- Melissa Sesana
I. Introduction
This essay examines the use of grids and models in the work of Guillermo Kuitca as a way of addressing the relationship between people and space. By studying the use of floor plans, blueprints and maps I wish to draw a connection between Kuitca’s paintings and the literary work of fellow Argentines Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges. Ultimately, I explore how in both disciplines models and grids function as symbols of memory, isolation, exile and the human condition.
I. Introduction
This essay examines the use of grids and models in the work of Guillermo Kuitca as a way of addressing the relationship between people and space. By studying the use of floor plans, blueprints and maps I wish to draw a connection between Kuitca’s paintings and the literary work of fellow Argentines Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges. Ultimately, I explore how in both disciplines models and grids function as symbols of memory, isolation, exile and the human condition.
II. The Grid and the Model
The role of the grid in modern art is contentious. Its initial appearance in fifteenth-century studies of perspective established its role as an intermediary between art and science. After a period of hibernation the grid resurfaced in the 1900s not as a tool for perfecting the pictorial recreation of reality but rather as a central subject matter within painting itself. Influenced by Cubism, the rigid geometry of intersecting vertical and horizontal lines that dominated the De Stijl and Russian Constructivist movements – spearheaded by Piet Mondrian and Theo Van Doesburg, and Kazimir Malevich and Aleksandr Rodchenko respectively – came together under the umbrella term of geometric abstraction.[1] This tradition went on to permeate, and perhaps give rise to, subsequent movements in modern and contemporary art, including Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Conceptualism.
In her seminal essay “Grids”, Rosalind Krauss focuses on the ubiquity and purpose of the grid in modern art. Originally published in October in 1979, Krauss pinpoints the grid as the emblem of modernist ambition, stating that, “the grid announces, among other things, modern art’s will to silence, its hostility to literature, to narrative, to discourse.”[2] Throughout the first part of the text Krauss stresses the extent to which the grid represents an obstacle and thus a rupture between visual art and language and as such has impeded artistic development.[3] She goes on to claim that the grid is that which art becomes when it turns its back to nature, fostering work that is “antinatural, antimimetic, antireal.”[4]
The role of the grid in modern art is contentious. Its initial appearance in fifteenth-century studies of perspective established its role as an intermediary between art and science. After a period of hibernation the grid resurfaced in the 1900s not as a tool for perfecting the pictorial recreation of reality but rather as a central subject matter within painting itself. Influenced by Cubism, the rigid geometry of intersecting vertical and horizontal lines that dominated the De Stijl and Russian Constructivist movements – spearheaded by Piet Mondrian and Theo Van Doesburg, and Kazimir Malevich and Aleksandr Rodchenko respectively – came together under the umbrella term of geometric abstraction.[1] This tradition went on to permeate, and perhaps give rise to, subsequent movements in modern and contemporary art, including Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Conceptualism.
In her seminal essay “Grids”, Rosalind Krauss focuses on the ubiquity and purpose of the grid in modern art. Originally published in October in 1979, Krauss pinpoints the grid as the emblem of modernist ambition, stating that, “the grid announces, among other things, modern art’s will to silence, its hostility to literature, to narrative, to discourse.”[2] Throughout the first part of the text Krauss stresses the extent to which the grid represents an obstacle and thus a rupture between visual art and language and as such has impeded artistic development.[3] She goes on to claim that the grid is that which art becomes when it turns its back to nature, fostering work that is “antinatural, antimimetic, antireal.”[4]