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You can't make a perfect painting. We can see perfection in our minds. But we can't make a perfect painting.

Agnes Martin

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Agnes Martin
Age: 92 †
Born: 1912
Born: March 22
Died: 2004
Died: December 16
Artist
Drawer
Painter
Agnes Bernice Martin
Make
Perfection
Minds
Painting
Perfect
Art
Mind

More quotes by Agnes Martin

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To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.
Agnes Martin
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I used to meditate until I learned to stop thinking.
Agnes Martin
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Fulfill your potential. That's the way to happiness.
Agnes Martin
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Pollock was terrific. I think he freed himself of all kinds of worry about this world. Ran around and dripped, and then he managed to express ecstasy.
Agnes Martin
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Any material may be used but the theme is the same and the response is the same for all artwork... we all have the same concern, but the artist must know exactly what the experience is. He must pursue the truth relentlessly
Agnes Martin
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What I say is that we're capable of a transcendent response, and I think it makes us happy. And I do think beauty produces a transcendent response.
Agnes Martin
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Beauty and happiness and life are all the same and they are pervasive, unattached and abstract and they are our only concern. They are immeasurable, completely lacking in substance. They are perfect and sublime. This is the subject matter of art.
Agnes Martin
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I think our minds respond to things beyond this world. Take beauty: it's a very mysterious thing, isn't it? I think it's a response in our minds to perfection. It's too bad, people not realizing that their minds expand beyond this world.
Agnes Martin
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Happiness is being on the beam with life - to feel the pull of life
Agnes Martin
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The Minimalists are idealist. They want to minimise themselves in favour of the ideal. But I just can't. You see, my paintings are not cool. ... I'm very careful not to have ideas, because they're inaccurate.
Agnes Martin
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When you look in your mind you find it covered with a lot of rubbishy thoughts. You have to penetrate these and hear what your mind is telling you to do. Such work is original work.
Agnes Martin
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Anything can be painted without representation.
Agnes Martin
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That which takes us by surprise-moments of happiness-that is inspiration.
Agnes Martin
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Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.
Agnes Martin
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When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.
Agnes Martin
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I paint with my back to the world
Agnes Martin
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It's through discipline and tremendous disappointment and failure that you arrive at what it is you must paint.
Agnes Martin
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My paintings are certainly nonobjective. They're just horizontal lines. There's not any hint of nature. And still everybody responds, I think.
Agnes Martin
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Inspiration is there all the time. For everyone whose mind is not clouded over with thoughts whether they realize it or not.
Agnes Martin
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It's not about facts, it's about feelings. It's about remembering feelings and happiness. A definition of art is that it makes concrete our most subtle emotions. I think the highest form of art is music. It's the most abstract of all art expression.
Agnes Martin