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The worst thing you can think about when you're working is yourself.

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
Thing
Think
Thinking
Worst
Working

More quotes by 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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I paint with my back to the world
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
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Fulfill your potential. That's the way to happiness.
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 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
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The enormous pitfall is devotion to oneself instead of to life. All works that are self-devoted are absolutely ineffective.
Agnes Martin
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I'm very careful not to have ideas, because they're inaccurate.
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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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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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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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
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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
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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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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
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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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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
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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