There were a few questions about how a grid of lines could be considered art, because Martin's work seems more mathematical than artistic. But couldn't any painting be broken down into lines and shapes? Some Cubist and Futurist paintings are blatantly composed of geometric shapes, but any painting is on some level nothing more than a collection of shapes of color. Being visually simple shouldn't disqualify Martin's work as art. Could her work even be considered "representational" in some ways, where she is representing the imaginary concept of infinity?


Something that surprised me in the reading was Fer's mentioning of gender: "To Martin, there was nothing particularly feminine about her metaphysics [...] On the contrary, she identified with that most serious masculine tradition of metaphysics"(456). It seemed out of place, in writing about infinity, to even mention femininity, and especially pointless to say that her metaphysics isn't feminine. This statement raises all kinds of questions about the difference between feminine and masculine metaphysics, and what that has to do with anything. Fey doesn't explain that statement, but brings gender up again in the conclusion: "I am not suggesting [...] that we should establish an exclusive lineage of women artists"(462). Why bother to make that statement? If she had written about men artists influencing each other, would she have made a disclaimer about establishing an exclusive lineage of men artists?