Agnes Martin: Readings for Writings

In “Readings for Writings” Jacquelynn Baas analyzes the origins of Agnes Martin’s personal philosophy as published in her influential book, Writings (1992). Reared in a Calvinist religious environment, Martin was attracted to the work of the rebellious Puritan allegorist John Bunyan (author of The Pilgrim’s Progress), and the even more rebellious visionary artist-poet William Blake (who created watercolor illustrations for Pilgrim’s Progress). Books by the American Pragmatist philosopher and educator John Dewey, author of Art As Experience (1934), nourished Martin’s early teaching career. Transcendentalist philosophy, especially Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s remarkable Record of a School (1835), would have been important as well. These authors who shaped Martin’s conception of herself and her work were themselves influenced by Asian philosophical systems. This helps explain Martin’s unusual receptivity to Daoist and Buddhist perspectives that attracted so many American artists and writers in the years following World War II. Martin’s writings and interviews reveal that her most important sources were Daoist and Buddhist texts published in the 1950s and early 60s, readings that helped Agnes Martin quiet and empty her mind and open herself to the creativity and freedom so essential to her art.