Friday, December 16, 2016

Portraits by Europeans and Words by Agnes Martin

Jean Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Madame Jean Tronchin
1758
pastel on vellum
Louvre

Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun
Woman's head
1780
pastel on paper
École des Beaux-Arts, Paris

Jacques-Louis David
Head of Marat (after death)
1793
drawing
Musée National du Château de Versailles

IRVING SANDLER: What would you like your pictures to convey?

AGNES MARTIN: I would like them to represent beauty, innocence and happiness; I would like them all to represent that. Exaltation.

IRVING SANDLER: You also think of your art as classical, because it is detached from the world, cool and untroubled, and strives for perfection and freedom from whatever drags people down. Do you think of your painting as continuing a classical tradition in the history of art?

Gaetano Gandolfi
Study of a young woman
1777
oil on canvas
private collection

Mauro Gandolfi
Study of an elderly man
18th century
oil on canvas
private collection

AGNES MARTIN: No, I just hope I have the classical attitude.

IRVING SANDLER: At the same time that you value a detached and cool art, you require that your art express feeling. It is commonly thought that detachment and feeling are antithetical, yet you would like to bring them together.

AGNES MARTIN: I think that personal feelings, sentimentality and those sorts of emotions, are not art but that universal emotions like happiness are art. I am particularly interested in the abstract emotions that we feel when we listen to music.

Arnold Boonen
Portrait of Jan van Huysum, flower-painter
ca. 1720
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum

Giuseppe Maria Crespi
Portrait of Count Fulvio Grati
ca. 1720-23
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Johan Zoffany
Portrait of Ann Brown in the role of Miranda
ca. 1770
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Johan Zoffany
Portrait of Archduchess Amalia of Austria
1770s
oil on canvas
private collection

IRVING SANDLER: Today, there are many artists who view modern life as a series of disasters  two world wars, the holocaust, rabid nationalism, ecological devastation  and who believe that the future will be no better. These artists attempt to embody this negative outlook in their art. Has this kind of expression a place in art in your view?

AGNES MARTIN: I don't respect their negative art, I think it's illustration. I consider exaltation to be the theme of art and life.

IRVING SANDLER: Your art is non-objective which, as you have written, is of extreme importance to you.

AGNES MARTIN: I think that the abstract emotions of which we are not conscious are tremendously important, especially since they are all positive. I mean they are happy emotions that we only feel when we get away from daily care and turn away from this common life. I don't think human welfare and comfort are the artist's responsibility. I mean every other activity, every other kind of work contributes to human welfare and comfort. But art has no time for that materialistic area. The reason I think that music is the highest form of art is because it manages to represent all our abstract emotions. I don't think that artists should be involved in political life because it's so distracting.

Gaspare Traversi
The Sitting
1754
oil on canvas
Louvre

Anton Raphael Mengs
Portrait of Pope Clement XIII Rezzonico
1758
oil on canvas
Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Jacques-Louis David
Portrait of Dr Alphonse Leroy
1783
canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Jacopo Amigoni
Portrait of a lady
18th century
oil on canvas
private collection

Pierre Gobert
Portrait of the Duchess of Modena as Hébé
early 18th century
oil on canvas
Musée National du Château de Versailles

– quoted passages are excerpted from a 1993 interview with Agnes Martin (1912-2004) reprinted in Talking Art : Interviews with Artists since 1976  (London, 2007)