artnet: Agnes Pelton Went to the Desert in Search of Solace. Her Paintings at the Whitney Show She Found Something Magical There

By Ben Davis, March 13, 2020 Share This Article, Read the full article →

A survey of the spiritual-abstractionist painter's oracular art brings an offbeat brand of enlightenment to New York.

Consider two paintings. One is Mother of Silence (1933), by the early 20th century spiritual-abstractionist painter Agnes Pelton. She is the star of a show that has just arrived at the Whitney Museum, part of a wave of recent interest in experimental art by previously unsung or undersung female artists working in esoteric or occult traditions, a vogue that is currently rewriting how museums approach the history of modern art.

Mother of Silence centers on a cluster of numinous blobs in pale lavender, pink, and turquoise pastels, set off against a red and black background and wreathed by precisely organized whorls of energy. It suggests the form of a seated Buddha. Read the full article →

Installation view of Agnes Pelton, Mother of Silence at the Whitney. Image: Ben Davis.