In 2013, Jason Andrew curated a brilliant show of contemporary artists that revolved around a borrowed Giacometti drawing. The next year he borrowed a Gorky. Now he is back, collaborating this time with Max Estenger, centering a show around Mondrian—with a twist. There is no Mondrian. Instead they rented a bus that took a large group to see Mondrian’s grave. (I will hereafter refer to Mondrian as M.)
Then we watched a dance performance and toasted M with champagne. I spent the time there contemplating mortality and visualizing the paintings—funny how a tombstone focuses the mind.
I think about M’s work often. I thought all painters did but an informal poll has made me think that is not the case, so I’ll just say a few words.
I love M’s paintings in a way that he specifically did not agree with. The abstract work makes me like the earlier work from observation even more. It is the process of how he found his abstractions that make them important to me. Did you know that he didn’t use rulers? He even found his straight lines.
M’s writings are more problematic; he was working towards an art for the “…the cultivated man of today [who] is gradually turning away from natural things, and his life is becoming more and more abstract.” *
(How’s that working out for us?)
He was looking for “an equivalence of vertical and horizontal expressions.” He felt, for example, that the tree paintings were too vertical.
He was driven to intensify, to reach universality and neutrality; his philosophy was messianic in a way that feels uncomfortable, possibly even crazy today; he believed that this art could bring harmony to civilization by the discovery of these “natural laws” and then we wouldn’t need art because our life would be art. Perhaps he wanted to be the last painter.
Still, the concept of verticalness and horizontality are basic to our ability to stand erect. We make sense of the world mathematically by comparing curves and diagonal lines to the vertical and horizontal too. In that way M’s work does deeply interact with human consciousness.
Turning to the show Mondrian80:
In the flickering horizontal strokes that extend the edges of Red Construction (see above) I see something of M. But it seems that the cobbled together structure must have been a little shaky so Butler had to nail diagonal supports on the right to get it to stand up.
It is a humorous rejection of a “pure abstract art, free of naturalistic appearances.”**
Perhaps she thinks that “cultivated man” of today might benefit from being more playful.
In Number75X, Drew has captured the possibility of endlessly expanding landscapes inherent to all of M’s work.
One aspect of M’s work that is that it is most often a section of a continuous world.
Drew states, “The grid is a structure for understanding how we see and expand systematically.”
When I read that, it gave me a new insight even into M’s most abstract works; they are complete and yet they could also be seen as a detail.
Szobody mentioned to me at the opening that Pier and Ocean was the inspiration for his untitled work.
And yet he couldn’t resist setting the waves in diagonal motion!
I also see this painting as having a sense of humor and lightness that De Stijl never thought of.
Actually, looking around the show, I see that all of the artists have fully taken in M’s pictorial ideas, but not his utopianism. We’ve seen how that works out— Fascism, Communism and The Death of Painting..
Knoebel’s Study… reminded me that M also made paintings with empty centers.
But, in the Knoebel, the white space is more concentrated and framed, and the black lines have disappeared. So this painting that looks superficially like a M is really nothing like him. What’s good about it though is that the inner space is glowing and projects a lightness of being and possibility.
I have no idea if Tryst has anything to do with M at all, but in the context of the show, I was studying it to see if there were any true verticals or horizontals (and I don’t think there are) and while doing so realized these figures are having sex in the afternoon.
I also have no idea if this painting has anything to do with M. I’m including it because I like it. I did not expect when I began to look at this show that I would find so many pieces that seem to offer a feeling of happiness and lightheartedness.
I don’t think the Manifesto on that has been published yet.
—CNQ
from left to right:Julia K. Gleich, Jason Andrew and Timothy Ward
