Understanding the Modern Stylings of Piet Mondrian

How many of us have looked at those red, yellow, and blue boxes and questioned the lack of merit in the direction of modern art? I can admit having thought that a toddler could easily create something as simple as the works of Piet Mondrian.

However, the concept behind Mondrian's compositions is a pretty revolutionary one since it aims to strip an image to its purest form. Whereas most artistic paintings present lines that form into various shapes and angles, he only implements the essence of those shapes: solid horizontal and vertical lines- because what's a shape but the careful "etch-a-sketch" configuration of vertical and horizontal lines? And as opposed to the vast array of colors, Mondrian uses the three primary colors in which all the other colors are generated from. And lastly, whereas the world contains so many gray areas, Mondrian presents the ideas of absolute light and absolute darkness with white and black. With these elements alone can all art forms imaginable be contrived. To think that art can progress from astounding realism of the Renaissance to its contortion of the Cubist era to finally an artistic era that completely abolishes any indication of space, figure-ground relations, or even any recognizable figure of Mondrian. In the text book, Art Since 1900, Foster states that Mondrian translates "the visible world into a geometrical pattern". Such a style is indicative even in his earlier paintings of landscapes. In the verticality of the trees juxtapose strongly with the horizontal planes of the ground and sky. These landscapes provide an obvious precursor to his compositions marked of his heyday.

I believe that this radical reduction in color, figure, form, and subject can be accredited-at least slightly-to a historical context. At the time Mondrian had coined his trademark style of these grid-like images, it had been at a time where the First World War was reaching its ending years. Within those four years of such grand carnage a general decline of optimism, assurance, and calm collection had occurred due to exposure to a long, over due war. Mondrian captured the essence of what humanity was deeply craving for at that point in history: pure elements that are recognizable without hesitation; a sense of order and peace that the compartmentalizing of Mondrian provided, away from the chaos of war.

Mondrian's aim for the "elimination of the particular" is probably reflective of the general consensus of that time who wanted to eliminate all the wages of war that had compromised the lives of many. This utopian sentiment is manifested completely within these painting. His principle of reduction is found in the maximal tension of the straight line. With strict verticality or horizontality, Mondrian rids his art of the fluctuating curves and instead provides succinct boundaries. There is no indication or sensation of figure and ground, no underlying current that gives for a "notion of passive interstice". Instead, Mondrian provides the purest of lines, the purest of shapes, and the purest of color to articulate a longing for order in the changing modern world.

Credit:
Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, and Yve-Alain Bois. Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Volume 2 1945 to the Present (College Text Edition). London: Thames & Hudson, 2005. Print.