Black Bucket Essays
Volume 2, Issue 1
“The value of art is in the observer."
- Agnes Martin
Bart O'Reilly
I put this quote to my drawing class at Harford Community College towards the end
of the fall 2017 semester. I asked that they use it as a prompt for their final projects.
In order to get the ball rolling we had a lecture/discussion where we looked at the
work of Agnes Martin and considered the implications of the statement in the
context of her painting practice. During the course of our research we happened
upon a video where Arne Glimcher from Pace Gallery, her dealer for many years,
told a poignant story. Agnes held a rose in her hand and asked his young
granddaughter if the rose was beautiful? She answered yes. Then Martin put the
rose behind her back so the child could no longer see it. Again she asked is the rose
still beautiful? Once again she answered yes, Martin replied that the beauty was not
in the rose itself but in the young girls mind.
It was with this thought that we started our discussion. We immediately noticed that
although abstract and grid based many of Martin’s titles referred to natural things in
the world such as tree, bud or mid-winter. Though her work was unfamiliar to most
of the group this gave them a feeling that it was accessible. We entertained the idea
that Martin herself was the chief observer of her own work, especially given her
solitude and search for inspiration during long periods of sitting. We had a very
lively discussion about the word value and what that meant to us. We discussed how
the value for the artist was distinctly different from the value taken on by any other
viewer. Monetary value was also significant as we noted the absurd value of the
recently auctioned Salvator Mundi thought to have been painted by Leonardo Di
Vinci. Ultimately one of our conclusions was that value is in the observer or artist
themselves rather than intrinsic to any object or idea.
The works produced by the class were many and varied. Some focused on the gaze
of the human eye, the observer and the observed and what it means to be part of
this reciprocal relationship so long a theme in visual art. Others took a more indirect
even poetic slant. One student made a piece that she jokingly called cosmic chess.
The work was a series of painted vinyl discs and CDs on a chessboard of mirrors.
The work invited the viewer into a game with arbitrary rules where their own
reflection followed their every move. Another student rescued a rusty chair from a
consignment store covering it with spray paint and living flowers. Her thoughts
were that she was initially drawn to the chair because she found it beautiful but
knew that others would not. She then covered it with the artificial beauty of colorful
paint. The significance of the flowers in this piece was that when freshly picked they
mimicked the artificial beauty of the painted chair, the irony however was that as
they withered they would return to the original state of decay that the chair was
found in. An organic reminder of an inanimate state.
Volume 2, Issue 1
“The value of art is in the observer."
- Agnes Martin
Bart O'Reilly
I put this quote to my drawing class at Harford Community College towards the end
of the fall 2017 semester. I asked that they use it as a prompt for their final projects.
In order to get the ball rolling we had a lecture/discussion where we looked at the
work of Agnes Martin and considered the implications of the statement in the
context of her painting practice. During the course of our research we happened
upon a video where Arne Glimcher from Pace Gallery, her dealer for many years,
told a poignant story. Agnes held a rose in her hand and asked his young
granddaughter if the rose was beautiful? She answered yes. Then Martin put the
rose behind her back so the child could no longer see it. Again she asked is the rose
still beautiful? Once again she answered yes, Martin replied that the beauty was not
in the rose itself but in the young girls mind.
It was with this thought that we started our discussion. We immediately noticed that
although abstract and grid based many of Martin’s titles referred to natural things in
the world such as tree, bud or mid-winter. Though her work was unfamiliar to most
of the group this gave them a feeling that it was accessible. We entertained the idea
that Martin herself was the chief observer of her own work, especially given her
solitude and search for inspiration during long periods of sitting. We had a very
lively discussion about the word value and what that meant to us. We discussed how
the value for the artist was distinctly different from the value taken on by any other
viewer. Monetary value was also significant as we noted the absurd value of the
recently auctioned Salvator Mundi thought to have been painted by Leonardo Di
Vinci. Ultimately one of our conclusions was that value is in the observer or artist
themselves rather than intrinsic to any object or idea.
The works produced by the class were many and varied. Some focused on the gaze
of the human eye, the observer and the observed and what it means to be part of
this reciprocal relationship so long a theme in visual art. Others took a more indirect
even poetic slant. One student made a piece that she jokingly called cosmic chess.
The work was a series of painted vinyl discs and CDs on a chessboard of mirrors.
The work invited the viewer into a game with arbitrary rules where their own
reflection followed their every move. Another student rescued a rusty chair from a
consignment store covering it with spray paint and living flowers. Her thoughts
were that she was initially drawn to the chair because she found it beautiful but
knew that others would not. She then covered it with the artificial beauty of colorful
paint. The significance of the flowers in this piece was that when freshly picked they
mimicked the artificial beauty of the painted chair, the irony however was that as
they withered they would return to the original state of decay that the chair was
found in. An organic reminder of an inanimate state.
