INNOCENCE
AGNES MARTIN, UNTITLED, 2004. Ink on Paper, 8.9 X 7cms.
The Innocence of Trees
Ludwig Wittgenstein distinguished between the innocence of a child, “an innocence which comes from a natural absence of temptation” and “the innocence a man has fought for,” of which only the latter is commendable. (Monk, 1990). William Blake held the belief that innocence and experience show “the two contrary states of the human soul." He describes both the joy and anguish of childhood in his poem Infant Sorrow (1794), the counterpart to Infant Joy (1789):
Infant Sorrow
My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Struggling in my fathers hands:
Striving against my swaddling bands:
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mothers breast.
Blake (1794)
For this essay, through the work, life and writings of the artist Agnes Martin, I want to explore the different types of innocence, for example: the innocence of the child, innocence verses guilt, or wiping a slate clean and returning to innocence in its purest form. Martin is the creator of quietly serene paintings--often constructed of fine vertical lines and lighlty shaded horizontal bands in oil and pencil, to soften her geometric grids—that offer the potential for a meditative response, reflective of her life of solitude and simplicity in the desert of New Mexico.
Martin equates the grid with innocence: "When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision." Her phrase: “the innocence of trees” draws attention to our ecological crisis, the wars being waged around the world and the violence done to the innocent, and her belief in the ability to find innocence in the simplest of things.
The grid, for Martin, seemed to evoke not a human measure but an ethereal limitless order or transcendent reality associated with Eastern philosophies. The drawing presented here as my pearl, is the last known drawing made by Martin before she died aged 92, December 2004. What I find remarkable about this drawing and its timing is the movement away from the grids that she spent most of her life painting/drawing to a curved line, almost as a premonition of her death to come. The simple and relatively small ink drawing 8.9 x 7 cms, belies a wavering, perhaps tentative line where the space around and within the drawing is as important.
For your 500 word assignment, explore your memories around your childhood to discover your innocence. When did that change, (assuming it did)? Do you think it is possible to return to a state of innocence? If so, describe the circumstances and any texts to support your thinking.
Ludwig Wittgenstein distinguished between the innocence of a child, “an innocence which comes from a natural absence of temptation” and “the innocence a man has fought for,” of which only the latter is commendable. (Monk, 1990). William Blake held the belief that innocence and experience show “the two contrary states of the human soul." He describes both the joy and anguish of childhood in his poem Infant Sorrow (1794), the counterpart to Infant Joy (1789):
Infant Sorrow
My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Struggling in my fathers hands:
Striving against my swaddling bands:
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mothers breast.
Blake (1794)
For this essay, through the work, life and writings of the artist Agnes Martin, I want to explore the different types of innocence, for example: the innocence of the child, innocence verses guilt, or wiping a slate clean and returning to innocence in its purest form. Martin is the creator of quietly serene paintings--often constructed of fine vertical lines and lighlty shaded horizontal bands in oil and pencil, to soften her geometric grids—that offer the potential for a meditative response, reflective of her life of solitude and simplicity in the desert of New Mexico.
Martin equates the grid with innocence: "When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision." Her phrase: “the innocence of trees” draws attention to our ecological crisis, the wars being waged around the world and the violence done to the innocent, and her belief in the ability to find innocence in the simplest of things.
The grid, for Martin, seemed to evoke not a human measure but an ethereal limitless order or transcendent reality associated with Eastern philosophies. The drawing presented here as my pearl, is the last known drawing made by Martin before she died aged 92, December 2004. What I find remarkable about this drawing and its timing is the movement away from the grids that she spent most of her life painting/drawing to a curved line, almost as a premonition of her death to come. The simple and relatively small ink drawing 8.9 x 7 cms, belies a wavering, perhaps tentative line where the space around and within the drawing is as important.
For your 500 word assignment, explore your memories around your childhood to discover your innocence. When did that change, (assuming it did)? Do you think it is possible to return to a state of innocence? If so, describe the circumstances and any texts to support your thinking.