Agnes Martin: Making Space for the Sacred

This book is an important addition to the studies of Agnes Martin, as the author met with her and discussed her work in Taos. The Agnes Martin Gallery at the University of New Mexico's Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico, is a sacred space. It resonates with connections to Giotto's Arena Chapel in Padua, Matisse's Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. In order to sustain such a bold claim, Joanna Weber looks at the Agnes Martin Gallery within the trajectory of the history of Western thought, specifically the Judeo-Christian tradition about how the presence of the sacred is apprehended through objects and in them. Weber considers both the continuities and the discontinuities, in the shift from churches to museums as containers for objects made available for contemplation, in order to assess the significance of the Gallery.The author also looks at Agnes Martin's work (paintings, writings, filmmaking, and the houses and studios she built) in order to explore the sublime that is integral to her oeuvre. She physically built her spaces for living and painting. Weber also consider the impact that this building process has on her paintings. Drawing on other works of art, philosophy, and theology to deepen our knowledge about how objects participate in making space for the sacred, the author also relies on Agnes Martin's own writings as a guide. In addition to considering the Gallery as an architectural space, she examines the ways in which Martin's paintings as objects create sacred space and make her Gallery in Taos a contemporary pilgrimage site.