Trailer of the new documentary by Leon d'Avigdor about the painter Agnes Martin. Credits, additional info and dvd orders: www.leon-davigdor.com/agnes-ma...
BETWEEN THE LINES is a film about the Canadian-American painter Agnes Martin. The core of the material was produced in fall 2002 in Taos (New Mexico), Agnes Martin’s final place of residence. It consists of interviews and shots at work in her Taos Studio, complemented by images of selected paintings, archival footage, quotes from Agnes Martin’s writings, and meditative sequences of the sea she loved so much.
The interviews center around Agnes Martin’s deep insight to fundamental human experiences such as Love, Religion and Spirituality, Happiness, Friendship, Innocence and Death as well as various aspects of her life and art resp. the creative process.
BETWEEN THE LINES is, just as Agnes Martin’s art, a deep journey ‘towards the within’ and unfolds the unique path she has chosen in her life and art. It allows its audience to embark on a contemplative encounter with an exraordinary artist and human being.
AGNES MARTIN (1912 - 2004) is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. She considered herself an abstract expressionist. Those who met her often used terms like inner silence, non-attachment and peace to describe her extraordinary presence. Hence, she was often called a mystic and a sage. Agnes Martin however rejected this kind of designation, she simply regarded her life as a quest for truth and her work as its expression through art.
Agnes Martin’s paintings, emerged from deep states of contemplation, are “concrete representations of abstract emotions” as she expressed it with the profound simplicity that was characteristic both for her way of life and her artistic vocabulary. From the early 1960s, the latter was limited to square canvases inscribed with lines or grids, using subtle colors that can appear almost immaterial. The paintings that Agnes Martin created this way are recognized as masterpieces of pure abstraction and timeless beauty.