There is a kind of lattice called "Mondrian"

Author: Chen Junjun

The dutch painter Mondrian's three primary colors and checkered boxes are well-known visual images, but Mondrian is perhaps the most unfamiliar painter.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Mondrian's birth, who has experienced war and the Spanish flu that ravaged the world in his life, and he expresses his inner yearning for a pure and beautiful world with images that simplify complexity.

"Large Blocks of Red, Yellow, Black, Gray and Blue Composition", oil on canvas, 1921 Collection of the Dallas Museum of Art

The "simplicity" that is difficult to imitate

A Dutch television station once made a program that copied famous paintings, and several painters copied the works of Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Mondrian and others. All the viewers thought that Mondrian's work was the easiest to imitate, but in the end only the copy of him failed.

In 2017, an American art historian led students to a museum to copy Mondrian's Composition series. To their surprise, these seemingly simple grids contain techniques that are far beyond imagination and are difficult to easily replicate.

Why aren't the three primary colors and checkered squares painted by Mondrian as simple as they seem? Technically, his lines are hand-painted, and the colors he uses are carefully colored and unique. From the artist's personal experience, as a pioneer of abstract art, Mondrian actually received orthodox realism training in his early years and had a deep foundation. His great transformation from realism to abstraction contains a change in the way he sees the world in his heart.

Mondrian was born in 1872 in a small town near Amsterdam. His father was an art-obsessed elementary school principal and his uncle was a professional painter. Despite the strong family art scene, the family initially did not support Mondrian in this precarious profession.

The young Mondrian was obsessed with painting. In 1892, he finally got his wish to enter the National Academy of Arts in Amsterdam. Deeply influenced by Post-Impressionism and Romanticism, he was very fond of the work of Seurat and Van Gogh, and often painted landscapes around Amsterdam.

"I love the scenery and the houses in dim weather or in very strong sunshine. At this time, the thick atmosphere blurs the details and strengthens the large outline of the object. I often sketch in the moonlight—cows resting or standing quietly on flat Dutch pastures, houses with dead, empty windows. Mondrian once wrote.

In 1908, Picasso and Braque established the Cubist School, which was the most avant-garde art genre in the world at that time. After coming to Paris, Mondrian soon became acquainted with the Cubist painters. Under their influence, he began to think about how to look beyond appearances, he tried to use a new pictorial language to reveal the essence of nature, looking for the inner laws of art, and adding a sense of rhythm to music to express pure spirit.

In The Grey Tree, the influence of Cubism on Mondrian is evident, and the power of abstraction awakens in his work. The trunk is in the center of the picture, the branches extend horizontally to the borders of the canvas, and the details of the tree are simplified. Mondrian simplifies complexity, transforms the familiar landscape of the past into an intricate variety of geometric shapes and lines, and achieves harmony through the balance of structure, color and area.

In the flu, a new style of painting was bred

After the outbreak of World War I, Mondrian and several like-minded friends founded Style magazine, and a school of art that was hopeful about the future, the Style School, began to flourish.

The Stylist artists represented by Mondrian proposed an artistic concept called "Neo-Plasticism". They advocate abstraction as the purpose of art, using abstract shapes and neutral colors to convey the idea of order and peace. They refused to use figurative elements and used only pure colors and geometric images to express pure spirit. "We find ourselves in abstract art. Art should be higher than reality, otherwise it has no value to human beings. Mondrian said.

In 1918, the Spanish flu ravaged the world, and Mondrian was not spared. During his isolation, he settled in his amsterdam studio and concentrated on his work. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: "When I got the flu, I noticed how reluctantly a person can become engrossed, and with it came the advent of better works of art. "Mondrian made all sorts of conceptual attempts during the pandemic, brewing the most important transformations of his artistic career.

In 1919, after recovering, Mondrian returned to Paris, gradually abandoning the fine and regular grid and rich and diverse colors, and began to use more basic elements such as straight lines, right angles, and three primary colors to compose abstract pictures. In 1920, Mondrian's Composition of Yellow, Red, Black, Blue and Gray was published as the first truly neo-Modelist painting. Since then, he has completed a batch of "Composition" series of works, with only three primary colors, horizontal lines, vertical lines and lattices in the picture, and every detail has been carefully considered and arranged.

Mondrian hopes that these works will convey the idea of the eternal movement of life. He believes that the thinner the lines in the picture, the faster the eye "reads" its trajectory, and vice versa. Therefore, by changing the width, it is possible to use the lines like the accelerator pedal of a car, which will help to successfully achieve his ultimate goal of making the painting have "dynamic balance".

In 1930, Mondrian's collection of paintings, Compositions of Red, Blue and Yellow, was published. The three primary colors and lattice have since become its most widely known visual images.

From chairs to houses to skirts, what is the charm of Mondrian's art?

Renowned art critic Will Gompez analyzed in 150 Years of Modern Art that Mondrian's goal is to "express the commonalities of all things in a sculptural way, not the parts that make them distinctive." To this end, he reduced art to its most basic elements: colors were limited to three primary colors— red, yellow, and blue, and only two geometric shapes— square and rectangle, with only black horizontal or vertical lines. There is absolutely no three-dimensional sense in the picture.

Mondrian believed that through these elements that were too simple to be simple, by balancing all the opposing forces, he could find the meaning of life from them. He once said: "Life is inherently simple, it may become more and more complex, but it cannot lose this simplicity." And that complexity needs to be perfected, and simplicity is the perfect state of human beings. ”

Mondrian's bold attempt not only opened a new chapter in the world of painting, but also provided a steady stream of creative inspiration for the world of clothing, architecture and design. Dutch architect Herrit Ritterfeld used the three primary colors and black lines of Mondrian's neo-modelingism to make a "red and blue chair" that looked like a three-dimensional version of Mondrian's painting. The back panels of the chairs were painted red, the seats were dark blue, and the designers also painted the chairs with yellow paint, making the black wooden frame more lively than ever. Ritterfeld also designed an entire house according to the principles of style, a house named after its owner Schroeder, which was later inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

In 1965, costume designer Saint Laurent incorporated the iconic three primary colors and plaids from Mondrian's works into the design of the dress, and the neat cut, simple lines and bold colors of the "Mondrian Skirt" triggered a fashion boom, breaking the boundaries between fashion and art. To this day, Mondrian's work remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration for designers.

Figure out the meaning of life

An artist once asked Mondrian why he was constantly destroying his work and painting it, and Mondrian said, "What I want is not to paint, but to find the truth." ”

The Dance of Victory is one of the most important works of Mondrian's life and his posthumous work. The work consists of three primary color blocks of various sizes. If it is likened to music, then the different color blocks represent different notes, which are joined together to form a song.

In fact, Mondrian was very fond of music, especially listening to the most "trendy" works of the moment, and he collected many records throughout his life. After moving to New York, he fell madly in love with jazz, often going to live jazz performances. Therefore, his paintings contain a certain musicality.

Mondrian didn't like to be seen painting, but when he was painting "The Dance of Victory", he held a studio open day for the first time, inviting everyone to visit the process of painting and exchange ideas. The small color blocks and lines in "The Dance of Victory" represent the various elements of the world, and he presents them to the world in a harmonious way in his own way. The painting remained on shelves in his studio until Mondrian's death. It is conceivable that in the process of painting, Mondrian already felt that he was moving towards the end of his life, but he insisted on completing this painting called "Victory", sending an optimistic signal to the world, hoping to leave a bright work to inspire everyone.

Someone once asked Mondrian, "I can't see anything in these grids you painted, what is your intention?" ”

Mondrian replied: "I want to express the relationships in a stylistic way through the contrast of colors and lines. I used to express myself by depicting nature, but if you look closely at my work in chronological order, you will find that I have gradually abandoned the natural characteristics of things and placed more and more emphasis on the representation of various relationships in shape. I think my job is to figure out the meaning of life for other people. ”

Living at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Mondrian lived through two world wars and the Spanish flu, and he always longed for stability and a peaceful and beautiful world. He expects the whole world to be as minimalist and pure as his paintings, and his philosophy of "less is more" has deeply influenced the course of modern art. (Chen Junjun)

Source: Liberation Daily