Agnes Martin at Tate Modern on The Art Channel

hi welcome to the art channel my name is Grace Adam and this is my colleague Joshua white this week we're going to be reviewing Agnes Martin who's showing at Tate Modern the exhibition runs until October this is a major retrospective of the American painters work and runs from her early biomorphic work in the 1950s up until her mature and late work in 2004 the exhibition is introduced by a series of paintings owned by the Tate Gallery which belongs to their series called artists rooms which travel through Britain to regional galleries this painting is called untitled and is dated to 1955 and we can see Agnes Martin's early style developing this biomorphic free-floating series of objects or images that may well operate like objects like a still life but you can see really can't really influence of early Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s artists like Rothko and Pollock and buzzy artis Marshall Gorky working with his free-floating forms across the plain of the picture and the palette is very muted isn't it it's very subtle it is and that's that's one of the things she keeps throughout her practice is very muted quiet palette and this incredible kind of order it's a beautifully ordered painting although this is obviously not to amateur style it's not something with perhaps associate with Martin it has got those kind of trademark ways of working and it is still referring to nature she is taking patterns from field shapes from hillsides and trees so it's very much a reference to nature it at this point and I think later on she talks about wanting people to view her work like they view a landscape so there is I guess that connection but this is definitely early days where she's kind of funny at what kind of painter she is and you can see her suggesting the settlement of forms that slow sort of coalescence around a structure which anticipates that kind of resolution in her practice late in her career when she arrives of the grid and she sort of found that structure yes that sort of finality yeah although as you say it's named a biomorphic painting it has still got it's got that special order it's got that special way of laying out the forms there's a very definite relationship between the objects or the forms within the painting so you can make a connection you can see her moving towards the grid towards the lines so burning tree which is the name of this object was produced in the early 60s 1961 when Martin was living in the docks in kind of abandoned buildings lots of artists studios down there and it's quite a surprising well object one doesn't expect to see Martin making an object I think it's absolutely fabulous it's like a claw a kind of Talon and it's made from found objects it's very much kind of piece of bricolage made from wood and from this metal that she's nailed onto these twelve spikes it's a very beautiful but aggressive piece of sculpture and she does actually write about abandoning making objects she feels that they are too aggressive the work is called burning tree and that takes us back to her biography growing up in a strict Calvinist family as if it's a memory of that image the tree alight with all of us or powerful symbolism but it works so formally doesn't it spikes those little metal caps have slots on top of those pieces of wood that stick out they look like original exon coat racks and of course she reclaimed a lot of this material local abandoned industrial warehouses that were being knocked down for the development of Manhattan and it also suggests to me a kind of cactus yes she would have been familiar at this point with the landscape New Mexico where she finally settles as chooses as her permanent home but it's it's almost surreal isn't it aggression it absolutely is yeah I mean you kind of think of Duchamp's objects when you look at this and of course it seems a million miles away I guess on the face of it from her paintings but it does have that regularity that almost a grid system that kind of rigor in making and that balance which you get through the paintings is actually a wonderful object this remarkable painting is called friendship made in 1963 when she was still working in New York and I think this is arguably the most important painting in the show it's this turning point in her practice when she's arrived at this geometric regularity see reality and structure we got the square edge to the canvas and she has applied gold leaf on gesso a white kind of primer to the canvas and then she incises or cut into the gold leaf to create these regular rectangles or bricks that stack up and I think it really illustrates this mature phase of her practice that we're by the process of building and accumulating material on the surface of the the cameras is intrinsic to its kind of meaning yes there is as you say a great sense of craft which is sometimes a word that people don't like to use but the making the rigor the time in these paintings in these objects is absolutely incredible and she was not only rigorous I think in making them but also in editing her output she bought back paintings that she didn't feel it reflected her current state and out of five or six works that were made anyone would see the light of day so she's incredibly strict on what is made and how its viewed but you're right this is some this is beautiful kind of glistening piece of gold which is quite a surprise when you come around the corner and it's that for me it's kind of a lovely contradiction because it on the one hand it feels very minimal and on the other hand it's it's like an icon it's like a piece of kind of Art Deco furniture it really kind of it kind of shouts at you and the color gold is so interesting because it's as much elemental as a color you don't find gold on the color spectrum and of course it has all of those associations with alchemy with the supernatural and also connections to art in the Middle Ages in Europe but also in terms of Eastern and Asian art that it's a kind of sanctifying color and ground but this is not really about a metaphor of landscape or illusion to the real observed world it's something quite introverted and methodical and process oriented we can see how this image was constructed and her and an attention to that did absolutely and I think it's interesting that you see her hand in all the work I mean often she is she's talked about as a minimalist which she didn't regard herself she thought of herself as an abstract expressionist so you're absolutely right there's no reference to the outside world but we are meant to come away with a feeling with an emotion when we look at this piece of work she always said happiness was the goal you know this makes you smile is this this takes you in it's a beautiful painting and of course it does still illustrate pure abstraction we can still connect it to modernism in 20th century this refining of the subject to a self-sufficient arriving at this autonomy the aura of the painting and of course it is so erratic with this with gold throw down the surface and what I love about this painting of course is that idea of repetition but also variation within the painting and so you have that constant shift within each block in the painting and all of that sort of tiny detail whereby there are a kind of slight Nicks absolutely and I think when you see these paintings reproduced in catalogs they look very mechanical they're small you can't see the detail and when you come up in front of them there's the artists hand there's the time the months in them and the mistakes and errors and wobbles and they're all there and that's I think very very engaging I think just a note on the title friendship I mean it's quite interesting and I think it's always you know it's it's problematic sometimes to talk about an artist life their biography but she was a very solitary human so I think actually calling this friendship is quite interesting she lived alone she worked alone she didn't take newspapers she didn't watch the TV so it really is almost a religious practice that she's engaged in I think there is a metaphor in that title that kind of arduous process building foundations or a progression in time real live time as if each block does represent some extent achievement you know social relationships and building something very concrete and solid yeah and it's interesting the language you were using we're talking about building and concrete we're talking about it almost in terms of sculpture it is a painting I think it's a painting with this class as a painting that's such a strong yes exactly and it's kind of double framed she's left some of that canvas visible around the edge and then there's a white frame so it's very contained it's very it's very in-your-face it so it's a solid piece of work this painting is called untitled number eight there are many untitled paintings in Martin's work this is made in 1974 and is part of a series of paintings where the grids have disappeared and it's horizontal lines it's graphite and acrylic on canvas and it's it's stained I mean the canvas suit feels stained those beautiful kind of orange and blue stripes the color kind of emanates from the canvas it's as if she's not painting it on she's kind of thinking it on and I think they're often talked about has been quiet and delicate and elegance and I'm slightly nervous of those descriptions because they feel quite sort of feminine and she always said I'm not a female artist I'm an artist I didn't want to be categorized so I think not titling them not talking about her personal work making these works which are perhaps perceived as quiet I don't think they are quiet I think they're very powerful you get that luminescence of the color and is quite restrained seared but it begins to almost a little pulse yeah on the surface of the canvas you have again order structure repetition but of course at the heart of these paintings is that handmade explicitly handmade quality she used a ruler masking tape but of course they don't have that pristine perfection of a painting by Mondrian without industrial feel of a sculpture by Donald Judd these are still very much made in the studio with all of that kind of imperfection on the surface despite the regularity that she super imposes on to the canvas absolutely and she's of course totally capable of making up a pristine painting that chooses not to so as we stand in front of this i can see all these graphite lines they're wobbly some are thicker some are thinner you can see where the pencil doubles up she talks about using a long ruler across the canvas and the lime looping and a short ruler where the line stays straight so the whole thing the drawing and the painting are they have a strong relationship with each other they're not I think separate for her yes you can still see the graphite lines so again that process of its making is explicit and it included in the final image and there's some discussion about whether these mature paintings refer to the landscape New Mexico but I'm hesitant about that applying that interpretation I think this is very much drawn out of her interest in Zen Buddhism and Daoism idea of beauty being something you find within and then you manifest materially and of course it also becomes an object of contemplation yes that you can stand here ostensibly for hours and just appreciate all of those really nuanced subtle sort of shifts in the blocks of color I mean they require as you say that they require time they require commitment and we're not very good at any of those things these days so they ask you to take time and you see so they kind of unfold in front of you and I think as you say they are very much sort of objects of contemplation again that's very kind of loaded phrase but she does talk about when she's making them emptying her mind getting rid of all of her thoughts and she always claimed that the paintings kind of came to her they painted themselves all artists to some extent write their own PR their own biographer insist to the outside they are they are internal and nature gives her ideas and inspiration she talked about looking at clouds in the sky they are dual intense perhaps is still clouds but they bring a kind of unique quality each one as they pass to her head in her vision and so the oil challenging yes they are I think you're right in our contemporary lives everything is at such an accelerated pace these demand kind of patience they do a looking thinking and a feeling mm-hm and they what they were challenging when they were first shown and they still are challenging I think and I think that's that is a huge compliment to the paint that they can still confuse and engages so we're in a room dedicated to a series called the ILO's dated to 1979 and it's designed as effectively as an installation an entire immersive environment with its own space and you really have to work hard to distinguish one painting from the next but there are again very very muted subtle contrasts she's using a palette or white turn it becomes almost a chromatic drained of color but of course we can begin to adjust eyes to this sort of slight tonality and contrast and again she's using these drawn lines to separate these bands and to introduce these narrow seams of space between the primary white bands across the surface and it's as if she's testing a painting or taking it to the limit without completely using one color fake yeah you're right I mean it's these twelve pieces of work are conceived as one piece I think as an installation and they were always designed to be hung together so you come into the center of this selection of work and you are you are enveloped and they are whole on this fairly light kind of rose-colored wall which is very helpful because they are they do glare at you as you say when you coming you have to adjust your eyes and again she wants you to slow down she wants you to take time you are forced to assess and reassess and to look at those slight differences they always written about his white paintings because they're not actually completely white paintings there is color different colors coming through under these horizontal bands and they are you know there are obvious allusions to Eastern philosophy to Taoism as he said to Buddhism and this idea of a contemplative object and of course within one color enormous infinite shades of contrast and variation they are really very silent and they operate almost like Rothko secret mural yes that is that though these cues in terms of the ear hang and the installation of the work that invites you to slow down your voice to show a degree of respect and some degree that's quite unfashionable and contemporary oh yeah often oyster s absolutely yeah and attention see ya forward yeah I mean that they are interesting because you say as you say they are they are quiet they are minimal they are essentially white but they're not nervous or tentative in any way they're really a very strong statement and to be able to do that having pared down everything even got rid of color is an incredible feat but as you say unfashionable things usually chat to us much more now and I'm noticing one other thing it is quite significant is the symmetrical square form that presupposes a kind of sort of balance but of course there is a degree of tension and it's kind of rectilinear horizontal emphasis within the painting setup it's just just very very slight yeah and opposition yeah I mean to some extent they are they almost apart their illusions their tricks you think you see something you can't see something the human eye always wants to have a foreground and a background then so they're always pushing and playing with that I think she doesn't decide to be a painter time she's 30 but she paints until she's 92 and it was a and all-consuming pursuit so it's you know on a personal basis very humbling to see paintings made just a few months before her death she's painting New Mexico know she's got solitary and practice and she I think begins to revisit some of the things that she's been interested in through her career after looking at the island is that the lots of colonies with beautiful stained candles with fantastic green lime top and bottom by lime of white and orange stripes through the middle but again the canvas is soaked and paint pools in places it's not even and the more you look I've come at you through the cameras there's a pop band sort of molten lava through the field of painting and then you can see that the washers can't you it's less precise some of the earlier work you can even see a freer hand to the graphite line at the top and in the center is this an artist conscious of running out of time we in it are those self-imposed sort of notions of discipline and rigor becoming free Appaloosa she allowing herself to in a sense be more instinctual and gesture and you can in an artist life pick up these shifts freely we have to be cautious about reading too much into yeah I think so surface but I think it is significant that this is very much in the toilet alone and as we were discussing you don't know whether this is an artist who thinks I've got lots left to do and not very much time I want to revisit what I've made before but it's actually physical thing you know making a large painting at 90 is pretty tough or whether I think as you say she has kind of relaxed into her practice she's allowed herself to operate within her boundaries but there's some latitude there's some looseness there's more humaneness in it in a way present they are used rather than that autonomy yeah yeah it's it's quite endearing yeah right and to see that color at the end of her life is a really beautiful silly relationship with these amazing colors

Channel: The Art Channel

Views: 140,530

Rating: 4.6259594 out of 5

Keywords: agnes martin, London (Museum) Painting Grace Adam Joshua White Contemporary Art, Agnes Martin (Visual Artist), Tate Modern, The Art Channel, Joshua White, Painting, exhibition, Abstract Art (Art Period/Movement), Art, art museum, Tate, Minimalism, American Art, Grace Adam, LACMA, Guggenheim Museum, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Modern Art, spirituality, Contemporary Art (Art Period/Movement), Canvas

Id: NUrs7bBvWO8

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2015