The Distillation of Color by Agnes Martin

Description

Produced in conjunction with the Pace Gallery exhibition of the same name, Agnes Martin: The Distillation of Color brings new voices to the scholarship around Martin’s work.

Handsomely designed, this concise volume celebrates Martin’s pursuit of beauty, happiness and innocence in her nonobjective art created while living in the desert of New Mexico. From her multicolored striped works to compositions of color-washed bands defined by hand-drawn lines, to the deep gray Black Paintings that characterized her work in the late 1980s, Martin’s treatment of color in each of these phases is examined. A particular emphasis is placed on the latter half of her career and the broadening vision that developed during her years working in the desert, which crystalized her quest to deepen her understanding of the essence of painting, unattached to emotion or subject, yet radiant and meditative in its pure abstraction. 

With editorial contributions by a selection of writers whose cross-genre works span art writing, essay and memoir, this book expands an approach to Martin’s paintings beyond a purely art historical lens, bringing new voices into the conversations around her career, inviting a rediscovery of her enduring legacy.

Text by Durga Chew-Bose, Bruce Hainley and Olivia Laing | Design by Mine Suda

172 pp. clothbound hardcover

19.7 x 1.9 x 24.8 cm

742 g

Published February 2022 by Pace Publishing