Hear artist Agnes Martin share insights about her creative process and thoughts about fundamental human experiences such as innocence, happiness, and love.
Alexander Liberman, "Agnes Martin with level and ladder", 1960. Alexander Liberman Photography Archive, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Photo: © J. Paul Getty Trust
Transcript:
Narrator: Filmmaker Leon d’Avigdor interviewed Agnes Martin at her studio in Taos, New Mexico, for a 2002 documentary about her life and work titled "Agnes Martin: Between the Lines". In these audio excerpts from the film, Martin shares insights about her creative process and offers her thoughts about fundamental human experiences such as innocence, happiness, and love.
Agnes Martin: I was sitting and thinking about innocence. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of innocence of trees. I thought it was quite easy to be innocent if you’re a tree. And into my mind there came a grid, you know. Lines this way and lines that way. And I thought, my goodness, am I supposed to paint that? Nobody will ever think it’s a painting. But at least it’s nonobjective. Completely abstract. So I painted it six feet square. And then I offered it to the Museum of Modern Art, and they took it. My very first painting.
There’s no indication or hint about the material world in my painting. No, I don’t paint about the world. Everybody else is painting about the world. That’s enough.
I am simply painting concrete representation of abstract emotions such as innocent love, ordinary happiness. I do want an emotional response. And I paint about emotions, not about lines. The truth is that it’s not the lines that express the emotion. It’s the scale of the composition. You know, if you go into a room that has perfect scale, you feel it. And it’s the same with a painting. If the painting has perfect scale, it moves you. And you have different scale to show different emotions. It’s the space between the lines that counts.
I painted for 20 years without liking them very much, you know. I burnt them at the end of every year. For 20 years I burnt the whole bunch because I didn’t want them to get in the market. And well, sometimes when I was starving, I used to sell one cheap, you know. But I always regretted it because you hate to think of a painting in somebody’s house that you don’t like well enough, you know.
My mother went to church but she didn’t say anything about whether we could go to church or not. My grandfather was very religious. But we did not go. I have my own religion. It suits me. I made it up myself.
I read all about everybody else’s religion before I settled on mine. It’s a secret religion. You don’t go out looking for converts or anything like that. Well, I guess I can tell you. It’s about love, not God. There’s no God but just love. That’s all I’m going to tell you.
It’s a secret.
The truth is that I have lived on an even keel. I don’t go down, and I don’t go up. I believe in living above the line. Above the line is happiness and love, you know. Below the line is all sadness and destruction and unhappiness. And I don’t go down below the line for anything.
