**** ‘Agnes Martin’ at Tate Modern, London

Agnes Martin, Happy Holiday, 1999, Tate / National Galleries of Scotland, © estate of Agnes Martin.

I recently wrote a short article about the relationships between female artists, museums and audience numbers, in which I discussed how the public are statistically unbiased towards men; unlike many western museums. Audiences actually want to see the fearless art created by women who are unafraid to challenge traditions in a historically masculine field. But not all of these female artists are, or were, as publicly exposed as the likes of Marina Abramović and Tracey Emin. Agnes Martin, for example, embraced a solitary life, but her work still had a significant impact on other artists. Her summer retrospective at the Tate Modern explores the full breadth of her career, from the early naturalistic landscapes to the uniform abstract canvases she became most famous for.

Agnes Martin, Untitled, 1977, watercolour and graphite on paper, 22.9 x 22.9 cm, Private Collection. Photograph courtesy of Pace Gallery, © 2015 Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Martin’s experimental work in New York is particularly interesting. Burning Tree, with its metal-tipped prong-like branches, is one of a number of sculptural pieces inspired by nature. It’s certainly not something I expected from an artist so fixated on grids and linework, but then geometry and symmetry seem to dominate Martin’s forms even with they are based on organic objects. I also did not anticipate such a warm atmosphere throughout the exhibition, and by that, I mean that I expected such minimalist canvases to lack much of an emotive impact. Some parts of the show did seem rather cold and unfeeling - the 12 near-identical white panels known as The Islands, for instance - but Martin’s delicate use of luminous colour and subtle alterations between works in a series are surprisingly calming.

I should also mention the concept of a retrospective within a retrospective, which becomes apparent in a room filled with drawings executed between 1952 and 2004, the year of Martin’s death. It’s a lot to take in one go, but if you’re interested in the development of an artist’s style over time, then this is a fascinating inclusion.

Agnes Martin, Untitled #1, 2003, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, © 2015 Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Agnes Martin, On a Clear Day, 1973, Parasol Press, Ltd. © 2015 Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Throughout the galleries, the exhibition narration connects Martin’s artistic position to her personal state of mind at the time. She suffered from schizophrenia as an adult, and her obsession with the perfect composition often meant that she destroyed her own works if they did not entirely satisfy. I can see how these associations might distract from Martin’s natural talent, but I see no problem in mentioning these backgrounds if they allow the visitor to understand the artist’s thought processes and feel more connected to the work itself. As someone who often struggles with abstract minimalism, I certainly found myself seeing everything a little more clearly. And who is going to argue with that?

Rating: **** - These simple works feel entirely different in the flesh and I’m ashamed to have left it so long after the exhibition opening to visit.

‘Agnes Martin’ is on at Tate Modern until 11th October 2015. All images are courtesy of the Tate.

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“These simple works feel entirely different in the flesh...”

Love this review.

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Mark Rothko, Untitled (yellow, orange, yellow, light orange) and an heirloom tomato.

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Beatrice Mandelman

Love it. See a series of collages by Mandelman here. 

Helen Frankenthaler: December/12/1928 - December 27, 2011 

Helen Frankenthaler was born in 1928 in New York. Her family encouraged her and her sisters to attend college and become professionals. Frankenthaler attended Bennington College in Vermont and learned about cubist style and theory under artist, Paul Feeley, later studying privately under Hans Hofmann, both of whom greatly effected her interest in abstract expressionism. 

While at the start of her artistic career in New York, Frankenthaller was setting up an exhibition at the Jacques Seligmann gallery where she met Clement Greenberg, the theorist behind the idea of Modernist Art. A very watered down version of Greenberg ideas include that painting should only be about painting. Figures, textures, multi-media, symbolism, allegories all get in the way of the painting. Many of the Greenberg’s followers focused on using paint that celebrated what paint was able to do as a medium. One main point of Greenberg’s ideas dealt with the flatness of painting. To stay true to the medium of paint, paintings should be flat and embrace the qualities of paint, in that there was no texture just forms of pigment on the canvas. 

Frankenthaler was a very important member of the group of artists surrounding Greenberg. Her unique approach to Color Field Art was so coherent with Greenberg’s ideas, that she became sort of the poster kid for Modernist art. 

Frankenthaler would pant using oil paint diluted with turpentine on very large scale canvases. She got the oil paint to an almost watercolor-like texture and would paint, smear, push the paint onto the unprimed canvas which was usually un-stretched and on the floor. Because she used unprimed canvas, a few of her works are currently falling apart and being eaten away from the chemicals in the oil paints and paint thinner. 

Frankenthaler was very conscious of overworking paintings, She tried to make them look as effortless and as complete as possible. In an interview she mentions that while she was painting one of her works she felt like she was finished, but later that night she decided to add a little bit of green in the corner. when she woke up in the morning she realized that it was too overworked, that bit of green paint was too much, she still sold the painting, but she knew that it overworked.

Helen Frankenthaler was really an incredible artist her works are in collections around the world including the Met, Centre de Pompidou, the Guggenheim, the Whitney and many others. She received many awards in her lifetime and served on the Council of the Arts for the National Endowment for the Arts from 1985 - 1992, and greatly opposed the ‘culture wars’ and government censorship of art while she served on the council. 

Want to learn more about women abstract expressionists? Meet Beatrice Mandelman and Janet Lippincott.

“I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important.” - Franz Kline, born today in 1910. 

[Installation view. Franz Kline. Chief. 1950. The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2015 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]

Love this quote. Happy belated birthday to Franz Kline!

More art history.

1. Bernard Meadows, Black Crab, 1951-52, bronze, 42.5 x 34 x 24.2 cm, Tate Collection. Source

2. Bernard Meadows, Startled Bird, 1955, bronze, 59 x 45.5 x 30.5 cm, Tate Collection. Source

The animal sculptures of Bernard Meadows, which compositionally resemble abstract paintings, are a very recent find for me. In the 1950s, birds and crabs were particularly common subjects in his work.

Phenomenal work. Meadows worked as Henry Moore's first assistant. 

More art history.