Agnes Martin #2

Agnes Martin, Coenties Slip rooftop with Jack Youngerman and Ellsworth Kelly, 1957.


Coenties Slip, New York.

"Agnes Martin: a Gentle Obsession
....
I wanted to buy Agnes’s Galisteo studio. It was for sale again, a few years after her death in 2004. The desire took me over for a long time, and I am afraid I nearly drove a New Mexico realtor crazy. The revelation came slowly, as many dream-killing realizations do, that the remodeling job done after her death, the fancy kitchen and other updates, would have wiped out the feeling of her living there, that I wasn’t likely to find her ghost or any traces of her life left behind. They would have been curated away.

I go to Coenties Slip on Sundays when Wall Street is empty. A new management company has just taken over the building where Agnes had her studio. Maybe I should be glad it still exists at all; it is part of the landmarked block where Fraunces Tavern stands (George Washington bade farewell to his officers there) and won’t be torn down, but the old sailmakers’ lofts are getting a re-do. The marketing website touts proximity to the South See Port (you read that right) and all major subway lines, and to granite tubs and rain showers. The rents are high. This is the way of New York. Where do young, or any, artists and writers go now?
...." (bron en tekst(?): Luanne Rice)