by Richard Gleaves

This summer Southern Californians have a rare opportunity to see the work of Agnes Martin in numbers and variety far beyond the ones and twos typically offered by regional museums.

Martin is commonly labeled a minimalist, but her work differs so markedly from that of other artists so labeled that it exposes the term itself as semantically overextended to the degree of buzz.

Perhaps a better term for Martin is "low stimulus threshold", as a way of foregrounding the visual subtlety that is her trademark. A Martin painting whispers in a way that makes a Judd box or Flavin light shout: all the difference in the world.

Art can take a million paths up the mountain, but the art that interests me most is the kind which challenges viewers to see the water they're swimming in. We live in a consummate high-stimulus-threshold society (the planet Soundtrack), and as a result much easy art exists which parasitizes the spectacle while claiming to comment upon it. Martin, on the other hand, took the hard road of making an art of the radical act of quiet contemplation.

A caveat on making the journey to Newport Beach to see the show: the curators — apparently influenced by their own elevated stimulus thresholds — decided the work was so quiet they could stuff far too much of it into two smallish galleries without causing a stir. Bad move: it reflects poorly on the museum. Each large Martin deserves a room of its own.