Through my position as an IMAF Drawing Centre Assistant in London’s Courtauld Gallery, I was given the opportunity to curate a works on paper display to accompany a major Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson exhibition, Mondrian || Nicholson, In Parallel. The theme (the “grid”) and the centrepiece (Linda Karshan’s Untitled, 1995 ) were predetermined, and my role was to compose a coherent display on the grid using works from the Courtauld drawing and print collection that reflected the theme while also complementing Karshan’s impressive graphite “grid” drawing.

Figure 1. Linda Karshan, Untitled, 1995. Graphite on Paper.

The resulting display, entitled Lines Crossed: Grids + Rhythms on Paper, contains 17 works on paper that reveal different ways the grid has emerged from the 16th century to today. I have found the experience of preparing this exhibition to be incredibly rewarding, and thought it would be apt to post an article I have written on the display…even though it isn’t exactly suitable for a Travel Blog! This article is part of a Courtauld Gallery teachers’ resource pack, and is therefore intended for all levels of readership.

Just a few preliminary notes: This is written in the Queen’s English and all images not included in the article are linked to the Courtauld Gallery collection website. The information on the objects on display as written about in my article is based on current research and may not be entirely consistent with Courtauld Gallery website (which will be updated soon).

Lines Crossed: Grids + Rhythms on Paper

“Measure is the basis of beauty.” Plato

A grid is defined as a network of repeated horizontal and vertical lines that cross each other to form a series of squares or rectangles. “Lines Crossed” interprets this definition while investigating how the grid establishes proportion and balance, and helps create and measure space in drawings and prints from the Courtuald Collection. The display contains seventeen works dating from the 16th to the 21st century and represents both preliminary drawings and fully finished works. The pieces are grouped into five different categories corresponding to the various ways in which the grid has emerged in art production and include: mechanical, perspectival, design, narrative, and mise en page. This essay will explain each of the categories in more detail while elaborating on the works themselves.

Linda Karshan’s Untitled (Fig. 1) serves as an aesthetic and conceptual bridge between Mondrian || Nicholson and “Lines Crossed”. All three artists portray grid forms in their work – but to different ends. Mondrian’s compositions display a more apparent grid through the intersection of black lines on the surface of a predominantly white canvas. Nicholson was more involved with rectilinear shapes in space– or the square created by the grid. Karshan’s grid is not an appropriated or intentional form but instead, a manifestation of her internal rhythm; the marks she makes on the page correspond to the reach of her arm. Each artist also placed importance on the connection between rhythmic body movements (dance, sport, and heart beat) and art making and felt that keen natural intuition was key for successfully balancing their grid compositions. Mondrian specifically theorised that in order to produce a successful composition, all of the components of the image – each vertical and horizontal line, colour plane, and negative space – must be equally dominant in order to reach, what he termed, “dynamic equilibrium”. The importance of rhythm and movement in Mondrian and Nicholson’s work is further discussed in Christopher Green’s entry in the Mondrian || Nicholson catalogue.

Art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss’s 1979 article “Grids” defines the grid within a Modernist, 20th century lens and describes it as an unnatural, non-narrative, stagnant structure. This provides an alternative definition of the grid as being an intentional, solitary form that developed in abstract art as a result of society’s attempts to scientifically organise and classify the natural word. While appropriate to consider in context to Mondrian || Nicholson, the majority of the works within this display do not fall within Krauss’ relatively contemporary scope.

Mechanical Grid: Squaring

Squaring is a transfer method where a measured grid is drawn on top of a preliminary drawing. The grid on a drawing proportionally matches a grid made on the final surface onto which the drawing will be transferred. The grid acts as a guide for where to place elements of the drawn composition on the final surface and is not a direct or exact transfer method. In squaring, the grid truly is a tool, an objective mechanism that guides two-dimensional replication. Mechanical squaring is still used today and the long history of the method can be traced back to the 18th Egyptian Dynasty (1550-1292 BCE), where sketches on papyrus, stone, or wood were transferred to the wall and painted. While squaring drawings presents one method of transfer for painting, squaring compositional drawings are often associated with the process of producing large-scale works such as frescoes, murals, and tapestries.

The 16th century depiction of Jonah and the Whale represents the most traditional and widespread application of the squaring grid in preparatory drawing. It is a completed composition that the artist invented and developed from imagination; it does not represent an actual event. The image derives from a popular biblical narrative and portrays the moment at which the repentant Jonah is ejected from the belly of the whale. In the background, Christ is shown resurrecting from the tomb – a miracle that Jonah’s story is commonly thought to foreshadow. As was common practise in the Renaissance, a carefully composed drawing such as this one would likely be drawn by a master artist while the actual transfer might have been undertaken by a member of the artist’s workshop.

Figure 2. Gasper van Wittel, View of Tivoli, 1700-1710. Graphite and ink on paper.

In both Gasper van Wittel’s View of Tivoli, 1700-10 (figure 2), and Frank Auerbach’s Studies for Oxford Street, 1957-59, the images represent observed landscape and urban scenes and are associated with finished paintings. These drawings are not a part of the same workshop tradition as the earlier Jonah composition and the artists themselves would have likely undertaken the actual process of transferring the sketches to the painting surface.

Squaring is the clearest use of a pure grid in the display and the only example where the grid bears no significance to the formation of the drawing it is transferring – it is purely a tool. The squaring grid places an objective measurement on top of a subjective image. In the process of transferring, the image will lose its coherence and each square of the grid will acts as an individual piece of the compositional puzzle. The grid then gives order to an otherwise complicated transfer process.

Perspective Grid

In a perspective drawing, the artist attempts to create the illusion of three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional image. In mathematical perspective systems, known as linear perspective, the grid acts as an exact measure for determining the relative size of objects as they recede into space. In Circle of Canaletto’s Parlatorium in a Venetian Convent , 18th c, for example, the underlying perspective grid is made clearly visible as structures that establish depth and volume, while simultaneously portraying the balance, proportion and accuracy of single vanishing point linear perspective. Although the Greeks and Romans had devised a perspectival system, the development of linear perspective is attributed to the Florentine painter Filippo Brunelleschi and was described in the writings of Leon Battista Alberti in his 1435 treatise, De Pitura.

Figure 3. Circle of Canaletto, Venetian Nunnery, with linear perspective lines superimposed by the author (Allison Wucher, 2012).

The basic concept for one-point, or single vanishing point, linear perspective is as follows: First the artist must establish a horizontal line that signifies the horizon in the image. The artist picks a vanishing point along the horizon line (typically in the center), and then diagonal lines are drawn from the edges of the picture to the vanishing point. Perpendicular lines are then drawn across the diagonals to create a structural grid that serves to organise the image and determine the scale objects within the illusionistic space. (Figure. 3)

The measured harmony and balance achieved through accurate perspective is exemplified in three of the four works included in this category. Pier Leone Ghezzi’s Palazzo Sacchetti, 1735, and Hans Bol’s Jerusalem, 1575, can be considered a pairing; both use a birds-eye linear one-point perspective to represent extant and celestial architectural formations on the land below. Bol’s representation of Jerusalem as a symmetrical, balanced grid coincides with the description of the holy city in the Book of Revelation, while Ghezzi’s drawing records an actual villa in the seaside city of Ostia, outside of Rome, built by architect Pietro da Cortona from 1626-9. The symmetry of the villa itself corresponds to ideals of Italian Renaissance and Baroque architecture while also incorporating functional fortification elements necessary to fend off occasional pirate attacks. The grid of the palazzo’s layout is one of aesthetic and functional design.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Gothic Arch, Etching on Paper

In opposition to Bol, Ghezzi, and Circle of Canaletto, the etching Gothic Arch (Fig 4) by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from his series of sixteen etchings titled Invenzeioni Carpricci di Carceri (or Invention of Imaginary Prisons, 1745), presents a disorientating architectural calamity. The balance and measurement of linear perspective is ignored and there is no perspectival grid recessing into the distance. Instead, Piranesi created “impossible objects”, where the multiple corridors and brick archways produce an irrational, vast space without indication of a vanishing point. The Gothic Arch is summed up well by art historian Malcolm Campbell, who stated that the cacophony of architectural elements, “…conspire to underscore Piranesi’s assault on perspectival convention and to mock our ocular – and intellectual – efforts to rationalise this space as ‘real’ architecture.” The grid within the Gothic Arch is seen in the repetition of architectural forms that are informed by accurate perspective but actively avoid following it.

Design Grid

The grid, as a network of horizontal and vertical lines, is the underlying structure necessary for coherently organising and drafting preliminary, instructional designs for the production of material objects. In this context, the grid is the objective foundation from which the innovation of design is developed. The grid reflects the physical and structural restrictions necessary to produce a functional object, and it is scaled proportionately to the size and shape of the final product. Of the design drawings in this display, three are plans for ceiling ornaments, and one is a decorative design for a domestic object.
While the origin of architectural design drawings can be found in ancient Greece, it could be argued that technical architectural drawings, specifically those based in geometrically accurate scaling and proportion became common in the Gothic period. Design drawings were then further developed with linear perspective during the Renaissance. Technical drawings of luxury objects run parallel to the history of architectural drawings and there are many examples of extant design proposals for commissioned objects from Renaissance workshops. However, when considering the grid as a design element it can certainly be found in prehistoric civilisations that incorporated geometric design into their adornment and possessions.

The three ceiling designs (by James Thornhill, Alfred Stevens, and another attributed to Marco Pino) on display all have unique characteristics but their common feature, besides the fact that they are all ceilings, is that they elaborate upon the ornamental embellishments of a larger structure. The fourth design, a tray design from the Omega Workshop, is different in that it presents a design for an entire object. However its function, similar to that of the ceiling designs, is to describe a decorative surface design rather than the construction of the object itself.

Narrative Grid

The narrative grid utilises vertical and horizontal lines to divide a single page into multiple pictorial spaces that can be viewed together, regardless of whether or not the series of scenes are narrative. The grid organises the space and provides an elegant solution to static pictorial imagery by enabling artists to not only portray a sequence of events across a single page, but also use different sized boxes within the grid to create a hierarchy of relative importance. The history of narrative art can be considered the history of art itself and the partition of a single surface in order to create narratives has continued through the centuries. The use of narrative friezes and scenes are found in Ancient Egypt and Greece, a more grid-like formation of space is seen in early Christian frescoes and icons, and continued into illustrations of biblical texts and interior decorative painting in the Renaissance. Today, we can see the narrative grid the most clearly in mediums like comic books, but the grid as a way of organising space is also visible in the typographical design of websites.

Of the two examples of Narrative Grid on display neither is an example of a continuous narrative “storyboard”, but both function as part of larger narrative publications. The first is a preliminary drawing for an engraving by Johann Jakob von Sandrart, 1680s, and represents half a page of scenes from the Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles. Because this drawing is intended as a design for an engraved print, the images are actually reversed. When printed, the image reads as a partially chronological sequence of events from the Book of Kings (the top row depicts chapters 23-25 of the second Book of Kings) and the Books of Chronicles (the bottom row shows chapters 20 and 10 from the second Book of Chronicles and chapter 22 from the first Book). The purpose of these images was to perhaps remind the readers of the most important events from each of these chapters. The decorative, faux architectural elements framing each of the scenes provide windows into the individual pictorial spaces, while also allocating a small space for the corresponding biblical verses to be written (the small rectangular boxes beneath each image contains a verse in the final print). The grid here allows for illusionistic and flat, two-dimensional space to coexist.

Anton Joseph Prenner and Frans van Stampart, Prodromus page 24, 1735. Engraving on paper.

The other example of narrative grid is in Frans van Stampart and Anton Joseph von Prenner’s engraved page from the Prodromus (Figure 5), 1735, which is an early type of presentation catalogue reproducing highlights from the Imperial Habsburg collection installed in the Stallburg Gallery in Vienna. Prodromus means “introduction,” and, as such, this publication offered an introduction to the collection. The Prodromus is directly linked to a tradition established by David Teniers who “originated” the illustrated catalogue through the publication of engraved reproductions from Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s Italian collection in his Theatrum Pictorium, 1660. These same Italian works became part of the extensive and significant Habsburg collection, and were again reproduced in the Prodromus. The orientation of the paintings in the engraving is completely fictive, but the Prodromus still reflects the installation style of the 17th century, which was to blanket the entire wall with as many objects as possible. Rigid symmetry and balance were also ideal when hanging paintings, so much in fact that many were ruthlessly “formatized”, meaning they were either cut down or another piece of canvas was stuck onto them, to allow them to fit the trend of symmetrical hanging. Of the Stallburg collection, 40% of the pieces were apparently “formatized” in this manner. Also, paintings were hung with consideration for how their pictorial space related to neighbouring paintings. For example, two pieces with figures that were scaled in differently, or had conflicting horizon lines would not be hung next to each other.

The Prodromus page reflects the same ideals and considerations of hanging a physical gallery, but only represents the most important objects in the collection. The central image depicting Explosion from the Garden is flanked by two reproductions of paintings based on Michelangelo’s famed presentation drawings, The Dream (in the Courtauld Collection) and The Rape of Ganymede, and is topped by Titian’s Rape of Europa, now in the National Gallery. The grid used in the Prodromus is created by the frames around the paintings and allows them to be organised, categorised, and recorded in a systematic and coherent way. The grid is not narrative in the sense that it delineates a series of events, but instead narrates trends in picture collecting and the history of these paintings as significant objects worthy of reproduction and distribution.

Mise en Page: Compositional Grid

Mise en Page is French for “placement on the page”, and describes the way an artist lays out forms across a two dimensional surface. It is applied specifically to drawings that are not worked up into a full composition but are rather an assortment of multiple doodles floating in space. It is argued that Mise en page originated in the late 15th century when paper became more widely available and drawing developed into a process of artistic invention and freedom rather than a necessary technical step for the design of paintings (squaring), luxury objects, or architecture (design drawings). By the 18th century Mise en page was an aesthetic ideal that was perfected by Late-Baroque French artists. The term Mise en page in the context of this display describes works where the placement of forms on the page is not bound by a visible structure and instead appears to be purely intuitive. However, the grid is still intimated, especially in the Stefano Della Bella Studies of Animals, mid-17th c, and the Sheet of  Nine Figure Studies attributed to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, mid-18th c, in how the forms are composed in an orderly, balanced, equally spaced manner across the page. It is as if a grid frame is invisibly transcribed onto the negative space in the image, creating boundaries between Della Bella’s Animals and Piranesi’s Figures. The function of both of these sheets is perhaps as a collection of models to be used as minor characters in the engravings by the respective artists.

Workshop of Charles Le Brun, Figure Studies. Chalk on Paper.

The Figure Studies by the Workshop of Charles Le Brun, mid-17th c, (Figure 6) suggests the grid in a slightly different way than Della Bella and Piranesi. This drawing could either be a page of practise sketches or a result of the artist working out aspects of a composition. The grid in this drawing is enacted through the rhythm of repeated forms across the page. Within the drawing there seem to be couplets of forms; two outstretched arms grasping a cloth, two female busts with their elbows held high and forefingers grazing their lips, two thumbs clutching fabric. The artist is searching for the perfection proportion and placement in their renderings and rather than erasing or throwing away the paper, they simply repeat the form and draw another line.

The Le Brun Workshop Studies is very much connected to Linda Karshan’s Untitled, 1995 (Figure 1). Karshan’s drawing is also a search for balance and perfection, but instead of searching through figurative renderings, her drawing is an expression of her own body’s rhythm and measurements. The drawing was made by marking the page as she literally walked around it, turning each corner after counting to eight, a count that represents her internal tempo. Each line Karshan draws corresponds to the reach of her arm and the placement of the lines is a reflection of her body’s position in relation to the page. Nothing is measured using a ruler or external tool. Every line drawn is deliberate and aims at accurately transcribing her body’s balance and proportion onto the surface. The final product of her movements reveals the form of a grid. Karshan, like the Le Brun Workshop Studies, did not intend to produce this exact image, this is just the image that came out of her creative movements.

Mise en page seems to reveal a true compositional grid; an innate tendency artists have for placing forms on a sheet that always seem to reflect the nature of the grid as a repetitive, organising, underlying structure that balances and makes sense of the image on the page.

-Allison Wucher, 2012.

Bibliography:

Krauss, Rosalind, “Grids”, from October, Vol.9, 1979
De Baranano, Kosme, Linda Karshan, Institut Valencia D’Art Modern, Valencia, 2002