Mondrian References

This section, was started in September 2001 after finding (and paying for) a fascinating article on the Northernlight site. Any articles or interesting insights into Mondrian and his works I come across will be collected here. Some (particularly mine) are more frivolous than others.

I happened upon a paper on generating Mondrians. Here's the paper and the appendices, page 1 and page 2.

There used to be, somewhere in these pages, a reference to a chap who liked throw up over modern art and opened his account with a Mondrian. The story might have gone with the rewrite as the source page link has died, or I might find it again. No matter, as the story resurfaced in The Independent as part of a series on Art attacks: From vomiting on Mondrian to elbowing a Picasso. The text runs,

Nauseous pretension
In 1996 a 22-year-old Toronto art student vomited over Piet Mondrian's Composition with Red and Blue which was hanging in New York's Museum of Modern Art. Despite gallery officials dismissing it as "an unfortunate incident" the student, Jubal Brown, said he intentionally defaced the painting. He later consumed red food colouring and gave a repeat performance all over a work by Raoul Dufy at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

That's the picture used to illustrate the Independent article, but the subject is more likely to have been B239. I am trying to confirm that. [Aug 2011] The painting in the Independent's photograph is B216, easily identified using the new Blackburn-Mondrian Index.

In a 2009 Independent article, Tom Lubbock analyses Composition in White, Black and Red, 1936 (B269) and wonders whether PM's style could be automated.

In May 2010, Tate Modern celebrated its 10th annniversary and Radio 4's frontrow played a piece in which John Wilson reminisced with Lars Nittve (the first director) about an interview before it opened when they were wandering around TM and came upon the first picture to be hung, a Mondrian. Here's the clip.
I emailed the program in an effort to find out which Mondrian it was, but no reply. So it goes. This link might show the Mondrians in the current Tate collections and the image below shows those at the time of writing: it was, presumably, one of those. I would like to think it was Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935.

In July 2010, Jazz Line-Up on BBC Radio 3 broadcast a performance of the late John Dankworth's Million $ Collection, a ten-movement jazz piece, each based on a particular painting. I cannot claim to like this era of jazz, I don't think the band was at its best and I failed to discern a link between music and paintings or much difference between the movements themselves (but what do I know?), nevertheless here's the Mondrian movement and some introductory comments

There are three players in this story, each of whom has given permission for me to mention it. It is told here in full in a transcript of a radio broadcast, but I will give a potted version. It starts with Dr Alan Lee from Flinders U.[the link has died], South Australia who had delivered a paper on the random generation of Mondrianesque compositions and the difficulties professionals in the art world found in distinguishing his fakes from the real thing. Details were published on the magazine Nature (415, 961, 28 Feb 2002).

Following 9/11, Kenneth Baker, the art critic on The San Francisco Chronicle, suggested to readers that "they might find solace for the trauma of the events of September 11 by contemplating a Mondrian painting that had been recently acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art". He drew parallels between Mondrian's state of mind (after leaving London for New York during the Blitz) and those affected by 9/11. Didier de Fontaine, a physicist working at the University of California, responded to the article, taking issue with some of KB's phraseology, contacted Alan Lee and gave Kenneth Baker the test. The entertaining correspondence can be seen here.

And yet, by a strange coincidence, on 10th September 2002, two UK newspapers, The Guardian and the Independent (the two most reliable UK daily newspapers) published an article suggesting a contrary point of view, that punters can tell a Mondrian from a Moondrain.

Chris McManus, psychologist at University College, London, adjusted some Mondrian's (as right) and asked his subjects to identify which is the real one. A majority (55-60%) got it right.

Chris has given permission for me to make his paper available (there will be a pdf file along in due course), suggested this link for information on a TV version, and noted that, "Alan Lee and I are corresponding at present to try and work out whether our results are completely incompatible or are just asking subtly different questions". [It would seem that the paper never arrived, NB 2010]

In his paper on Mondrian in Bulletin 29/1977 from the National Gallery of Canada (see here for details and here for the full text), Robert Welsh considers the origin of Double Lines in Mondrian's work. One interesting possibility is that PM was helped towards the idea by the English constructivist painter Marlow Moss (1890-1958). Moss's 1932 painting Composition in White, Black, Red and Grey is shown right. In his footnotes, Welsh notes,

A.H. Nijhoff ("Introduction," ex. cat. Marlow Moss; Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1962, n.p.), a close personal friend of Moss, relates how upon first publicly exhibiting a double-line painting, circa 1930-1931, the artist received a written request for an explanation from Mondrian. Her illustrated reply cited three basic reasons: (1) single lines produce an impression of planar surfaces; (2) single lines render the composition static; and (3). double, or multiple, lines have a dynamic effect by ensuring "a continuity of related and interrelated rhythm in space." Such reasoning certainly would have appealed to Mondrian, whether or not one considers Moss the principal stimulus for Mondrian's adoption in 1932 of the double-line convention (i.e., with S:cc 368); although Composition with Yellow Lines is dated 1933, according to documentation kindly supplied by H. Henkels of the Hague Gemeentemuseum, it was commissioned and presumably begun the previous year, which allows it to be considered the final major "single-line" painting.

There is what looks to be a fascinating book by Ms Moss by Florette Djikstra, reconstructing her works. It is on sale at Amazon (link) and I have a copy on order.

In the excellent Rue du Départ, a book detailing the reconstruction of Mondrian's Paris studio, the recollections of his friend and biographer Michel Seuphor take up one chapter, including the anecdote:

At a certain point he was using colours that were too cheap. He had no money and had to live. As you know, he had a very difficult time . Sometimes Piet went hungry. I know that very well. So, since he had to paint, he bought paints that were too cheap. And in the course of time these have changed colour. Especially the yellow. Mondrian's yellow has become green, the green that he hated. In the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum there's a Mondrian hanging which is called Composition with Green, that's what it says in the catalogue. You can shout it in any way you want to that it's impossible for Piet ever to have made it like that, but they don't believe you. It's yellow that has become green. Pauvre Mondrian!
26 Rue du Départ, p 13

That is a good story, but I am not sure how true it is. The Catalogue Raisonné lists five works at Boymans-van Beuningen and the only Composition is catalogue no. B215, consistently referred to as Composition with Yellow and Blue. The Catalogue only has a B&W image, fig 1. I have added colours in figure 2, copying them from figure 3, the remarkably similar painting of the same name from 1932 (B234).

I have written to the museum asking for comments - no reply after 2 months [or, indeed, after 7 years].

Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery (Building Studies, 5) by Elizabeth Burns Gamard.
German artist Kurt Schwitters began constructing the Merzbau, a combination of collage, sculpture, and architecture, in a corner of his studio in Hannover, Germany in 1920. Also called the Cathedral of Erotic Misery, this was Schwitters's private world. It eventually took over his entire living quarters, the apartment above, and part of the yard, and was divided into rooms-the Biedermeier Room, the de Stijl Room, the Goethe Cave, the Mondrian Cave, and the Mies Cave, among others. It was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in 1943.
Although the Merzbau is of essential importance in understanding the early Modern Movement, this is the first in-depth study in English of this structure. Elizabeth Burns Gamard discusses its physical evolution and its significance within the artist's oeuvre. She also investigates its larger relation to German Expressionism and romanticism and to critical thought of the time. This book offers an in-depth analysis of a single structure through original documents, drawings, and critical examination of the design process.

John is a versatile artist and insightful commentator. Click here for his comments on VBW, then explore his work. He claims to be influenced by the Great PM, "My own work is infused with Mondrian, though it doesn't appear to be", and has promised a contribution for Homages. I do love the word venal, especially when used so appropriately.

A Northernlight search turned up an excellent chap by the name of Richard Speer whose considerable admiration for PM is exceeded by his devotion to the philosophy of Objectivism founded by Ayn Rand. Unfortunately, Objectivism in its stated form rejected PM's work and so Richard set out to reconcile the two:

soon after I discovered Mondrian, I realized with dismay that his art is incompatible with Ayn Rand's explicit aesthetic treatise, The Romantic Manifesto, in which she issues a blanket condemnation of all non-representational art. To me, this seemed at odds with other writings by Rand which embrace concepts of abstract linearity.
I could not accept this conflict and set out to bridge the dichotomy. The task was one of two great intellectual projects that consumed me during my college years. (The other was a critique of Rand's explicit and implicit views on gender and sexuality and a corollary monograph positing a link between sexual orientation and psycho-epistemology.) The product of my efforts to reconcile neoplasticism and Objectivism was a 1991 monograph entitled "Mondrian and Metonymy,"

The full artile is here. Note his statement that 'the original paper was written when my artistic and philosophic interests were narrow and very much in development. It does not accurately reflect my current aesthetic..

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- When Piet Mondrian traveled from London to New York in 1940, the energy of Manhattan inspired him. He decided to revise 17 paintings he had completed in Europe, and began scraping away old paint, adding new lines and colors, and inscribing two sets of dates on each one. After he died, however, all those changes made Mondrian's work a little confusing. Experts had no way of knowing what the paintings originally looked like, and little hope of finding out. Now they do.

Mondrian: The Trans-Atlantic Paintings, which opens Saturday at Harvard University's Busch-Reisinger Museum and runs through July 22, examines those paintings using technologically sophisticated tools including ultraviolet light, infrared light, X-rays and digital imaging.The exhibit allows visitors to compare the original and final versions of 11 of the 17 paintings. Kermit Champa, who teaches the history of art and architecture at Brown University and who is author of "Mondrian Studies," said that the high-tech research provides groundbreaking information about Mondrian. The show includes computer kiosks on which visitors can compare images of both the original and final paintings. They can also examine photographs taken through a powerful microscope that reveal the different layers of paint.

The exhibit's catalog details the research, which was completed by Harry Cooper, the museum's associate curator of modern art, and Ron Spronk, the associate curator for research at Harvard's Straus Center for Conservation. Some of the paintings have visible traces of removed lines and color that have only become apparent as the works aged. "Over time, it has no doubt become more pronounced," Cooper said. "So in some cases, the painting is giving away its own secrets." Many of the paintings kept their secrets hidden until Cooper and Spronk started examining them. Their work took two and a half years to complete, and had been evolving since Cooper's arrival at the museum three years ago. "The first day he was here, before he even got to his office, I said to him, 'I've always wanted to work on Mondrian,'" Spronk said. "He quickly came up with the idea of concentrating on the trans-Atlantic paintings. And we've been working on it ever since."

Though Cooper and Spronk wanted to have all 17 Mondrians in the exhibit, some of the paintings' owners declined to lend them because they were too delicate to travel. Through their research, Cooper and Spronk discovered that some of the dates on the paintings had also been altered. They think that the original date probably represents the year Mondrian finished the first version, while the second date indicates when he began it. The show provides so much new information because Mondrian did not keep detailed records about his work, and many of the paintings were not photographed after they were finished the first time. The only clues about some of the original compositions come from records kept by Charmion von Wiegand, an art critic and artist who sublimated her unrequited love for Mondrian by chronicling his career. Not everyone, though, was as enamored with Mondrian's work. The trans-Atlantic paintings did not cause critical accolades when they were first shown. Harriet Janis, the wife of a prominent art dealer, wrote that they "inadvertently demonstrated the conflict resulting from the attempt of any artist to merge two periods of his work." The exhibit also includes one painting that was unfinished at the time of Mondrian's death in 1944 that clearly illustrates how the artist altered his work.

The paintings are surrounded by photographs of the artist, and one picture of his studio decorated with colored rectangles. He wanted to make what Cooper called a "tonal environment" in which to create and alter his work -- even though Mondrian believed that all painters would one day become irrelevant.

"He felt that at some future, Utopian point there wouldn't be painting at all," Cooper said. "You wouldn't need it. Everything around you would be beautiful, and that would be it."

The exhibition runs in Dallas until 25th November 2001 and I'm trying to get hold of the associated book.
[I got the book, it's fascinating. The site created for the exhibition no longer exists.]

En modern Mondrian-inspirerad boksida? Nej, illustrationen är 150 år gammal.

The architectural historian Joseph Rykwert once recounted to me an illuminating anecdote concerning Mondrian's emotional-intuitive bias. Carl Holty, one of a group of artists who befriended and learned from the emigre in New York in 1941, was discussing Juan Gris with Mondrian one day. To his astonishment, Mondrian made a sour expression. When Holty asked what he could possibly hold against the purism and formal finesse of the Spaniard, Mondrian responded: "Oh, he's much too cold and intellectual for me!" Holty persevered and asked what artist he really could admire or love. "Matisse," replied Mondrian unfazed, "he's such a great colorist."

Juan Gris is referred to (here and elsewhere) as, the Third Musketeer of Cubism, who actually pushed Cubism further to its logical conclusion until his untimely death in 1927 at the age of 39.

In May 1943 Mondrian was invited to sit on the jury for a Guggenheim exhibition Spring Salon for Young Artists. This picture, Stenographic Figure, which Guggenheim dismisses, draws his [PM's] attention as "the most exciting painting that I have seen in a long, long time, here or in Europe". (Piet Mondrian, Bullfinch Press, 1994, page 83)

This, from an eBay sale, looks intriguing. I didn't buy it, but the book is readily available second-hand, so one day.
(11th March 2010) Now in stock, see here.
(5th April 2010) Maiotti has produced a series of books on various aspects of artistic endeavour, at least one other of which contains a Mondrian reference. I am checking out the others and will add any references I find.

The Painting the Nude Handbook ~ Learning From The Masters, by Ettore Maiotti. c.1991, published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, New York. First Edition stated. ~ HC, thick glossy pictorial bindings with red cloth spine. Title etc. in white lettering on spine. Book is in almost new condition. The Contents are: Introduction ~ THE HUMAN FIGURE AND ITS PROPORTIONS - The Vitruvian Figure - Modern Canons - Fritsch's Canon - The "Inacuracies" of the Masters - Leonardo da Vinci and His Pupils - Jean Auguste - Dominique Ingres - The Cartoon - Ingres: The Valpincon Bather - Ingres: The Reclining Odalisque - Preparing Canvases, Panels and Boards: First Method - second method - How to Fix the Canvas on the Frame - The Model's Pose - Cezanne's Watercolour - Painting Figures - Nude Studies in Charcoal - Male Nudes by Francesco Hayez - Copies of a Plaster Statue of a Male - Torso Drawn by My Students - The torso Drawn by Gianfranco Pugni - Egon Schiele: Female Nude - Puberty, by Edvard Munch - Boy Pulling up a Rope, by Pellizza da Volpedo - Woman Pulling up Her Stocking, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - Odalisque au Tambourin, by Henri Matisse - The Nude and Nature by Frantisek Kupka - Piet Mondrian's Nudes - Van Gogh's Nudes - Paul Gauguin - The Spirit of the Dead/ Paul Gauguin - Drawing Studies of the Rotation of a Statue of a Bust, following Luisella Lissoni - Vallotton and Japanese Art - How to Cut Wood for Wood Engravings ~ Inreluctably Bound, by Franco Tripodi - Line Drawings of Nudes - The Meaning of a Figure - La Toilette, Camille Corot - Maurice de Vlaminck - Nude, by Gianni Maimeri - Mortally Wounded, by Gianni Maimeri - The Palette Knife - From the Figurative to the Abstract: Franz Kline - How to Move from Figurative Painting to Abstract Painting - Abstract Art - Lying Nude, by Nicolas de Stael - The Symbol of the Egg - Before We Continue Our Journey towards Abstract Art - Casorati's Nudes - Casorati's Nudes from the Point of View Technique - Goya's Majas - Frescos - Index! Beautifully illustrated mostly in color, some b/w. Book is apprx. 8" x 6 1/4" high, 160 pages.

PM also gets a mention in this, but I haven't got around to reading it yet to be able to say why.
(11th March 2010) Now in stock, see here.

You wait all day for a Mondrian nude to come along and then three arrive at once. Again, I haven't bought it, but if someone who has would care to send me the (no doubt) small Mondrian entry, I would be very grateful.

'The Body: Images of the Nude' by Edward Lucie-Smith Hardcover, 176 pages. Published by Thames and Hudson, 1981.102 plates and 90 in colour.
Excellent condition except the dust jacket was torn but has now been repaired. The human form- the most instantly recognizable of all visual objects- has lost none of its fascination, its essential mystery or its many layers of meaning. The Body is a visual exploration of the artist's, and the viewer's reactions to the perennial theme of the unclothed figure in Western art. The field is immeasurably wide and the paintings in this book are not only magnificent but often relatively new and unfamiliar. They are presented through a pattern of juxtaposition and contrast: the full-page colour plates within each chapter are grouped in units of 3, the text for each group being a succinct commentary which links the works and show how they illuminate each other.

Features stunning full-page images from artists such as: Matisse, Raphael, Durer, Bosch, Titian, Rubens, Tintoretto, Renoir, Jericault, Delacroix, Ingres, Klimt, Moreau, Ernst, Munch, Rousseau, Maillol, Modigliani, Chagall, Mondrian, Gauguin, Dages, Bacon, Hockney, Moore, Picasso and Schiele.

Chapters: The Rational Nude: Antiquity and the Renaissance; Symbol of Perfection or Conventional Sign - The Uneasy Nude: the body in late medieval and Mannerist art; the attractions of awkwardness - The Fleshy Nude: Beginnings of a sensual presence; Baroque art and the solidity of flesh - Passion and Pallor: Romantic and Neo-Classical Nudes; detachment, involvement and the academic code - Dream and Symbol: Visions of the Human Form; Symbolist Fantasy and the surreal Imagination - Fragmentation: the body as an obsessive theme; multiple versions of modernism - Drawing the nude: eleven modern artists in confrontation with a perennial theme .

And finally [as it was then], I have developed a theory of how Mondrian got started on his Compositions of the sort Monica likes so much. I happened to be building a downstairs toilet and had just finished insulating the stud wall when I realised it was a Mondrian. I have applied to the Blackburn Foundation for a grant to research where and when PM had a partition wall installed in his house or studio.

Well, Chris, I bought a book, Martin Kers Hollandbook, Photographic Impressions of Holland. It is an excellent work with some terrific photographs, including some of bulb fields.

This is the picture on the cover. The bands of colour on the left are tulips which are grown in blocks - to quote the text by Marijke Kers, translated by Neil Walker, "Cleverly and economically we divide the land by straight lines. Diches, avenues of trees, roads, banks and bulb fields - march along side by side to the horizon."

This derives from the Chandos public house, Charing Cross, London (just off Trafalgar Square).

The first of the three illustrations (click to enlarge) is a view of a window-ledge opposite through a slightly open window.

The second the same window from a slightly higher position so that the ledge is seen through the distorted glass.

Now here's the thing. Blotkamp states that "as far as we know, the only time that the young Mondrian ventured abroad on his own initiative was the brief visit he made to London (probably in 1900)." p 22

I am working on another theory that he might have nipped over again during WW1, during the period he was unable to gain re-entry to France, and could thus be my grandfather, that post being currently vacant.

The Nicholsons were friends of Mondrian. It was Winifred Nicholson who brought him from Paris to London in 1938. In 1931 or 32, Winifred painted her children on holiday on the Isle of Wight, shown left. In 1942, Mondrian painted New York City, shown right. Winifred retained the painting until she sold it in 1971. In Christopher Andreae's lovely biography of Winifred, he notes that 'One evening in Winifred's flat in Paris, 1936, Mondrian had seen Winifred's paintings and appreciated them - 'It was a good evening at your home and I saw with pleasure your work; also your "naturalistic" painting is very pure and true,' he wrote her in a thank-you note.' (Letter in the Tate Archives, Ben Nicholson Papers).

Published by the New York Graphic Society, Boston, ©1975
The jacket illustration shows The phases of evolution and dissolution of Cosmic Form. Rajasthan, C. 19th century. The endpapers and pages with text are printed on a heavy stock paper that is light beige. The plates are on a slick white paper. There are 76 color and 58 black and white plates. This unique record of an Indian art form that has survived centuries of foreign invasions and tribal warfare introduces the Western reader to yoga art - mystical configurations that seek to clarify the viewer's perceptions and to unite him with the cosmic forces. Based on complicated systems of colors, numbers and proportions, these largely abstract and geometric images recall the canvases of Klee and the sculpture of Brancusi, both of whom were familiar with Eastern philosophies. Richly illustrated, the book includes many superb reproductions of meditative drawings, scuplture in stone and wood, pages from scrolls and illuminated manuscripts, mandalas, charts for computing astrological events and yantras, or power diagrams of the universal forces. All have a purity of conception, deftness of line and compelling design quality that mirrors the discipline and concentration they are intended to enforce. Ajit Mookerjee, the world's foremost expert on yoga art and the author of Tantra Asana, contributes an authoritative text introducing the reader to the philosophy of yaga and describing the symbolic systems that underlie the art. He provides an invaluable explanation of how the basic design elements are used metaporically - the square symbolizes power over the manifest world - and combined to form visually complex works.

Philip Rawson, a distinguished scholar of Eastern art contibutes a critical essay drawing on parallels between yoga art and Western art similar in appearance or intent; works by Klee, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko, Noland, William Blake and alchemists, Quabalists and Christian mystics are examined and illustrated.
Together the text and art guide the reader to an understanding of the fundamental union between viewer and object - the essence of yoga art.

Only one copy of this book (that a copy of the printing by Thames and Hudson) appears to be available from any of the internet booksellers. That copy is priced at $250.00.

But in February 2010 I found a copy on sale in an Oxfam bookshop for £12.99. It is a fairly interesting book with many attractive illustrations, some of which bear a note-worthy resemblance to PM's works. I have created another page showing the section in which Mondrian appears.

During my period of determined Mondrian collecting in the early 2000s, I often came across references to the Life Magazine issue of 2nd July 1945. It took me a long time to get hold of a copy at a reasonable price (I think I paid £5 for it a couple of years ago). It was rather a disappointment, nevertheless, it now has its own page here .


fig. 1 B215	fig 2 B215 colourised	fig 3 B234

Articles on Mondrian