On view through September 4
Agatha Bennett (American, 1919–2006), Cross in Square and Bear Paw—Nine-Block Variation, ca. 1985, cotton, cotton/polyester blend, cotton knit, and corduroy, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, museum purchase and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Collection, 2017.34. © Estate of Agatha Bennett/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The grid—a geometric form of intersecting vertical and horizontal lines—has for more than fifty years been recognized for its iconic presence in twentieth-century art. Art critics such as Rosalind Krauss and Jonathan Elderfield began writing about the prominence of grids in the 1970s, referring to the form’s ubiquity in the work of such artists as Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, and Frank Stella.
Although this exhibition highlights works by those artists in the High’s collection, it also presents them alongside artists who played “off” notions of the grid in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The exhibition surveys the High’s diverse collecting areas, offering unprecedented juxtapositions of works by artists from a variety of cultural backgrounds, unified conceptually by their interest in grids. Ultimately, the exhibition not only confirms the grid as a dominant force in twentieth-century art but also expands this notion beyond canonical minimalist and abstract artists to include a more diverse group of artists working in a wide array of media.
