Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2012

Publication Title

Woman's Art Journal

Volume

33

Issue

2

Pages

50-53

Abstract

[First Paragraph] The impression emerges, through reading this anthology and remembering the work, that Agnes Martin's paintings are somehow not there. Their qualities and effects are of a second order, not directly tied to their material facts, because as perceptions, they evade and exceed these facts. Although it is entirely clear of what they consist and how they were made, viewers report constant dissolution and condensation of screens, veils, or mists from the tiny elements on the surface. Emblems of the less than absolute sufficiency of empirical knowledge, they reinforce Martin's claim that "The cause of the response is not traceable in the work" (232). The question with which these essays grapple in light of these effects is: what could such phenomena mean? How are the artist's ambitions and conditions, as well as the conditions of the viewer, inscribed upon them?

Comments

Posted with permission of the publisher.

Original Publication Citation

Colaizzi, V. (2012). Agnes Martin, by Lynne Cooke et al. Dia Art Foundation: New York and Yale University Press: New Haven, 2011 (Book Review). Woman's Art Journal, 33(2), 50-53.

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