KAREN WILKIN
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ingJapanese handmade paper with its faint irregularities and screen marks?
I'm not sure that they do. There are such a lot of givens in a Martin: size,
proportion, scale, visual weight. The pictures seem the result of a program
rather than of intuitive discovery.
What puzzles me is that Martin's work is presumed to deal with uni–
versal metaphysical issues, while that of other abstract painters who ex–
plore related notions of expanses, minimal inflection, and subtly nuanced
color, such as Kenneth Noland or Jules Olitski, is dismissed as empty or
decorative. I suppose Martin's grids, repetitions , and unchanging six- foot
squares could be construed as evidence of rigor, while Noland and
Olitski's alertness to the variables of process, their courting of the unex–
pected, could be seen as sensual and anti-intellectual. Yet these same ac–
cusations of "mere" decorativeness have been leveled at Matisse , arguably
the most visually intelligent artist of the twentieth century. A perceptive
painter friend recently said she was struck by the respect accorded
Martin's frequently quoted remark that she wanted her art to be like the
ocean, since no one gets tired of looking at the ocean, when Matisse's
wish that his art refiTsh "the mental worker" the way a good armchair
refreshes the physical worker has been treated as evidence of trivial inten–
tions.
Grouping Martin 's canvases, as the Whitney show did, makes subtle
differences more evident and more communicative. Being surrounded by
these tranquil "fields" for contemplation can be quite pleasurable, which
suggests, ironically, that claims for spiritual significance notwithstanding,
Martin is just a good decorator. It was hard to see, however, why the last
group of white pictures at the Whitney was given such prominence -
something to do with the machinations of art dealers, I was later told -
while the entire installation was marred by glaring white "aprons" pro–
jecting from the foot of each wall. Against the Whitney's shiny slate £loor,
they were especially objectionable, distracting the eye from the paintings
they were meant to protect.
Two exhibitions dealing with what are now called "marginalized"
artists were among the most informative and engaging of the season.
EI
Taller Torres-carria: The Sr/[(Jol 4thI' SOllth alld Its
u,I!acy
was seen at the
Bronx Museum for the Arts, part of a tour that included Madrid, Austin ,
Texas, and Mexico City. The Uruguayan-born painter, Joaquin Torres–
Garcia,
011
whom the show hinges, is best known for abstractions com–
bining shorthand images, personal symbols, and "alphabets," ordered like
words on a page by elegantly proportioned grids. Painted in Paris during
the 1920s and 1930s, these conflations of ideal geometry and the everyday
reflect both Torres-Garcia's affection for the vernacu lar and his close rela–
tionship with such purists as Theo Van Doesberg and Mondrian.
