Tag: agnes martin

Agnes Martin COS Play

October 2016 feels like so many worlds away at this point. When I think of all the paths we diverged from, I mean just

a young fair wispy swedish looking model actually she looks surprisingly like a facetuned young agnes martin, stands with her hand on a concrete railing of the guggenheim museum. she wears a light blue tunic with a tie waist, which has a faint grid taken from an agnes martin painting, and an indigo tie skirt, part of the capsule collection the swedish brand cos did for the guggenheim in 2016
checked v-neck shirt

Of all the paths we didn’t take, one world I don’t miss is the one where Swedish mid-tier minimalist brand COS got any organic attention at all for the Agnes Martin Capsule Collection they designed for the artist’s Guggenheim retrospective.

a young polished and pink swedish boy with bieber bangs across his forehead leans against a white wall in the guggenheim museum while modeling a grey linen collarless and lapel-less mid-thigh jacket with a thin grey grid on it, taken from an agnes martin painting. he also wears a white waffle weave cashmere crewneck sweater and loose indigo pants with a tie waist, all from a capsule collection by cos in 2016
patterned linen coat

The twelve pieces made of “hand-drawn and hand-stitched” “grids and stripes” on “natural fabrics such as linen and canvas” were adapted from specific Martin artworks. They all seem to be from the 60s, none of the works that ended up in the Guggenheim’s Agnes Martin animated gif campaign. I thought I’d hunt them down, but I don’t have my Martin books handy.

COS says the collection was also inspired by the artist’s own wardrobe. And yet, they ignore her most iconic looks:

a serene older white woman with short hair parted to the side sits stiffly in a rocking chair against a dark wall, next to her white painting hanging on a white wall. she has a peter pan collar over the top of her dark blue cardigan, buttoned all the way up; dark cotton trousers, and white mallwalker sneakers. charles rushton took this portrait of agnes martin at her studio in new mexico in 1999
Charles Rushton portrait of Agnes Martin in New Mexico, 1991. Collared shirt, cardigan, sensible trousers, sneakers: the artist’s own.
a lush grey tone photo of a thin woman with her hair braided down her back, as she wears a white quilted jacket and pants, her back to the camera, she paints a white square canvas hanging on a raggedy white brick or plaster wall. agnes martin photographed in 1960 by alexander liberman
Agnes Martin photographed in 1960 in her unheated loft in Coentie’s Slip by Vogue creative director Alexander Liberman. Thermal quilted liner ensemble: artist’s own.

And of course:

a grainy scan of a photocopy of a black and white photo of a white woman with her dark hair pulled back, wearing white, and a black painting with a white line bisecting it in the background, an undated portrait of agnes martin by mildred tolbert
An undated photo of Agnes Martin by Mildred Tolbert, with the painting Night and Day in the background, from an exhibit in the lawsuit filed in October 2016 by Mayor Gallery against the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné LLC

COS x Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim [trendland via @octavio-world]
Previously, related, from October 2016:
Agnes Martin Mini-Storage
The Complete Agnes Martin GIFs: A Retrospective