Night 1963

Agnes Martin made this grid, called "Night," on paper, and she must have used a very sharp pencil and a steady hand. This piece reminds me of the quiet hum of Agnes’s work, that whisper she cultivated. Just imagine the artist, patiently drawing these lines, maybe in dim light, each one a meditation. I often think about the pure labor of painting, or in this case drawing, it’s like she’s trying to chart the unknowable, mapping feelings onto a grid. The subtle imperfections become so important—they're the human touch, where the artist's intention meets the fallibility of being. It seems like an echo of artists like Mondrian, who were trying to distill the world down to its most basic elements, or maybe a cousin to Sol Lewitt. Each of them, in their own way, inviting us to lose ourselves in the simplicity and the endless variations within a set of rules. Art is a constant conversation with our predecessors.