Paging: Agnes Martin's Writings

I have a very quiet mind. I worked hard for that. It took a lot of discipline.—Agnes Martin

The painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004) published this book of her writings, which collects her few statements and notes about art-making from the fifties and early sixties. 

For readers unfamiliar with her work, Martin is known for her serene paintings using lines and grids in pastel colors, though prior to her move to New Mexico, she mainly worked in only black, white, and brown. She was born in Saskatchewan and moved to the United States in 1931; she became a citizen in 1950. Martin moved to New Mexico in 1967, after spending years painting on the waterfront in an artist’s community on Coenties Slip in the lower part of Manhattan.

Martin’s writings are like the paintings: elusive, transcendent, mysterious, and orderly. The writings are not poetry (they are not written in lines), but they live in the world of light and letters. Anyone with a sensitivity to the pulse of metaphors will feel the secretion of the same pulse from their systems. 

The book is in German and English with a handful of images of her paintings. It includes most (all?) of her rare statements about art from exhibit catalogs, reviews, interviews, and a lecture from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia in 1973 called “The Untroubled Mind.”