On a Clear Day

Through simple and reductive means, Agnes Martin’s works evoke a quiet serenity and meditative response. Martin rose to prominence in the New York art scene of the 1950s before she abandoned art making in 1967 and relocated to the New Mexican desert. Martin’s print series, On a Clear Day, from 1973, inaugurated the second phase of Martin’s career as an artist, and, like its title, announced a new clarity in Martin’s resumed activity. In 1971, Martin traveled to Germany at the invitation of Luitpold Domberger to create a suite of prints to be published in 1973 by Robert Feldman’s Parasol Press in New York. Martin was drawn to printmaking, and the silkscreen process in particular, for its ability to render sharp corners and straight lines. The result of this collaboration was a portfolio of thirty prints, each a different permutation of a dark-grey grid printed on a neutral ground. The series unfolds with the expansion and contraction of each grid’s proportions. These prints anticipate many of the considerations of Martin’s second phase of work—and the Minimalist movement as a whole—including her sharp marks, graphic grids, and serial projects. In a draft for the statement accompanying the portfolio Martin wrote, “These prints express innosence [sic] of mind. If you can go with them and hold your mind as emty [sic] and tranquil as they are and recognize your feelings at the same time you will realize your full response to this work.”