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Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin

Night Sea

by Suzanne P. Hudson

$19.95 Paperback
eBook

96 pp., 6 x 9 in, 16 color illus

Paperback
9781846381713
Published: January 13, 2017
Publisher: Afterall Books

$19.95

eBook
9781846381737
Published: June 8, 2018
Publisher: Afterall Books

$19.99

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A close examination of Agnes Martin's grid painting in luminous blue and gold.

Agnes Martin's Night Sea (1963) is a large canvas of hand-drawn rectangular grids painted in luminous blue and gold. In this illustrated study, Suzanne Hudson presents the painting as the work of an artist who was also a thinker, poet, and writer for whom self-presentation was a necessary part of making her works public. With Night Sea, Hudson argues, Martin (1912–2004) created a shimmering realization of control and loss that stands alone within her suite of classic grid paintings as an exemplary and exceptional achievement.

Hudson offers a close examination of Night Sea and its position within Martin's long and prolific career, during which the artist destroyed many works as she sought forms of perfection within self-imposed restrictions of color and line. For Hudson, Night Sea stands as the last of Martin's process-based works before she turned from oil to acrylic and sought to express emotions of lightness and purity unburdened by evidence of human struggle.

Drawing from a range of archival records, Hudson attempts to draw together the facts surrounding the work, which were at times obfuscated by the artist's desire for privacy. Critical responses of the time give a sense of the impact of the work and that which followed it. Texts by peers including Lenore Tawney, Donald Judd, and Lucy Lippard are presented alongside interviews with a number of Martin's friends and keepers of estates, such as the publisher Ronald Feldman and Kathleen Mangan of the Lenore Tawney archive, which holds correspondence between Martin and Tawney.

Suzanne Hudson is Associate Professor of Art History and Fine Art at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Robert Ryman: Used Paint (MIT Press) and Painting Now.

In her wonderful contribution to the Afterall Books One Work series, Suzanne Hudson persuasively argues that Agnes Martin's 1963 painting Night Sea is the summa of the early grid paintings. Because, as Hudson shows, Night Sea makes Martin's process—and indeed Martin's struggle—so visible, we comprehend much more clearly what follows: the achieved perfection of the graphite grid paintings. That an analysis of a single work could so fully illuminate the entirety of an artist's oeuvre is a true accomplishment. Plus, the prose is a pleasure to read.
Douglas Crimp, Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester

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Agnes Martin

Night Sea

Agnes Martin

Night Sea

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