Agnes Martin, The Rose

Yesterday I was at the Art Gallery of Ontario and spent a while looking at The Rose (1964) by Agnes Martin. It’s six feet a side (182.6 × 182.7 cm to be exact) and the media are listed as “oil, red and black pencil, sizing on canvas.” It’s a quiet, mysterious work, apparently very simple but full of small differences to see when looked at closely. It’s made of pencil lines, horizontal and vertical, in a grid. I wondered how many lines there were. This is not at all necessary to the enjoy...