One of the biggest critiques of modern art is, “That looks like something I could have made in 10 minutes.” Think of Jackson Pollock’ drip paintings or Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” (spoiler alert, said fountain is in fact a toilet). Although many people find modern art ridiculous, sloppy, or pointless, modern art full of intention and at times, perfectionism. A prime example of this is the abstract painter Agnes Martin.
Martin, born in 1912, did not find her niche or gain public
recognition until well into middle age. She discovered her preferred form of
expression after moving to New York in the 1950s and immersing herself in the emerging
abstract expressionism scene. It was in New York where she discovered the grid,
the type of painting she would soon become famous for. Martin’s grid paintings
are the perfect example of extreme minimalism. Just looking at her paintings causes
the eye to slide out of focus. To some, the simplicity of her work may seem
uninteresting or meaningless, however, Martin’s work is full of intention. Her desire
is that her paintings carry emotional weight; that looking at them invokes the
feeling of walking up to the ocean and all the calm, happiness, and wonder that
comes with that sensation.1
“Summer” (1964): via
The New Yorker 2
The calm and peacefulness her paintings covey does not necessarily translate to her creative process. Martin described her process as beginning with sitting in her rocking chair waiting for inspiration to strike. Once inspiration hits, the peacefulness ends as Martin begins each of her 6ft by 6ft creations with mathematical calculations and small scale drawings before tackling her massive canvasses. Martin is infamous for destroying any and all of the work she deems not good enough. She is one of the few artists with little to no early work to speak of, as she has destroyed almost all of it. Martin continued to paint well into her 80s and even then, if one brushstroke wasn’t exactly right or one line was slightly off, she would destroy the whole painting and start again.3 This extreme perfectionism reveals a true intention behind every brushstroke in her surviving works.
Perfectionism is something that seems to plague many great creatives, not just Martin. The architect Frank Gehry, for example, works and reworks, and reworks again, models for buildings. For some this endless tweaking is needless but, for Gehry, it is necessary to bring the vision in his head to life.4 Conversely, for musician and songwriter Nick Cave, it is letting go of his perfectionist tendencies that allows him to truly create impactful music. He says in his conversation with Sean O’Hagan, “The lyric that I have spent months working on, thinking about, nurturing, nourishing, polishing, perfecting, only to find it doesn’t fit with the piece of music Warren has fixated upon. So then I’m forced to either abandon the idea, dismantle it, or use fragments of it. Once I get to that place, I can end up singing literally anything… And very often it is in the midst of this raw, unfocused, involuntary vocalizing that the real treasure is found.” 5
Perhaps perfection is the thief of joy. Perhaps perfection
is what makes all of these creatives so great. The one thing I do know is that
I definitely could not make a tenth of what these creatives produce “on my own
in 10 minutes”.
[1] Art, in. 2020. “Bow Down: Women in Art: Olivia Laing on
Agnes Martin.” Libsyn.com. 2020. https://frieze.libsyn.com/olivia-laing-on-agnes-martin.
[2] Schjeldahl, Peter. 2016. “Agnes Martin, a Matter-of-Fact
Mystic.” The New Yorker. October 10, 2016. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/agnes-martin-a-matter-of-fact-mystic.
[3] Guggenheim New York. n.d. “Materials and Process.” The
Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. https://www.guggenheim.org/teaching-materials/agnes-martin/materials-and-process.
[4] Pollack, Sydney. 2005. “Sketches of Frank Gehry.” Ultan
Guilfoyle.
[5] Cave, Nick, and
Seán O'Hagan. 2022. Faith, Hope and Carnage. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Agnes Martin's art is very detail-oriented and highly mathematical. Drawing on such a small scale and blowing it up to a 6x6 piece requires patience and talent. One thing I found particularly interesting is her need for perfectionism and how that can plague her abstract expressionist works. Instead of going to extremes, she relaxes and meditates until the inspiration strikes her. What I have noticed in many artists is that they let the inspiration come to them, rather than forcing it. Agnes Martin's art is so clean but has so much depth despite its small angles and mathematical edge.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your focus on perfectionism as both a guide of and an enemy of creativity. We have not talked much about this concept yet, or how perfectionism in creatives forms. How do we decide what is perfect? When is something good enough, or not quite right?
ReplyDeleteI have always thought of perfectionism as an enemy of creativity, but maybe it is one of the guiding factors in development as a creator. By feeling the need to get something "just right", you discover new ways to portray a certain emotion, or to create a concept.
The difference between Cave and Martin is interesting. Obviously every creative has a different method, but this dichotomy in thinking is a concept I hope we will discuss more in class.
I thought your approach to connecting Agnes Martin and Nick Cave was different from what I’ve seen in other blog posts, including my own. Connecting the two via their differences rather than their similarities when it comes to perfection and creating was fascinating. Perfection for some can be the enemy of creativity, but for Martin, it is the driving force behind the intention of everything that goes into her work. Cave, on the other hand, uses the idea of moving away from perfection to drive his work. I think the dichotomy is really interesting and it is cool to see the different approaches to perfection and creating side by side.
ReplyDeleteI like how you introduced your post, because I definitely tend to think that way about modern art. You really outlined the importance of understanding the creative process behind a work of art to fully appreciate it, and I your connections to Nick Cave and Frank Gehry emphasized this as well. It is really interesting to hear how different artists respond to and utilize perfectionism, and how it can be helpful for one person and destructive to another.
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