Friendship

Agnes Martin, 1963

"If you wake up in the morning and you feel very happy about nothing. No cause. That's what I paint about." That's Agnes Martin. Born on a farm in Saskatchewan. Said it was so flat you could see the curves of the earth. When she's forty-five, a dealer buys enough of her paintings to get her to New York. Six years later, she makes this. Look at it. A six-foot square of gold leaf, laid over red oil paint. One of only three gold ones she made. She let the gold dry a day or so. Then she scratched a grid into it. Line by line. Hundreds of little rectangles, by hand. Look along the lines. Little flecks of red showing through. And nothing's quite straight. By now, a grid on a square canvas is her trademark. It's what people mean when they say an Agnes Martin. She'd sit in a chair and wait. Sometimes for weeks. Until a tiny picture of the painting showed up in her head. Then she'd use long division to scale it up. So, the vision arrives. But you still gotta do the math. She said, "I paint about emotions, not about lines." So look at the gold again. Your eye keeps hunting for something in there. The grid, the red flecks, the wobble. Doesn't sound like much when you say it. But just keep looking. Then, 1967. She burns all the art in her studio, buys a pickup and a trailer, and drives. A year and a half. She ends up on a mesa in New Mexico, twenty miles from the highway. Builds herself a house out of adobe bricks. Makes the bricks too. No electricity. No phone. No neighbors. A world without objects. Without interruption. She doesn't pick up a paintbrush again for seven years.

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