THE REST IS SILENCE: THE ART OF AGNES MARTIN

AGNES MARTIN’S Orange Grove, 1965, appeared on the cover of Artforum’s April 1973 issue—its extraordinary yet impenetrable materiality both inviting us in and holding us at bay. Some four decades later, and following an important suite of exhibitions at Dia Art Foundation, we are still puzzling over the laconic surfaces and elusive substrates of Martin’s oeuvre. On the occasion of a major traveling retrospective opening this summer in London at Tate Modern, and the concurrent publication of several studies on the artist’s life and work, we invited a group of distinguished contributors to offer short reflections on Martin’s surprisingly diverse practice. Ten artists and scholars revisit Martin’s abstraction—from time to history, matter to translucence, writing to film, and the personal to the universal—a matrix that underlines the generative complexity of its own enduring presence.

Curated by Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell with Lena Fritsch, “Agnes Martin” is on view at Tate Modern, London, from June 3 through Oct. 11, 2015; travels to the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Nov. 7, 2015–Mar. 6, 2016; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Apr. 24–Sept. 11, 2016; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Oct. 7, 2016–Jan. 11, 2017.

Visit artforum.com for additional material, including the April 1973 issue from the archives.