Page 28 - Studio International - February 1973

number of repetitions. A collection of similar
bits, beyond easy counting, implies infinity; that
is why the internal area of a Martin painting can
seem highly expansive. It is clear that in her
paintings the parts are submitted to the larger
structure that the picture constitutes as a whole.
Thus the painting is an image of wholeness and
this is not merely a formal completeness
demonstrated but a symbolic value as well. The
unitary system of the picture becomes
expressive of stability, fullness, completeness,
as subject matter. The form of the painting
itself becomes, to use E. H. Gombrich's phrase,
a visual metaphor of value.8 To quote Martin
again: 'Walking seems to cover time and space
but in reality we are always just where we
started.'9 When one looks at a legible and
sustained module, it can be said that one part
predicts the other parts. This is true in the case
of Martin, but the image of walking without
progress is a clue to the reading of her grids in
another way. One section of the grid or one
row of it is locked into the others so that we get
not an effect of succession (prediction and
confirmation), but of an invariant pattern
divulged all at once. The effect is not of
simultaneity, which is too sharp a word, but of
arrested movement; the grid is still because the
whole can be grasped by the eye and the mind
at once.
Ann Wilson calls Martin classical and the
artist herself, in manuscript notes, confirms
Hill 1967 (detail). 72 x 72 in. Coll. Mr and Mrs D.W. Dietrich II, Pennsylvania the idea. 'Everyone recognizes the nature pattern
of unequal and contesting parts. Classicism
irregularizing refinements, which never become includes factors of repetition and continuity (the forsakes the nature pattern.'10 Referring to one
deviations from the prescribed system (witness changing water in a constant course), and of of her poems, she notes : 'This poem, like the
the regularity and exactness of the rectangles motion contracted into timelessness. The paintings, it not really about nature. It is not
noted above), is set up. Thus the legibility of synonymic forms that she uses, then, may be what is seen. It is what is known forever in the
the system is preserved, the presence of the analogous to geological strata, a handful of sand, mind.' The value that she places on what is
module never called in doubt, but it supports the sun reflected on water, or the planting of an `known' rather than 'seen' suggests innate ideas,
not only a proposition concerning order but orchard (though not to the pattern of rivets or a which she sometimes calls 'a memory of
unpredictable physical variations as well. row of bolts on, say, the ME lot mentioned perfection'. 'Although I do not represent it very
In Martin's paintings there is a secret tension above). 'Nature is like parting a curtain, you go well in my work, all seeing the work, being
between perception and recognition. The into it's, to quote Martin, which is something already familiar with the subject, are easily
difference between the two has been succinctly that can be said about her own paintings. reminded of it.' Thus the aesthetic criterion of
given by D. W. J. Corcoran: percieve an There is reason, however, not to make too wholeness suggested above has the function of
aeroplane, but I recognize a ME101.'4 In the much of the nature metaphors, despite her confirming patterns in the mind. In one of her
case of Martin's paintings we perceive a grid, imagery's smouldering significative power. To written notes entitled 'Response to Art' she has
but what do we recognize ? Both by inference quote the artist again: 'My paintings have this to say of the relationship of artist and
from her imagery and from judging her titles we neither objects, nor space, not time, not spectator:
recognize a form of nature imagery. Typical anything - no forms. They are light, lightness, `The cause of the response is not traceable in
titles include: The Beach, Desert, Drops, Earth, about merging, about formlessness breaking the work. An artist cannot and does not prepare
Field, Garden, Happy Valley, Islands, Wheat. down form.'? She concludes the argument for a certain response. He does not consider the
Although these titles are not openly descriptive inarguably : 'You wouldn't think of form by the response but simply follows his inspiration.
they are persistently evocative; they have a ocean.' Somewhat in the manner of Mondrian's `Works of art are not purposely conceived. The
definite congruence to the artist's visual + and — drawings, derived from the sea and response depends upon the conditions of the
imagery. The words are compatible with a notion dunes in 1915, Martin uses images that evoke observer.'
of the world regarded in terms of synonymous an iconography of wholes and totals, whose Martin is allowing for the fact of diversity of
forms and continuous surfaces (as opposed to natural analogue is landscape as it expands into spectator response and interpretation, but, as
contrasting forms and divided surfaces). As amplitude and infinite spaces. we saw, she has an inclination towards classical
Martin wrote : 'There's nobody living who There is of course all the difference in the fixity. Her invariant patterns do not take the
couldn't stand all afternoon in front of a world between a compact zone, such as a form of a canon of absolute geometry, imposed
waterfall.'5 One of her paintings is called painting establishes, and a boundless field, the inexorably on the painting, but take the form of
Falling Blue but it is not necessary to assume continuous space of the world. However, a sense of contact which occurs when the
the words describe this painting or, conversely, endlessness can be connoted by a contained work artist's and spectator's minds converge despite
that the painting illustrates these words. of art in one of two ways, either by an all-over their indifference to one another.
However the experience Martin refers to field of colour or by a grid with a sufficient Lucy Lippard points out that 'perhaps by

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