“Perhaps it is because of this sense of a beginning, a fresh start, a ground zero, that artist after artist has taken up the grid as the medium within which to work, always taking it up as though he were just discovering it, as though the origin he had found by peeling back layer after layer of representation to come at last to this schematized reduction, this graph-paper ground, were his origin, and his finding it an act of originality. Waves of abstract artists “discover” the grid; part of its structure one could say is that in its revelatory character it is always a new, a unique discovery.”

Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avante-Garde and Other Modernist Myths

“For those for whom art begins in a kind of originary purity, the grid was emblematic of the sheer disinterestedness of the work of art, its absolute purposelessness, from which it derived the promise of its autonomy. We hear this sense of the originary essence of art when Schwitters insists, “Art is a primordial concept, exalted as the godhead, inexplicable as life, indefinable and without purpose.” And the grid facilitated this sense of being born into the newly evacuated space of an aesthetic purity and freedom.”

Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avante-Garde and Other Modernist Myths

“The absolute stasis of the grid, its lack of hierarchy, of center, of inflection, emphasizes not only its anti-referential character, but — more importantly — its hostility to narrative. This structure, impervious both to time and to incident, will not permit the projection of language into the domain of the visual, and the result is silence.”

“And just as the grid is a stereotype that is constantly being paradoxically re-discovered, it is, as a further paradox, a prison in which the caged artist feels at liberty. For what is striking about the grid is that while it is most effective as a badge of freedom, it is extremely restrictive in the actual exercise of freedom. Without doubt the most formulaic construction that could possibly be mapped on a plane surface, the grid is also highly inflexible. Thus just as no one could claim to have invented it, so once one is involved in deploying it, the grid is extremely difficult to use in the service of invention.”

Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avante-Garde and Other Modernist Myths

“We have already seen that the avant-garde artist above all claims originality as his right — his birthright, so to speak. With his own self as the origin of his work, that production will have the same uniqueness as he; the condition of his own singularity will guarantee the originality of what he makes. Having given himself this warrant, he goes on, in the example we are looking at, to enact his originality in the creation of grids. Yet as we have seen, not only is he — artist x, y, or z — not the inventor of the grid, but no one can claim this patent: the copyright expired sometime in antiquity and for many centuries this figure has been in the public domain.

Structurally, logically, axiomatically, the grid can only be repeated. And, with an act of repetition or replication as the “original” occasion of its usage within the experience of a given artist, the extended life of the grid in the unfolding progression of his work will be one of still more repetition, as the artist engages in repeated acts of self-imitation. That so many generations of twentieth century artists should have maneuvered themselves into this particular position of paradox — where they are condemned to repeating, as if by compulsion, the logically fraudulent original — is truly compelling.”

Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avante-Garde and Other Modernist Myths