By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Mary Lance
Country: united_states
Year: 2007
Running time: 56
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892862/
Bruce says: “Agnes Martin says ‘I’ve been born a hundred times, married a hundred times, given birth hundreds of times and died a hundred times. This time around I want to be alone.’ ‘You can‘t be an artist if you can’t be alone.’ Filmed when she was 86 years old, six years before she died, AGNES MARTIN: WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD is both a running dialogue about the artistic process and a memoir of Martin’s life as a painter. Martin has a delicate sense of humor. She remarks on how her paintings have shrunk from 6’ x 6’ to 5’ x 5’ because she can no longer handle the big pieces. Martin’s canvases consist of tiny penciled grids, often with muted color stripes or solid backgrounds. She does not use squares – ‘too aggressive,’ she claims; all her grids contain only rectangles. Never would she consider circles as they are too expansive. Wearing striped smocks and shirts that echo her paintings, Martin gessoes her canvases and draws her patented horizontal lines (40 years of horizontal lines must be some kind of record, she thinks) on camera, all the while talking about her life, where she has lived, and how she supported herself in the lean years.
“Generally considered a superstar of the art world, Martin did not find success early on. She struggled as she alternately worked for a year and then painted for a year. In the 50’s and 60’s she lived in New York and was part of the art scene. When her $45/month loft was taken away as the building was sold, she left New York and never returned. Her life in New Mexico has helped her fulfill her ambitions. Although Martin mistakenly exhibited with Minimalists early on, she considers herself an Abstract Expressionist. She sees her work akin to Rothko or Pollack rather than Judd or LeWitt. Few of her early works (prior to the 70’s) remain as she has destroyed whatever she did not sell.
“Martin claims her one year long effort in filmmaking was one of her most rewarding endeavors. The 1976 film, GABRIEL, took most of a year out of her life and painting career. Martin is quite philosophical about her inspiration, her thought processes and her accomplishments. She is as unpretentious as her art. 4 cats”