Articles on Mondrian

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.

The Mondrian Test
Mondrian, Moss and the Double Lines
Composition with Green
Mondrian Cave
John Sheridan on Victory Boogie Woogie
Richard Speer on Objectivisim
Altered Mondrian Paintings Explored
The Elements of Euclid
Mondrian on Juan Gris
Mondrian on Pollock
Mondrian and the Nude
Breakthrough Mondrian Theory
Blackburn's Second Mondrian Theory
Blackburn's Third Mondrian Theory
Yoga Art
Life Magazine 2nd July 1945
 

The Mondrian Test
(21st September 2002)
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., 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.

Where do I stand on this debate?

Here is the test (click to enlarge).

and here are the answers.

(1st Oct 2002)

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.

Here are the links - Independent   Guardian

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."
 

Mondrian, Moss and the Double Lines

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 left. 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.
 

More information on Marlow Moss here.

(19th Oct 2002)
Composition with Green

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

(1st Dec 2002)

Mondrian Cave

This caught my eye on an eBay listing,

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.

(20th Oct 2002)
John Sheridan on Victory Boogie Woogie

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.

 (18th November 2001)

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,"

Click here for the paper and here for Richard's summary of the Objectivist philosophy.
 

The next is the article which stimulated this page

Altered Mondrian Paintings Explored

Story Filed: Friday, April 27, 2001 12:00 PM EDT

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."

Copyright © 2001 Associated Press Information Services, all rights reserved.

The exhibition runs in Dallas until 25th November 2001 and I'm trying to get hold of the associated book.

Click here for the exhibition site.

Mondrian on Juan Gris
 

Mondrian on Pollock

Painting Mondrian Nudes

30th Sep 2002

Breakthrough Mondrian Theory

Blackburn's Third Mondrian Theory
(21st Sep 2002)

from 30th July 2002