The Writings of Mary Martin
Can what an artist writes influence how we respond to their work?
Do we need an explanation, a key? We know that Mary Martin’s constructions are not decorative and do not look like architectural detail. They have a unique presence and take their place in the world with power and confidence. The way they were made, using systems of proportion and rhythm can be described only after they have been made. They do not pre-exist. They are paradoxical. Mary Martin’s writing tells us that she admired the architecture of Le Corbusier, in particular his use of scale and proportion; and the choreography of Merce Cunningham who transforms everyday movement into dance.
The artist and the philosopher pursue reality
or essence.
The philosopher expresses it and the artist creates it.
Mary Martin felt strongly that all information necessary to respond to a work of art should be contained within it and that words can be dangerous. She wanted the story of how her work had been made to be clear to the person looking at it through intrinsic qualities of construction. She wrote little and usually in response to requests for information. Occasionally she wrote as a way of making her ideas clearer to herself. She made three attempts, all abandoned, to pin down her thoughts about proportion, rhythm and measurement. Thoughts which are so apparent in the reality of her reliefs.
She clearly enjoyed writing a short memoir of her time as a student at Goldsmiths and at school. Her art teacher had previously taught Barbara Hepworth and Mary Martin mentions that the first work of Barbara Hepworth’s that she saw was an illustration of gnomes and toadstools. This is a rare autobiographical
fragment. Her concern was not with her identity or her feelings but was with the certainties, as she saw them, that informed her work. However she wanted to make plain that adherence to principles is to give expression to ideas and not an end in itself. She emphasised the unexpected and the need to make decisions and remain inventive throughout the process.
Of the process of construction itself she wrote that it is,
A thinking making process, not necessarily in three dimensions.
Internal logic is the key.
the success of such a process is wholly dependent on a right choice of symbols. The choice is based on intuition and experience.
She was at pains to counter a view of her work as impersonal,
In the mechanics of art precision is essential to expressiveness. I mean precision of choice not dry academic precision… experience shows that, in many things, precision is the property of the hand rather than the machine.
The Waterfall describes her search for a symbol as a starting point for a screen she was to make at the surgical unit at Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast. Consideration of a recurring squiggle, that she found appearing on drawings she had made on the spot, took her on a meandering journey through connected ideas to a conclusion which seems both logical and inevitable once the end is reached.
by Hilary Lane
(Mary Martin quotes in italics)
Mary Martin
Perspex Group on Red (C), 1969
Mary Martin
Expanding form, 1955
Maquette for The Waterfall, 1957