The progressive tipping and enclosure of space can be observed in the sequence of works leading up to this one, a strategy that parallels modernist tendencies toward pictorial abstraction accompanied by spatial flattening.
It has been suggested that Dutch Old Master Rembrandt may have been stereoblind, which would have aided him in flattening what he saw for the production of 2D works.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana, flooding and flattening most of New Orleans and displacing Barbara and Rosa Hawkins, who subsequently relocated to Florida.
By measuring the length of the arc, Maupertuis' team was able to prove that the Earth is, indeed, flattened at the poles as sir Isaac Newton had predicted.