Agnes Martin (Dia Foundation)
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Agnes Martin (Dia Foundation) Details
Review "This volume is an irresistible summons to readers to turn their backs on the world, and follow the artist into her work."—Nancy Campbell, Times Literary Supplement Read more About the Author Lynne Cooke is curator at Dia Art Foundation and chief curator at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Read more
Reviews
I've always loved coming into contact with Martin's work. It is very difficult to find any text that seems to offer the 'real' deal. This book, although crafted beautifully by the publisher, seems to drown me with artsy-***rtsy dreck. Martin's work seems to whisper her soul to you. While this author combines many points of view, at first perusal, they all seem like they've been professors far too long tucked away in some art department. The illustrations are nice, but too small to get the feel an actual Martin work impresses upon you. The best parts of the book are the quotes from Martin herself. This author seems to keep Roget's Thesaurus a little too handy. Really, you can write "some" sentences in relatively plain English and still elucidate your concepts. Agnes Martin is no easy artist to round up however, so I can understand a bit of philosophical leeway...but some of the paragraphs have so many over-intellectualized words, it's difficult to decipher. That's just the first author and contributor. The others seem to either try desperately to write in the way Martin painted, or completely go off the rails with their own version of what they consider artistic writing. However, there are some lovely passages as well, and a lot of content directly from Martin and her life. The photos in some of the contributions don't much seem even slightly relative. I'm going to keep trying to get thru this book...for the sake of knowing Martin's life more intimately...but I doubt at this point I will accomplish the knowledge by this book alone.
