A recent trip to MOMA in NYC had me looking more closely at Agnes Martin. Agnes Martin (Dia Foundation) has a great selection of Martin’s paintings and drawings and as well as essays by various authors discussing Martin’s life.

Agnes Martin was originally from Saskatchewan, Canada. She lived mostly in New Mexico but studied at Columbia University and lived for a little while in NYC when her work became popular. Martin was enthralled with nature, especially the landscape of New Mexico, and that’s where she lived an isolated existance for the majority of her life.

I read that Martin sat so still that birds would land on her.

I love the idea that Martin  loved the outdoors passionately and yet her paintings seemingly have nothing at all to do with nature. In fact Martin used her art work to explore her theories about reality, beauty and happiness. Isn’t it kind of awesome that Martin could translate nature into drawings and paintings that are defined by grids and lines?

I’m intrigued by artist whose works are straightforward at first glance but are in fact realizations of a personal manefesto.  Barnett Newman is another artist that comes to mind– he used solid colored canvases with a single stripe to explore ideas about art as an integral part of our life experience.

I’m now thinking about contemporary artists as philosophers with very specific and self-defined views of the world. It seems to me that we are missing an opportunity to incorporate their insight if we look at contemporary paintings without learning about their historical context.