The late 1960s and early 1970s, when Fishman and Snyder were finding their “voices” as painters, critical attention was primarily focused on minimalism and conceptual art – painting had been declared “dead” (Cohen). They each moved to New York and were greatly influenced by New York School Abstract Expressionist and Minimalist trends. Fishman completed an MFA in 1965 and Snyder in 1966. Louise Fishman and Joan Snyder are two artists who have used the grid extensively over the course of their careers in ways that demonstrate the developmental and narrative potential of the grid.įishman and Snyder were born a year apart in 19 respectively and both came of age artistically during the in the late 1960s and 1970s. Though the grid may “resist” development, it has proven to be productive ground for artists who have used the grid as a structure and as a convention to adapt to their own expressive requirements. As the experience of Mondrian amply demonstrates, development is precisely what the grid resists (Krauss 9).” In her 1978 essay, "Grids," Rosalind Krauss puzzles over the ubiquity of the grid in modern art, saying, “It is not just the sheer number of careers that have been devoted to the exploration of the grid that is impressive, but the fact that never could exploration have chosen less fertile ground. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Mythsĭevelopment of the grid in the work of Louise Fishman and Joan Snyder "The grid is an emblem of modernity by being just that: the form that is ubiquitous in the art of our century." – Rosalind E.