Agnes Martin
Friday, 7 December 2012
Work from her oeuvre.
“…Grid, in this context, is a convenient but misleading descriptive. It identifies a superficial relationship of Martin’s work to an abstract concept of two-dimensional space, when in fact her painting tends to suggest an extension of our concept of three-dimensional space. The breathing that I describe in these prints takes place serially, from one print to the next. It occurs between the prints, you might say. In this way, Martin allows their space to expand in the mind of the viewer as she travels from one print to the next. Thus they take on an additional dimension.
I would argue that all Martin’s work, not just the serial editions, accomplishes this. The fourth dimension is the spatial dimension beyond the three-dimensional living space to which we are all accustomed. Length, width and height are the first three dimensions. The fourth is time. So to experience the fourth dimension necessitates moving through three-dimensional spaces. Not a three-dimensional space, as when you’re traveling down a road in a car, but multiple three-dimensional spaces, one after another. For us, the experience is only possible in our minds. “Do not look at the rain,” wrote Martin, “look at the space between the rain.” If you do, you’ll find your field of vision suddenly goes loose, like a sail when the wind has died. You’re not seeing anything particularly; you’re seeing everything at once. This is what Agnes Martin’s work is like for me. I look at her drawings and I see right through them, beyond them into a universe of space, into the fourth dimension…” – Ben La Rocco for the Brooklyn Rail.