Last week Liz and I enjoyed a trip to the Hood Museum of Art. Among the exhibits we saw was a wonderful collection of work related to “grids.” It was a fascinating way to “frame” cubism and see the influence of the grid on much of modern art.
When abstracted, the parts of the building lose their original purpose and relationships and become simple shapes related in new ways.
Just minutes before, while sitting outside in the sun, I’d been looking at the exterior of the building, framing up various sections in the viewfinder. While I recognize there can be dangers in seeing the world as a series of 2×3 rectangles, I confess I often enjoy the resulting simplicity and order that it brings to the world.
The smaller views, like the bricks in this building, work together to make the whole. I find particularly enjoyable seeing the contrast between the building’s rectangles and shapes and abstractions of the surrounding natural world—trees and clouds in this case.
While I don’t pretend to have perfected segmenting scenes like this into grids, it is a concept I’ve explored for years and look forward doing more with in both the built and natural environments.
