Agnes Martin via Anna Rieger

Agnes Martin—Paintings, Writings, Remembrances published by Phaidon Press. Texts by Agnes Martin and Arne Glimcher. Hardcover with dust jacket, 282 pages. 250 × 290 mm. Art direction Henrik Nygren. Studio Henrik Nygren Design

This is a beautiful book designed by Anna Rieger on Agnes Martin.  The end papers are sheets of calculations for Martin's building projects; other notebooks appear inside as inserts.  The common theme for Martin's writings is the struggle to remain calm, to let things go, which makes me wonder if the tension in the apparently hyper-rational grids and geometric planes isn't what distinguishes Martin's work from, say, Le Witt's which doesn't have the restlessness hers has. 

After hearing a long CBC archive program yesterday on Emily Carr, another passionate painter who was a near-recluse, perhaps the closely-guarded privacy is defensive and sustaining: just leave me alone to do my work! We can hardly, today, understand such a combination of fierceness and self-effacement.

Agnes Martin, Untitled, 1960, Oil on linen, 12 × 12". © 2006 by Agnes Martin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.