Agnes Martin

by Donald Goddard

All twelve paintings are square. Each is articulated in horizontal bands--as few as four, as many as twelve—which become increasingly apparent as we move closer. These horizontalized fields of vision represent how we view the world and how we are in the world, then become total, infinite, though material realities, in which looking at them is really looking into, and being in, them. Generally speaking, we see the world from a vertical position, and the world we see (with our horizontal eyes) is horizontal—a landscape.

In a very brief movie on view Martin is seen painting up and down with a brush. Still, the ruler rules, the instrument of horizontally. There are no diagonals, no one-point perspective measuring life into the distance. It is all there in front of us, in us. It is where she is, and like all great art, a real place. No matter how much we confront reality, and go beyond the surface, what we see is always surface, because there are always further surfaces. The Islands are about how much there is, not how little—islands in an endless space.