Art Using a Grid
By grid, we mean something like graph paper with horizontal and vertical lines equally spaced. A grid gives stability and structure -- qualities artists desire in their work. Successful paintings have been made with equal cells and uniform color within each cell but at this time we will look at more varied works freely based on a grid.
The German artist Paul Klee made a journey, together with fellow artists August Macke and Louis Moilliet, to Tunisia in 1914 and was impressed with the culture and colors of the region. He was so carried away by the light and color that he wrote "Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has a hold of me forever... Color and I are one.”
When he came home, even years afterward, he painted abstractly based on that experience. Some of his related watercolors were slightly less abstract, including abstracted Arab shape associations of plants and architecture. Please look at one of those called Southern Gardens from 1919. You can see some cells but also departures from a complete uniform grid plus some small figures -- plants.
This painting illustrates one of Klee’s practices. He mounted the watercolor painting on top of another paper acting as substrate. That way he could write the date and name below, not on the painting.
Now, please look at a Klee work from 1930, called Rhythmic. It only has three colors, white, gray, and black, but has an unusual sense of slanted depth and ruggedness. The cells look distorted or rumply. You could imagine the display as white cubes on a black background with light coming from the right.
Klee used unusual materials at times and also mounted artworks done on paper onto some other material like cloth or a different paper serving as substrate.
Most of the time that procedure worked out well. Somehow in this case the reddish brown background can be questioned, but we don’t know if the background has shifted color from the original.
It is hard to tell what background would look better. Even experts try different choices of background, mat or no mat, and type of frame.
Here is another consideration. Even if you were convinced a different background would look better, if you changed it, the work would lose authenticity ‒ and price.
Art Market
Speaking of price, a watercolor painting by Klee, with full verifiable provenance, called Raumarchitekturen from 1915 was auctioned at Christie’s in London in 2012 for 713,250 pounds, that is roughly one million dollars. Most paintings that sell for a high price are much larger than this Klee painting, which is only 7 ⅞ by 6 ¾ inches.
So, Klee might be one of the very top earners on a square inch basis.
Bass Relief Open Grid
In a previous post, we saw a sculptural relief in the form of a grid, by the Dutch artist Jan Schoonhoven. Similarly, the German artist Klaus Staudt made a comparable work except it uses open frames set at various angles which cast shadows onto the light background.
Because of the varying tilt of the frames, it has a more casual appearance ‒ the tilts even look random. Due to the lightness
and openness of the components do you think the use of a thin frame a distance away from the array was a good idea?
Lyrical Image in Each Cell
Back to painting – each grid cell doesn’t need to be of a single color, in fact you can really loosen up and have different figures inside each cell as was done by Wassily Kandinsky. Note though that the grid cells are of uniform size.
How do you think this would look with uniform, true circles inside the cells? I’ve seen those and they seem rather dull and the strict circularity takes away from the power of the grid. It seems that Kandinsky is treating us to a little Lyrical Abstract picture in each cell. The cells are wonderfully varied, yet give a balanced overall effect. Kandinsky was a great colorist.
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