Artists on Agnes Martin collects four working artists — Vija Celmins, Jennie C. Jones, Jutta Koether and Zoe Leonard — responding to Martin's paintings not as historians but as people who make things, in the seventh volume of Dia's Artists on Artists series.
About This Book
Agnes Martin's grids invite a particular kind of writing: reverent, hushed, slightly evasive. This book avoids that, largely because its contributors have their own practices at stake. Vija Celmins finds affinities with Martin's attention to the field and the picture plane, and admires the rigour and consistency underneath. Jennie C. Jones traces the effect of solitude on the work while connecting the grid to sonic notation and pattern. Jutta Koether applies a Derridean reading that deliberately destabilises the contradictions inside the paintings. Zoe Leonard finds the personal and poetic in Martin's commitment to repetition. Abundantly illustrated across Martin's long career, the result is a critical reader that reopens an artist often treated as settled.
Key Features
- 120 pages with 105 colour plates drawn from across Martin's career
- Edited by Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and Svetlana Kitto with Karen Rasaby; foreword by Jessica Morgan
- Texts by Vija Celmins, Jennie C. Jones, Jutta Koether and Zoe Leonard
- The seventh volume in Dia Art Foundation's Artists on Artists series
- Pocket format, designed to be carried and read rather than shelved
What You'll Discover
- How a painter as exacting as Vija Celmins reads Martin's handling of the field and the picture plane from inside the same problem
- Jennie C. Jones's account of the grid as sonic notation — pattern, interval, and the influence of solitude on Martin's output
- Jutta Koether's Derridean reading, which treats the paintings' contradictions as generative rather than resolved
- Zoe Leonard on repetition as a personal and poetic commitment rather than a formal device
About the Author
Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and Svetlana Kitto edited this volume with Karen Rasaby, with a foreword by Jessica Morgan, Director of Dia Art Foundation. Agnes Martin (1912–2004) was an American abstract painter and occasional filmmaker whose grid and line paintings have shaped the reception of both minimalism and abstraction.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Dimensions: 13.3 × 17.8 cm
- Pages: 120
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780944521663
- Publisher: Dia Art Foundation
Perfect For: Painters and artists working with repetition and restraint, readers of the Artists on Artists series, and anyone who has looked at a Martin and wanted better company than the usual reverence.