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Inspiration From Artists Wk 114 Featuring Artists : Nina Scott Langley and Agnes Martin
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Message
Posted
Best seen in the flesh - I appreciate all but the last one, which I confess defeats me; at this size, at least - black is too intense at this resolution for me to get any real impression of what the work would look like if one could see it in situ. I like the pale colours of her other works - actually, not pale, but delicate.
Incidentally, the site seems to be getting slow again.....
Posted
Thank you Martin for such a detailed and informative introduction to this artist. I am out for the day today so hopefully will catch up later. It will be interesting to see what others think of her work. It’s the sort of art (for me at least) that it would be easy to flit past but your intro makes me want to look in more depth.
The bonus of this Inspiration thread is that it makes us look at and examine art which we might otherwise just ignore!
Posted
An interesting artist. I have to confess that abstract art mostly flies over my head, but much of it I just plain like. A google image search has revealed a variety of work as she found her way through her art. Here are a few that appealed.
Below, the lady herself, an early piece, and (they say) her most famous piece...the gold painting 'Friendship.'
This one shows her grid markings...
Another early work...
From 1953, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden...
This one shows her grid markings...
Another early work...
From 1953, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden...
Posted
Unfortunately Miss Martin's work does little to enthuse me. Whilst searching on line for her work I did find one that appealed to me - but when I looked further it turned out to be by another artist - James Hugonin. Then I realised why Agnes Martin's work does not appeal. It is the lack of colour, the overall mono (or almost) chromic nature of the images. For want of a better word they just seem drab. I haven't posted the Hugonin work but for anybody interested the link is https://www.inglebygallery.com/exhibitions/6742-and-per-se-and-part-x-agnes/overview/. His work seems to be in the style of Agnes Martin but brought alive by colour.
Edited
by Tony Auffret
Posted
I tend to agree with Tony about this artist’s work regarding lack of colour, which is what usually draws me to a painting. However, it’s difficult to really judge the appeal of this type of abstract artwork based on fairly small images, they often look far more impressive ‘in the flesh’, especially if they’re on a large scale.
Edited
by Jenny Harris
Posted
An artist whose work reflects the inner workings of their mind - who internalizes and then reproduces all that they see - may indeed be different, in terms of colour and shape, from the artist who seeks to respond to the observed world without necessarily subjecting it to such filters .... (I know what I mean by that: it is extremely obscure, but I can't think how else to put it - compare this artist with the previous one, for example: very different, and of course, you really can't, in any meaningful way; but whereas Scott-Langley drew and painted what appealed to her, which she could reproduce with pencil and paint, Agnes Martin abstracted what she saw, as it were edited it in her brain, and then committed the result to canvas).
All that is, of course, is a remark about the difference between abstract and realist painting, so what might make it relevant? Well - the colour question. Colour is perhaps invariably important to figurative artists; it may be, often is, important to abstract artists - but not necessarily; it doesn't follow that it must be. This is one reason why so many of us have trouble with conceptual art - where's the colour, where's the form, where's the evidence of the human hand, other than in the assemblage of objects? Probably not there, but then - those elements weren't necessarily intended to be there.
So the relative absence of colour - there IS colour, but it's subdued - doesn't in itself trouble me about Martin's work, because that wasn't its purpose. I'm sure that for all my verbiage, this comes as no revelation to anyone in this thread! But I did think it an observation just worth laying down here for consideration: looking for that in an artist's work which they never intended to be there is likely to lead to disappointment and indifference. I think we have to go beyond our preferences and delve in a bit: and that is no criticism at all of those who are unmoved by Martin's work; no one has said it's bad or trivial - but maybe some are great devotees of colour and deplore its absence: and I'm not, particularly, so do appreciate it though without necessarily understanding it.
Pauses for breath....
Posted
Thanks for your interesting reactions and comments.
I'd hazard a guess that colour is extremely important for most abstract artists, though for some (Klein & Motherwell's large monochromes spring to mind) it perhaps isn't the main factor. Now, Howard Hodgkin would have a thing to say about colour :-). Mind you, amongst abstractionists, black is a perfectly good colour. Pierre Soulages, who died a couple of years back at the age of 102, famously created colour out of black paint, smearing it on in ways that created reflections and irridescence. And Ad Reinhart, who worked in the middle of last century, produced abstract works that look all black until you've stared at them for a good few minutes, by which time you realise they're just very dark shades of red, green and blue. I see some commonalities in his work with that of Agnes Martin, but coming at it from the 'dark side'.
Strangely, it is colour that leaves the lasting impression after viewing Agnes Martin's work (or at least the dozen or so exemplars I've seen in the flesh). I imagine that the visual system is working hard to up the perceptual contrast and colour gets perceptually boosted as a result.
Now the other thing you mention Robert is 'where's the evidence of the human hand' -- one might also add the signatory's hand (since quite a few well known artists step away from the process after the design stage to maintain some kind of purity of process). It's a fair point in many cases but I don't think it applies in Martin's case, where part of the charm is the evidence everywhere of the human hand. There are no straight continuous lines in any of the grids close up, and if you check out the MOMA demonstration painting session it becomes apparent why, and also that the shimmering effects to some extent rely on the base paint layer(s) showing up through the gaps in the graphite. The deviations were kept under control though. Apparently she jettisoned far more works than she exhibited and even bought some back that she wasn't happy with...
Edited
by Martin Cooke
Posted
Martin sorry I haven’t responded earlier unfortunately following a covid booster I’ve been quiet unwell , I try to post a thank you as soon as possible for the introduction to the featured artist. I have had a look at her work but as in having visual problems I can’t see the work very well . I will have a look later today and hopefully be able to see more clearly.