Customer Reviews

Agnes Martin

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Agnes Martin is one of the world's most respected abstract expressionist painters. Awarded the US National Medal for the Arts and many others, at 88 years young, she continues to paint daily in her Taos, New Mexico studio. This book highlights an extensive collection of her past and present work. The fascination of the work is that she is able to simplify and reduce the visual experience to very faint lines, grids, and bands of muted color on paper and canvas. The images in this book are not concrete, they are not bold, they are contemplative soft feminine brush strokes and fine graphite lines that can, if you allow them, produce a sense of calm, peace and joy. A true experience! If you are unable to go to Taos's Harwood Museum to see seven of her blue and white series all arranged in an octangal room constructed to house them, this book will introduce you to one great painter. Enjoy.

Lucky me, I found this in a local public library! But it is too bad I cannot buy this as it is out of print. Unlike other art books, this book is not limited to pictures but has lots of useful information to read.

Agnes Martin died in December of 2004. I encountered her art in March of 2005. I have a lot of catching up to do, for she was in the art world for many many years until her death at age of 92. This book has certainly been helping me on the catching up.

The best part of this book, to me, is the selected wrinting of Agnes Martin. Her writing, just like her art work, is characterized by contentment, conciseness, and beauty.

This book is extremely informative for artists especially minimalist and abstract artists. Not only showing us her version of beauty, but also her version of the definition of good art and bad art are explained here in a very clear form. Agnes Martin was indeed an ORIGINAL being after all. This book comfirms it.

Great Text! includes the best of her writings and her early work (her prime--before late 70s pastel colored paintings). Essays are fantastic and thought provoking and don't get hung up on a feminist critque. The best all around text I have seen on Agnes Martin.