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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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Agnes Martin
Age: 92 †
Born: 1912
Born: March 22
Died: 2004
Died: December 16
Artist
Drawer
Painter
Agnes Bernice Martin
Thinking
Painting
Lines
Everybody
Horizontal
Art
Responds
Nature
Hint
Stills
Hints
Still
Paintings
Think
Certainly
More quotes by Agnes Martin
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
I often paint tranquility. If you stop thinking and rest, then a little happiness comes into your mind. At perfect rest you are comfortable.
Agnes Martin
Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track, I want to say that they are not what they seem to be. I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step.
Agnes Martin
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
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
That which takes us by surprise-moments of happiness-that is inspiration.
Agnes Martin
I used to meditate until I learned to stop thinking.
Agnes Martin
The enormous pitfall is devotion to oneself instead of to life. All works that are self-devoted are absolutely ineffective.
Agnes Martin
I would like my work to be recognized as being in the classical tradition (Coptic, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese), as representing the Ideal in the mind. Classical art cannot possibly be eclectic. One must see the ideal in one's own mind. It is like a memory - an awareness -of perfection.
Agnes Martin
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
My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.
Agnes Martin
I once taught art to adults in a night course. I had a woman who painted her back yard, and she said it was the first time she had ever really looked at it. I think everyone sees beauty. Art is a way to respond
Agnes Martin
I paint with my back to the world
Agnes Martin
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
I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect - completely removed in fact - even as we ourselves are.
Agnes Martin
I'm very careful not to have ideas, because they're inaccurate.
Agnes Martin
Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.
Agnes Martin
Anything can be painted without representation.
Agnes Martin
What we really want to do is serve happiness. We want everyone to be happy, never unhappy even for a moment. We want the animals to be happy. The happiness of every living thing is what we want.
Agnes Martin
It is commonly thought that everything that is can be put into words.
Agnes Martin
