It’s not common in New York to catch a moment of quiet, hypnotically serene beauty, but the Guggenheim is offering this up for the price of admission in its current retrospective of the painter Agnes Martin. The Canadian-born artist was deeply influenced by the Zen practice of meditation; by the abstract painters Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly, whom she befriended in New York in the late 1950s; and by the desert landscape of Taos, New Mexico, where she later moved. In more than 100 works curated by Tracey Bashkoff and Tiffany Bell, Martin’s repertoire comes together to reveal the gracefully precise and meditative style that is fully Martin’s own. If museumgoers are inspired by the show—as accolades from the New York Times and Artnet indicate they will be—they have something in common with the creative team at cult fashion label Cos, who took Martin’s work as inspiration for a capsule collection. In collaboration with the Agnes Martin Foundation, Cos has created a 12-piece line whose gridded patterns and precise pleats recall Martin’s singular style. The collection catalog was shot at the Guggenheim, whose white curves make a compelling backdrop to the Martin-inspired clothing.
