seen in this space in years," by Holland Cotter in the New York Times and 'one of the two or three best museum shows in New York this season" by Deborah Solomon on WNYC. We are very proud to have co-published the extraordinary exhibition catalog, where Martin is quoted, "My paintings have neither objects, nor space, nor time, nor anything – no forms. When you give up the idea of right and wrong, you don't get anything. What you get is rid of everything, freedom from ideas and responsibility." Featured image is Untitled #10 (1975). continue to blog
"Untitled" (2002) is reproduced from Agnes Martin, the catalogue to the definitive retrospective which originated at TATE and opens today at LACMA. Co-curated by Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell, this landmark show is the first museum retrospective since the artist's death in 2004. "Abstract painting, imbued with new terms, contexts, conditions and methodologies, has come under scrutiny from a generations of younger artists and their critics who are claiming the genre for themselves," Morris and Bell write in their Introduction. "There will be many for whom this is the first opportunity to view Martin's work in depth, to reflect on the contemporary relevance of her distinctive practice and its place in art history. What more appropriate moment could there be for reanimating the discussion around Agnes Martin?" To read the complete Introduction, continue to our blog. continue to blog
On October 15, 1975, Agnes Martin wrote, "Art work that is completely abstract – free from any expression of the environment is like music and can be responded to in the same way. Our response to line and tone and color is the same as our response to sounds. And like music abstract art is thematic. It holds meaning for us that is beyond expression in words." Untitled (1958) is reproduced from our definitive monograph—the catalogue to the critically acclaimed retrospective currently on view at LACMA—which has been called "zen-like," "expansive," "compelling" and "immaculate." continue to blog
The monumental traveling retrospective, Agnes Martin, opened yesterday at the Guggenheim, and already it has been called "the most out-of-this-world-beautiful retrospective I’ve seen in this space in years," by Holland Cotter in the New York Times and 'one of the two or three best museum shows in New York this season" by Deborah Solomon on WNYC. We are very proud to have co-published the extraordinary exhibition catalog, from which the late painting, "Untitled #1" (2003), is reproduced. According to essayist Briony Fer, Martin once called the triangle paintings "'scary. Not many artists are able to produce a startling new body of work at the age of over ninety, let alone scare themselves with it." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.25 x 10.5 in. / 272 pgs / 160 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $72.5 ISBN: 9781938922763 PUBLISHER: D.A.P./Tate AVAILABLE: 7/28/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by D.A.P./Tate. Edited by Frances Morris, Tiffany Bell. Text by Marion Ackermann, Rachel Barker, Jacquelynn Baas, Tiffany Bell, Christina Bryan Rosenberger, Briony Fer, Lena Fritsch, Anna Lovatt, Frances Morris, Maria Müller-Schareck, Richard Tobin, Rosemarie Trockel.
The critically acclaimed, indispensible illustrated monograph on Agnes Martin, published to accompany the major retrospective exhibition organized by the Tate and on view in 2016 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Guggenheim
This groundbreaking survey provides an in-depth account of Martin's artistic career, from lesser-known early experimental works through her striped and gridded grey paintings and use of color in various formats, to a group of her final pieces that reintroduce bold forms. A selection of drawings and watercolors and Martin's own writing are also included.
Edited by the exhibitions's co-curators Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell, and with essays by leading scholars that give a context for Martin's work—her life, relationship with other artists, the influence of South-Asian philosophy—alongside focused shorter pieces on particular paintings, this beautifully designed volume is the definitive publication on her oeuvre. Frances Morris places Martin's work in the art historical context of the time; art historian Richard Tobin analyzes Martin’s painting "The Islands"; conservator Rachel Barker offers the reader a close viewing of "Morning"; curator Lena Fritsch provides a visual biography by comparing photographic portraits of Martin from different periods; and art historian Jacquelynn Baas delves into the spiritual and philosophical beliefs so present in Martin's art, including Platonism, Christian mysticism, Zen Buddhism and Taoism.
Agnes Martin was born in Maklin, Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1912, and moved to the US in 1932, studying at universities in Oregon, California, New Mexico and New York. She painted still lifes and portraits until the early 1950s, when she developed an abstract biomorphic style influenced by Abstract Expressionism. Her first one-woman exhibition was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1958. Partly through close friendships with artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Ad Reinhardt, Martin began to experiment with symmetrical compositions of rectangles or circles within a square, then from around 1960–61 to work with grids of delicate horizontal and vertical lines. She left New York in 1967, shortly after the death of Reinhardt, and moved to New Mexico, where she lived until her death in 2004.