Hello uncultured swine,
I recently learned about the fear of success. The worry you’ll be so successful at your craft, you fumble under the expectations. I’ve decided to inherit this condition. That I’m a genius who can’t handle her own brilliance is a problem I’m willing to have. Plenty of skilled artists actually were crippled by their success; Harper Lee, J.D Salinger, Lindsay Lohan. And one in particular went to great lengths to avoid it.
Start your pick-up truck and vanish into obscurity, we’re chatting about Agnes Martin.
Sometimes I look at my car and think maybe, just maybe, I’ll pack a bag with heaps of snacks and a few other things - leave - and never come back. What’s stopping me you ask? A deep fear of shitting in public toilets. A fear that runaway abstract-expressionist painter, Agnes Martin, apparently didn’t have.
Martin came to art later in life. Having grown up in Canada aye, she moved to the United States in 1931, aged 19, to help her sister through pregnancy. Easily impressed, the standard of education encouraged her to stay and study at the Teachers College, Columbia University in New York. During this time, she attended studio sessions and started to consider painting as a profession.
A soon restless Martin left NYC to study in Albuquerque(?) then left Albuquerque(?) to study modern art in NYC. In 1957, aged 45, she moved to New York street, Coenties Slip, which had a thriving creative and queer community, and so much potential for innuendo I’ve become overwhelmed. Here, her minimalist abstraction (below) was immediately supported by fellow artists, and championed by local gallerists.
Her signature style was precise and structured, painting grids and geometries so meticulously, Mondrian looked sloppy by comparison. At this point, abstract artists were preoccupied with purity and tried to atomise what we see to its most basic forms (for most basic form, see: P Diddy). To Martin, grids were innocent in their simplicity. Maybe her way of tempering a wobbly lived experience.
Martin suffered from aural hallucinations and catatonia as manifestations of schizophrenia, and was hospitalised regularly in the 1960s. Toward the end of the decade, her on/off relationship with artist, Chryssa, had ended, she was grieving the death of a friend and feeling further loss at rapid changes to her district. In 1967, after years of success in the art industry, Martin renounced art and vanished.
Closeted gay, grieving and hallucinating, usually the trifecta for a good night out, was now a predicament for the missing person’s unit. She wasn’t seen for around 18 months, randomly reappearing at a fuel station in Cuba, New Mexico in 1968. There still isn’t much certainty about her whereabouts during the period and when asked decades later about her disappearance, she responded:
“I left New York because every day I suddenly felt I wanted to die and it was connected with painting. It took me several years to find out that the cause was an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.”
Citing burnout is chic, and relatable. Martin asked the fuel station manager if he knew any land for let and serendipitously, his wife had some. It was 20 miles of dirt road from a highway with no amenities and, importantly, no neighbours. From this secluded place, she not only pioneered the lesbian hobby farm, but had years of creative rest. A prelude to what would become some of her finest work.
Though Martin hid from the art world, the art world found her. In 1971, she was approached to talk to students and exhibit her work non-commercially and through this, slowly found joy in painting again. The proceeding decades of Martin’s life were peaceful, from both her and her art’s account. Once tight, structured grids became placid lines (as above). Titles of the work were now biophilic or joyful. The previous tension in her art mostly dissipated.
In old age she was flush, showing her art across the continent, and a tad more social. Though Martin preferred living frugally, she eventually afforded herself martinis and some Beethoven because at 80-something, why the fuck wouldn’t you. It took her years and severe measures to find a balanced relationship with art and the ~world at large~ but paid dividends in both eventually.
And the secret to her joy and success? Running away, owning as little as possible, painting in solitude and living off nothing but walnuts, tomatoes and hard cheeses for 6 to 12 months (true story). My IBS quivers, but my soul is mighty tempted.
Miss this when I miss a week :( you know my health situation from the Kahlo issue so sometimes I just need to break promises.
I was also published last week! normal and cool but I tend to get jazzed and try do heaps more and more, all the time, without an off switch then fall into a puddle. I really am a delight.
Lots of lurveeeeeeee to you, editor Grace (who is winning boxing matches rn???) and
C U NEXT TUESDAY xoxoxoxo