Elizabeth Harris Gallery

Thornton Willis at Elizabeth Harris

WHAT WE LIKE TO CALL THE “MODERNIST GRID” is really not modern at all. It is the application to painting of a structural pattern that is so ancient it can almost be thought of, in Platonic terms, as an Ideal Form. Grid patterns determine the layout of streets in antiquity on different continents. The grid template shaped Indus Valley town planning in the third century B.C.E.. It appealed to the Greeks and Romans. Ancient Mexican builders used it; so did the Chinese and Korean. Continue Reading