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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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Agnes Martin
Age: 92 †
Born: 1912
Born: March 22
Died: 2004
Died: December 16
Artist
Drawer
Painter
Agnes Bernice Martin
Exactly
Materials
Relentlessly
Experience
Artwork
Artist
Theme
Truth
Pursue
Used
Material
May
Response
Must
Concern

More quotes by 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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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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Happiness is being on the beam with life - to feel the pull of life
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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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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I used to meditate until I learned to stop thinking.
Agnes Martin
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When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision.
Agnes Martin
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That which takes us by surprise-moments of happiness-that is inspiration.
Agnes Martin
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Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in the mind.
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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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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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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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
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It is commonly thought that everything that is can be put into words.
Agnes Martin
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Doing what you were born to do … That's the way to be happy.
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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I paint with my back to the world
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 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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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