Swimming in a Night Sea

My friend Wil and I are in love--with the same Agnes Martin painting in the current exhibit of paintings collected by the Fishers (who happen to own The Gap, which happens to own just about everything else.) Winding our way through a Friday afternoon with the ease of old friends who are both absorbed by the imagination was a rare treat.

The Agnes Martin painting, "Night Sea" was the cherry on the cake.

Quietly exhibited with other, more subtle Martins, the luminous blue painting hung on the wall like a brilliant blue eye. After a moment or two, it moved, oceanlike, slowly undulating, a blue hip rolling across the whiteness of the MOMA's pristine wall. Wil and I had been playing a game in every room: which piece would you take home, if you could? He laughed when he saw my eyes widen at "Night Sea", and said it was his "take home" painting. "Well," I said, "you're going to have to fight me for it."

This is what is so exciting about art--the emotional payload. Even if you don't understand all you see, it can be understood at a cellular level. I walked closer to "Night Sea" and saw Martin's excruciating labors, the brickle of separations between the orderly patches of blue--cut, perhaps by a tool? Who knows, hardly matters to me. Equally mysterious, the whole heart, whole gut reaction to great art, when thought is almost unimportant--according to Agnes Martin, thinking just gets in the way of the imagination--and of art. I have had this reaction to art before, and it's like walking into sunlight from a dark cave. Illumination, brilliance that is felt, not necessarily analyzed.

Agnes Martin died in 2003. What a shame, I thought, I had no chance to talk to her, but then, she did the talking in "Night Sea." She lived in Taos, New Mexico, so far from the ocean, yet she swam luxuriously in the night sea of her imagination. Martin once said that "I used to meditate, but my mind was too full. I just told myself, no more of this, empty your mind of thoughts while you work." Unencumbered by ideas, wholly motivated by the heart of her imagination, Agnes Martin moved into her ocean of energy. The result is worth the trip, many trips, to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.


This was Wil's fourth visit to the show, and I can tell, it won't be his last. Nor mine. I want to take my grand daughter, a young artist I've always called "Apple". My Apple is ripe for this pipeline wave of imagination. Its contagion will likely infect her creativity with an appetite for more--and more making of art. I can't wait.