On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print

This exhibition surveys the rich permanent collection of the Loeb Art Center. It presents a study of the grid in European and North American art and visual culture as a pervasive form that has structured perception from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Visible and invisible grids govern the materiality and composition of photography, printmaking, and typography in the name of objectivity and transparency. Both intentionally and subconsciously, the modern eye has been trained to see the world through grids. Artists have long wrestled with the assumed neutrality of the grid by experimenting with optical illusion, thematizing perception, and transgressing boundaries of text and image and between mediums. While Minimalists celebrated the grid as pure form, postmodern and contemporary artists—especially women, immigrants, people of color, and queer artists—have rejected or reclaimed the grid. By denying homogenous, objective vision, many artists instead embrace abstraction as an expression of subjectivity and self-liberation.

There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.