Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists - Part 4. Группа авторов
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his artistic production. Eventually the projections were restored and de Kooning was able to return to his full abstract creation [Espinel, 2007]. In this period of his artistic activity, de Kooning managed to combine figurative art with abstraction and his technique became more simplified. de Kooning shifted from applying the paint thickly with visible brush marks into more flat and sanded textures, which resembled his techniques from the beginning of his career. In addition to this, he started using new ribbon-like patterns with lively colours superimposed on a more serene background. His artistic style evolved to pure abstract, whereby he was able to dim all resemblance to any recognisable shapes or patterns [Espinel, 2007]. de Kooning’s late paintings proved that abstract expressionism was able to communicate through emotional and spiritual terms. In addition to this, his late paintings were considered very consistent with his initial works, but stripped of irrelevant elements, which was taken as a sign of abstract mastery [Bonetti, 1995]. Of note is the fact that these late artistic creations were produced at the time when he was formally declared as lacking mental capacity and dependent in activities of daily living. It is important to note that, similarly to the case of James Brooks, no formal neurological diagnosis was given to de Kooning [Espinel, 2007]. de Kooning completed his last painting in 1991 and he died in 1997 at 92 years of age.
A potential explanation for the preservation of artistic abilities was suggested by Espinel [2007] by a syndrome of “Creating in the Midst of Dementia” as an isolated impairment of semantic memory in the context of preserved working, procedural and episodic memory. In addition to this, brain reactivation in response to previous artistic productions could serve as a surrogate of semantic memory, which is supported by the fact that projections of sketches onto a canvas were triggering the existing patterns of behaviour and creation.
Forsythe at al. [2017] postulated the deterioration of de Kooning’s artistic abilities, demonstrating a steady decline in fractal dimension from the age of around 40 years and continuing until his late productions (Fig. 2). Similarly to the case of Brooks, one may argue that this change could merely be a sign of mastery in abstraction, which is synonymous with simplification and decreased levels of detail and complexity.
Agnes Martin
Agnes Bernice Martin was born on March 22nd, 1912, in Macklin, Saskatchewan, in Canada to a family of Scottish Presbyterian settlers. Her father, who was a wheat farmer, died when Martin was 2 years old and her mother had to sell their property to cover their living expenses [The Art Story, 2018c]. Martin had a difficult relationship with her mother, and she believed she was hated as a child and that she was emotionally abused. In a documentary made by Mary Lance (With My Back to the World), Martin said that she could remember exactly her moment of birth and she gave some insight into her mother’s influence on her life:
I was very happy. I thought I would cut my way through life… victory after victory… Well, I adjusted as soon as they carried me into my mother. Half of my victories fell to the ground. My mother had victories. [Martin, 2003]
The family moved to Vancouver, where Martin swam competitively and was even considered for qualification for the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936. In 1931, Agnes Martin immigrated to Washington. She attended the Western Washington Stage College in Bellingham and eventually studied at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York, where she was awarded her bachelor degree. She was collecting prints of famous paintings at that time, and also demonstrated promiscuous behaviour in her later teen years. Agnes Martin pursued her education further at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and returned to Columbia to earn her Masters in 1952. At the same time, due to her aversion to chaos, Martin started following Zen Buddhism and Taoism. In 1947, Martin became engaged in artistic programs under the auspices of the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico. At that time she was producing abstracted landscapes with intermingled pointed shapes. In the late 1950s her work was noticed by Betty Parsons, who was also involved in helping other abstract expressionists develop their careers. Martin relocated to New York and joined the bohemian lifestyle of other lower Manhattan artists. Parsons helped Martin in exhibiting her paintings, which became associated with abstract expressionism and colour field [Schjeldahl, 2016; The Art Story, 2018c]. However, she did not join the 10th Street abstractionists, but instead moved to Coenties Slip by the Seaport and Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, which stood away from alcohol, socialising and the brawling lifestyle of the 10th Street artists. It is important to note that Agnes Martin was a closeted lesbian and Coenties Slip was welcoming of homosexual artists, and she did not consider herself to be a woman [The Art Story, 2018c]. Due to the political and societal climate in the 1950s, coming out as homosexual would be very risky and could potentially end any professional career. The Coenties Slip was in a way an enclave in two senses – one in distancing from the 10th Street abstract expressionist lifestyle, and the other in allowing people to develop in different artistic directions. When living in the Coenties Slip she befriended, among the others, Robert Rauschenberg (abstract expressionists and pop artist), Ad Reinhardt (abstract expressionist, minimalist and monochrome painter), Ellsworth Kelly (colour field and minimalism painter), Jasper Jones (abstract expressionist, neo-Dadaist, and pop artist), and Barnett Newman (abstract expressionist, colour field/“zip” painter). She was influenced by her artistically divergent surroundings in the development of her artistic style, and her most influential contacts were Kelly and Rauschenberg, from whom she borrowed some stylistic ideas. Martin created one of her most famous watercolours, entitled Summer (Fig. 3), while living at Coenties Slip. In this painting she incorporated squares containing a pale blue dot on a dynamic blue background, which from a distance may seem to be merely a blue and rather homogeneous block [Miranda, 2016; Schjeldahl, 2016].
Fig. 3. Agnes Martin: Summer, 1964. © 2018, ProLitteris, Zurich. Reprinted with permission.
Agnes Martin’s style incorporated grids as an element of the organisation of canvases, as can be seen in Figure 3, filled with colour. These techniques blended the two separate artistic styles of minimalism and colour field [The Art Story, 2018c]. Although Agnes Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist, she was seen by art critics as quieter than 10th Street abstract expressionists, and subtler than Coenties Slip minimalists [Greenberger, 2015].
When she lived at Coenties Slip, Agnes Martin started experiencing episodes of auditory hallucinations and catatonia, and she was eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In the early 1960s she required several hospitalisations at Bellevue Hospital and she was treated with electroconvulsive therapy [The Art Story, 2018c]. Martin’s psychosis was noted by her fellow artists from Coenties Slip, including Robert Indiana, who explained:
I happened to encounter Agnes on South Street and she simply walked past me and didn’t recognise me. Shortly thereafter she was committed to Bellevue. [Greenberger, 2015]
Agnes Martin had another psychotic episode triggered by listening to Handel’s Messiah in a church on 2nd Avenue [Laing, 2015]. Martin’s biographer, Nancy Princenthal, noted that she was clear about the fact that her disease with psychotic breaks and vivid auditory hallucinations had nothing to do with her work. The voices Martin heard did not direct her in what to paint and did not influence her work. On the other hand, the voices directed other aspects of Martin’s life with various punitive and protective directions [Princenthal and Martin, 2015].
There was another element to this though, as Martin’s artistic creation was eccentric and distinct. Martin apparently described her paintings as coming to her mind fully formed as the size of a postage stamp, and she was just extending them to the full six-square-foot canvas as full-blown paintings. This could be considered as a way to establish a balance between her emotions, perception and visual world [Princenthal and Martin, 2015]. Martin wanted to conceal and control her psychiatric symptoms, and as mentioned by Schjeldahl [2016], used the grid as a screen and shield, distilling the overwhelming, uncontrollable content of her states of mind