Agnes Bernice Martin

Artists like Agnes Martin come along very rarely. In reviewing the course of her long career, it is astonishing to realize that she broke most of the rules that could assure her future success as an exhibiting artist and, despite that, succeeded in garnering exceptional acclaim for her paintings and drawings throughout her life. There are many resources available for us to learn the details of Martin's unique biography: her 20-year struggle for recognition; her evolution from figurative to abstract painting; her overwhelming success in exhibiting at Betty Parson's Gallery in New York after 1957; her sudden departure from New York to Santa Fe in 1968 and her withdrawal from art-making for the next seven years. But no written reference can inform us better than a taped interview in the artist's Taos studio by Chuck Smith and Sono Kuwayama in 1997. In that conversation, Agnes Martin makes many provocative and profound statements that reveal both her goals and her state of mind as a visual artist, which aid us in knowing how to truly see the intimate, inspired works she created.