Untitled # 9
Martin spent her forty-year career exploring the production and perception of stillness. "My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent," she once explained, "and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in artwork, which is also wordless and silent." She developed a consistent format—an allover grid on a square canvas—and experimented with subtle variations of line and tone, creating an aesthetic vocabulary that was spare and coherent. In Untitled #9, minimal in effect, Martin removed the visual distractions of conventional space through quiet, meditative gestures. Three equidistant horizontal lines mark the canvas, but the rigid geometry is balanced by the hand-drawn lines, which tremble and stutter across the painting’s surface.
Artwork Details
- Title: Untitled # 9
- Artist: Agnes Martin (American (born Canada), Macklin, Saskatchewan 1912–2004 Taos, New Mexico)
- Date: 1984
- Medium: Acrylic, India ink, and graphite on canvas
- Dimensions: 72 x 72 in. (182.9 x 182.9 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Gift of American Art Foundation, 1984
- Object Number: 1984.435
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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