Agnes Martin
Untitled IX, 1982
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas
Funds from the Alliance for Contemporary Art and the Acquisition Challenge Grant, 1984.109

height: 72 1/2 in, 184.1500 cm; width: 72 1/4 in, 183.5150 cm; frame height: 72 5/8 in, 184.4675 cm; frame width: 72 1/2 in, 184.1500 cm; frame depth: 1 1/2 in, 3.8100 cm

Modern and Contemporary Art

Modern and Contemporary Art

In her pursuit of the sublime, Agnes Martin combines the states of feeling expressed by the abstract expressionists with the reductive vocabulary of minimalism. There is very little happening in "Untitled IX." Dozens of fine, slightly irregular pencil lines run horizontally across a canvas not quite white, not quite pink, but a luminous hue between the two. If this is all we see, the artist is pleased. “[My work is about] light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down form. You can go directly in if you don’t encounter anything,” she wrote. “Accept the necessity of the simple, the direct; go into a field of vision as if you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.”

• "Contemporary British Artists"--Denver Art Museum, 11/14/1998 - 7/11/1999
• "Retrospectacle: 25 Years of Collecting Modern and Contemporary Art"--Denver Art Museum, 11/16/2002 - 8/3/2003