“Pattern/Signifier”



There are those that say Agnes Martin’s art has nothing to do with language. Technically, that may or may not be true. But the whole or her work takes up the linguistic idea of language/reality and signifier/signified. Martin lived in the desert, and, looking at it every day, she possibly viewed in its uniformity, society as a whole. Thus, she is also able, in her art, to see the possibility that a simple, “minimal” pattern—gentleness, truth, honesty, beauty—could serve as the basic signifier for all society, independent of its (society’s) outward confusion. This artwork, which Martin titled “a clear day,” is precisely parallel, as we shall see, to visual writing artworks that present the same type of signifier/signified paradigm.