Rectangle after Rectangle (2018)

Saturated with color, the repeated, curvilinear shape of these shields forms the keynote of the composition, contesting the rectilinearity of the frame.7

With the triumph of the rectilinear codex over the curvilinear scroll and the corresponding ascendance of the rectangular picture format, the picture became a binary structure of accommodation and resistance to the rectangle. The straight line was now the accommodating, and therefore unmarked, term; the curved line the resistant, marked term.8 Though every picture housed in a rectangular codex is structured this way, throughout the history of manuscript illumination, battle scenes in particular have capitalized on this arrangement. The depiction of the Battle of Hastings in the manuscript Vie de seint Auban (The Life of Saint Alban), written and illustrated by Matthew Paris almost eight centuries after the Milan Iliad, once again pits curves against straights: here, shield, head, and rump against frame and piercing lance.

Source: www.cabinetmagazine.org