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Property from the Collection of Mary & John Pappajohn
AGNES MARTIN (1912-2004)
Untitled #7
Details
AGNES MARTIN (1912-2004)
Untitled #7
signed and dated 'a. martin 96' (on the reverse)
acrylic and graphite on canvas
60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4 cm.)
Painted in 1996.
Untitled #7
signed and dated 'a. martin 96' (on the reverse)
acrylic and graphite on canvas
60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4 cm.)
Painted in 1996.
Provenance
PaceWildenstein, New York
Acquired from the above by the late owners, 1997
Acquired from the above by the late owners, 1997
Literature
G. Celant, XLVII Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte: La Biennale di Venezia, Milan, 1997, p. 389 (illustrated).
T. Bell, ed., Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings, digital, ongoing, no. 1996.007 (illustrated).
T. Bell, ed., Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings, digital, ongoing, no. 1996.007 (illustrated).
Exhibited
New York, PaceWildenstein, Agnes Martin: Recent Paintings, January-February 1997.
Further Details
“I would like my work to be recognized as being in the classical tradition…, as representing the Ideal in the mind. Classical art cannot possibly be eclectic. One must see the Ideal in one’s own mind. It is like a memory of perfection.” Agnes Martin
Chosen by the legendary curator Germano Celant for inclusion in his 1997 Venice Biennale, Untitled #7 is an epic painting by Agnes Martin. A unique figure in the landscape of abstraction, during the course of her career Martin reached a status that “took on the aura of a legend” for being the link between the famed New York School of the 1950s and the younger generation of artists belonging to the Minimalism of the 1960s (H. Cotter, “Agnes Martin, Abstract Painter, Dies at 92,” New York Times, 17 December 2004, p. 9). Including elements from both movements, Untitled #7 is transcendental in its radiance, joyful in its idealism, and of such a compositional rigor that it aligns Martin with classical art and the greatest masters and intellectuals of the Early Renaissance.
In this expansive canvas, the regular repetition of two broad horizontal bands and a single smaller band occupies the overall surface of this 60 inch square canvas. Over the first layer of gesso, applied carefully and finely, the artist drew by hand gentle lines of graphite that divide the surface in different fields of colors. These thin lines, clearly visible when closer to the painting, disappear from afar, creating a soft, delicate translucence that is further enhanced by the enigmatic color palette. Indeed, Martin’s pursuit of perfection translated on the canvas in looser brushstrokes, and more varied colors. Resulting from a “secret painting technique” never fully disclosed by Martin, the pale blue, opaque yellow, and warm white shine with a divine brightness which makes the canvas “diaphanous, as though the light were shining out through it from behind” (M. Ackermann, “Untited #5, 1998,” in F. Morris and T. Bell, Agnes Martin, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2015, p. 168).
Debuting in New York with a solo exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery in 1957, Agnes Martin took her place in New York's fervent artistic community, living in the Coenties Slip area of lower Manhattan with Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg as neighbors. Akin in spirit to a particular genre of the Abstract Expressionists—particularly Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, and Barnett Newman, with whom she shared a close friendship and an interest in “reduced forms with the sublime content” (T. Bell, “Happiness is the Goal,” in F. Morris and T. Bell, Agnes Martin, exh.cat., Tate Modern, London, 2015, p. 26)— Martin developed her signature artistic language in which the penciled lines and geometric forms became the privileged grammar for the rhythmic and repetitive syntax of her square canvases. Simultaneously, her art was in dialogue aesthetically with Robert Ryman's hieratic white-on-white works capable of arousing, through the materiality of the brushstrokes and compositional simplicity, unexpected “feelings” and “sensitivity” (R. Ryman, quoted in R. Storr, Robert Ryman, exh.cat., London, 1993, p. 39). The optical clarity of both Martin’s and Ryman’s works was for Thomas McEvilly “a vehicle for all sort of metaphysical content” (T. McEvilley, “Absence Made Visible: Robert Ryman,” Artforum, Summer 1992, p. 95) and almost as if “the artist[s] were preferring us a vessel in which signification can be conveyed while asking us to go fill it ourselves” (D. Cameron, “Robert Ryman: Ode to a Clean Slate,” Flash Art 24, no. 159, Summer 1991, p. 93). Thinking of their artworks like music compositions, Martin and Ryman shared the idea that one doesn't “have to know…to receive pleasure…to appreciate the symphony” (R. Ryman, quoted in “Light and Music,” in Art21, 2 November 2011). The quest for solitude and silence caused Martin to leave New York and settle New Mexico in 1972.
Untitled #7 belongs to the mature period of Martin’s oeuve. It carries the air of New Mexico—the clear horizon of untouched nature, and the quiet sun of early-morning sunrises. Reinterpreting through colors and forms the same landscape of many of Georgia O’Keefe’s works, Martin sought in nature what she wanted to evoke in her paintings: a complete halt, ultimate beauty, and perfection. “For Martin”, noted scholar Tiffany Bell, “the change was one of content, which she described as a shift from joy to happiness…” (Ibid., p. 29) and from “sublimity to…infinity” (B. Fer, “Infinity,” in B. Fer, The Infinite Line: Remaking Art after Modernism, London, 2004, p. 47).
In one of her writings, Martin affirmed: “A work of art is successful where there is a hint of perfection present - at the slightest hint…the work is alive” (A. Martin, quoted in D. Schwarz, Agnes Martin: Writings / Schriften, Berlin, 1991, p. 32). Indeed, a sense of transcendence and imponderability is conveyed through Untitled #7’s composition, which departs from its central thin horizontal band as the “otherworldly” perfection is placed in the self-imposed geometric law that rules the canvas. Martin’s oeuvre plays on the importance of visual representation by using the form and physicality of the artwork as the privileged messenger to convey bigger intellectual ideas and feelings. Like every Renaissance painting, which was never just a painting/object but a symbol imbued with meaning, carefully conceived to uplift the souls of its onlookers, Untitled #7 is the material visualization of a higher, purer idea–a feeling of equilibrium and “innocence” (Agnes Martin, quoted in F. Morris and T. Bell, Agnes Martin, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2015, p. 56).
Not unlike the great Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, who employed “prospective idealism” to create his formally and spiritually transcendent altarpieces, Martin adopted strict geometric rules and repetition to convey the purest sense of happiness and perfection through the flawlessness of the form. Both the figures in Piero’s The Baptism, ca. 1440, and the colored bands of Untitled #7 respond to the artists’ broader intellectual plans and stop being perceived one by one, “but only in the complex thus divinely penetrated by the eye of the perspective” (R. Longi, Piero della Francesca, London, 1930, pp. 32-33). The “sovereign peacefulness” and “liquid solemnity” of both works result from the blending of colors and contours which are “reduced to a simple tracery” and vanish “as line at the very instant when, thanks to a mysterious divination of measure, the volumes are joined together and to each of the emergent shaper is assigned its own broad color. And this color, too, is wrought into harmony in the unicity of the natural light” (Ibid., pp.32-33).
Painted in 1996 at the climax of Martin’s career, coronated by her awarding of the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale, Untitled #7 is the quintessential work by the artist for encompassing in the smooth brushstrokes of its porous surface, the immaterial, the emotional, and the possibility of constant rebirth and happiness from the perfection of nature. Untitled #7 is Agnes Martin’s personal invitation to each one of us to go beyond the tangible realm and investigate our immaterial and emotional worlds by pursuing the search for beauty and happiness. After all, “Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not the eye, it is in the mind” (A. Martin, quoted in F. Morris and T. Bell, Agnes Martin, exh.cat., Tate Modern, London, 2015, p. 158).
Chosen by the legendary curator Germano Celant for inclusion in his 1997 Venice Biennale, Untitled #7 is an epic painting by Agnes Martin. A unique figure in the landscape of abstraction, during the course of her career Martin reached a status that “took on the aura of a legend” for being the link between the famed New York School of the 1950s and the younger generation of artists belonging to the Minimalism of the 1960s (H. Cotter, “Agnes Martin, Abstract Painter, Dies at 92,” New York Times, 17 December 2004, p. 9). Including elements from both movements, Untitled #7 is transcendental in its radiance, joyful in its idealism, and of such a compositional rigor that it aligns Martin with classical art and the greatest masters and intellectuals of the Early Renaissance.
In this expansive canvas, the regular repetition of two broad horizontal bands and a single smaller band occupies the overall surface of this 60 inch square canvas. Over the first layer of gesso, applied carefully and finely, the artist drew by hand gentle lines of graphite that divide the surface in different fields of colors. These thin lines, clearly visible when closer to the painting, disappear from afar, creating a soft, delicate translucence that is further enhanced by the enigmatic color palette. Indeed, Martin’s pursuit of perfection translated on the canvas in looser brushstrokes, and more varied colors. Resulting from a “secret painting technique” never fully disclosed by Martin, the pale blue, opaque yellow, and warm white shine with a divine brightness which makes the canvas “diaphanous, as though the light were shining out through it from behind” (M. Ackermann, “Untited #5, 1998,” in F. Morris and T. Bell, Agnes Martin, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2015, p. 168).
Debuting in New York with a solo exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery in 1957, Agnes Martin took her place in New York's fervent artistic community, living in the Coenties Slip area of lower Manhattan with Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg as neighbors. Akin in spirit to a particular genre of the Abstract Expressionists—particularly Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, and Barnett Newman, with whom she shared a close friendship and an interest in “reduced forms with the sublime content” (T. Bell, “Happiness is the Goal,” in F. Morris and T. Bell, Agnes Martin, exh.cat., Tate Modern, London, 2015, p. 26)— Martin developed her signature artistic language in which the penciled lines and geometric forms became the privileged grammar for the rhythmic and repetitive syntax of her square canvases. Simultaneously, her art was in dialogue aesthetically with Robert Ryman's hieratic white-on-white works capable of arousing, through the materiality of the brushstrokes and compositional simplicity, unexpected “feelings” and “sensitivity” (R. Ryman, quoted in R. Storr, Robert Ryman, exh.cat., London, 1993, p. 39). The optical clarity of both Martin’s and Ryman’s works was for Thomas McEvilly “a vehicle for all sort of metaphysical content” (T. McEvilley, “Absence Made Visible: Robert Ryman,” Artforum, Summer 1992, p. 95) and almost as if “the artist[s] were preferring us a vessel in which signification can be conveyed while asking us to go fill it ourselves” (D. Cameron, “Robert Ryman: Ode to a Clean Slate,” Flash Art 24, no. 159, Summer 1991, p. 93). Thinking of their artworks like music compositions, Martin and Ryman shared the idea that one doesn't “have to know…to receive pleasure…to appreciate the symphony” (R. Ryman, quoted in “Light and Music,” in Art21, 2 November 2011). The quest for solitude and silence caused Martin to leave New York and settle New Mexico in 1972.
Untitled #7 belongs to the mature period of Martin’s oeuve. It carries the air of New Mexico—the clear horizon of untouched nature, and the quiet sun of early-morning sunrises. Reinterpreting through colors and forms the same landscape of many of Georgia O’Keefe’s works, Martin sought in nature what she wanted to evoke in her paintings: a complete halt, ultimate beauty, and perfection. “For Martin”, noted scholar Tiffany Bell, “the change was one of content, which she described as a shift from joy to happiness…” (Ibid., p. 29) and from “sublimity to…infinity” (B. Fer, “Infinity,” in B. Fer, The Infinite Line: Remaking Art after Modernism, London, 2004, p. 47).
In one of her writings, Martin affirmed: “A work of art is successful where there is a hint of perfection present - at the slightest hint…the work is alive” (A. Martin, quoted in D. Schwarz, Agnes Martin: Writings / Schriften, Berlin, 1991, p. 32). Indeed, a sense of transcendence and imponderability is conveyed through Untitled #7’s composition, which departs from its central thin horizontal band as the “otherworldly” perfection is placed in the self-imposed geometric law that rules the canvas. Martin’s oeuvre plays on the importance of visual representation by using the form and physicality of the artwork as the privileged messenger to convey bigger intellectual ideas and feelings. Like every Renaissance painting, which was never just a painting/object but a symbol imbued with meaning, carefully conceived to uplift the souls of its onlookers, Untitled #7 is the material visualization of a higher, purer idea–a feeling of equilibrium and “innocence” (Agnes Martin, quoted in F. Morris and T. Bell, Agnes Martin, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2015, p. 56).
Not unlike the great Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, who employed “prospective idealism” to create his formally and spiritually transcendent altarpieces, Martin adopted strict geometric rules and repetition to convey the purest sense of happiness and perfection through the flawlessness of the form. Both the figures in Piero’s The Baptism, ca. 1440, and the colored bands of Untitled #7 respond to the artists’ broader intellectual plans and stop being perceived one by one, “but only in the complex thus divinely penetrated by the eye of the perspective” (R. Longi, Piero della Francesca, London, 1930, pp. 32-33). The “sovereign peacefulness” and “liquid solemnity” of both works result from the blending of colors and contours which are “reduced to a simple tracery” and vanish “as line at the very instant when, thanks to a mysterious divination of measure, the volumes are joined together and to each of the emergent shaper is assigned its own broad color. And this color, too, is wrought into harmony in the unicity of the natural light” (Ibid., pp.32-33).
Painted in 1996 at the climax of Martin’s career, coronated by her awarding of the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale, Untitled #7 is the quintessential work by the artist for encompassing in the smooth brushstrokes of its porous surface, the immaterial, the emotional, and the possibility of constant rebirth and happiness from the perfection of nature. Untitled #7 is Agnes Martin’s personal invitation to each one of us to go beyond the tangible realm and investigate our immaterial and emotional worlds by pursuing the search for beauty and happiness. After all, “Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not the eye, it is in the mind” (A. Martin, quoted in F. Morris and T. Bell, Agnes Martin, exh.cat., Tate Modern, London, 2015, p. 158).
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