Abstract:
Hannah Higgins suggests that the grid is, “the dominant mythological form of modern life - a visualization of modernity’s faith in rational thought and industrial progress comprising everything from the urban landscape to the power grid, from modernist painting to the forms of modern physics.” In fact, it could be argued that in our daily lives we are surrounded by, and have constructed, grid-like forms as a way to conduct our entire existence. I will be looking at the complex and contradictory relationship that the grid has with nature, and how it has been used by artists since the early 20th Century to look for a deeper understanding of the world that we inhabit as well as to construct specifically modern paintings.