Different lines
Piet Mondrian (actually Mondriaan,the artist dropped the second "a" in his surname in 1911)
b.1872 Amersfoort,Netherlands
d.1944 New York
Composition No.1:Lozenge with Four Lines
(1930)
-oil on canvas
Movement-De Stijl (The Style)
In 1918,Mondrian created his first "losangique" paintings such as the latter Composition No.1 Lozenge with Four Lines by tilting his square canvas 45 degrees.Most of these diamond-shaped works were created in 1925 and 1926 following his break with the De Stijl group over Theo van Doesburg's introduction of the diagonal.Mondrian felt that in doing so van Doesburg had betrayed the movement's fundamental principles thus forfeiting the static immutability achieved through stable verticals and horizontals.Mondrian asserted however that his own rotated canvases maintained the desired equilibrium of the grid,while the 45 degree turn allowed for longer lines.
Art historian Rosalind Krauss identifies the grid as a structure that remains emblematic modernist ambition.She notes that these painting by Mondrian whose works had become synonymous with the grid,two signal opposing generative tendencies in which the lines intersect just beyond the picture frame (suggesting that the work is taken from a larger whole),exemplifies a centrifugal of the grid;Tableau 2,whose lines stop short of the picture's edges (implying that it is a self-contained unit) evinces a centripetal tendency.Krauss argues that these dual and conflicting readings of the grid embody the central conflict of Mondrian's-and indeed of Modernism's- ambition: to represent properties of material or perception while also responding to a higher,spiritual call."The grid's mythic power" Krauss asserts "is that it makes us able to think that we are dealing with materialism (or sometimes science or logic) while at the same time it provides us with a release into belief (or illusion,or fiction)".
Different lines
Piet Mondrian (actually Mondriaan,the artist dropped the second "a" in his surname in 1911)
b.1872 Amersfoort,Netherlands
d.1944 New York
Composition No.1:Lozenge with Four Lines
(1930)
-oil on canvas
Movement-De Stijl (The Style)
In 1918,Mondrian created his first "losangique" paintings such as the latter Composition No.1 Lozenge with Four Lines by tilting his square canvas 45 degrees.Most of these diamond-shaped works were created in 1925 and 1926 following his break with the De Stijl group over Theo van Doesburg's introduction of the diagonal.Mondrian felt that in doing so van Doesburg had betrayed the movement's fundamental principles thus forfeiting the static immutability achieved through stable verticals and horizontals.Mondrian asserted however that his own rotated canvases maintained the desired equilibrium of the grid,while the 45 degree turn allowed for longer lines.
Art historian Rosalind Krauss identifies the grid as a structure that remains emblematic modernist ambition.She notes that these painting by Mondrian whose works had become synonymous with the grid,two signal opposing generative tendencies in which the lines intersect just beyond the picture frame (suggesting that the work is taken from a larger whole),exemplifies a centrifugal of the grid;Tableau 2,whose lines stop short of the picture's edges (implying that it is a self-contained unit) evinces a centripetal tendency.Krauss argues that these dual and conflicting readings of the grid embody the central conflict of Mondrian's-and indeed of Modernism's- ambition: to represent properties of material or perception while also responding to a higher,spiritual call."The grid's mythic power" Krauss asserts "is that it makes us able to think that we are dealing with materialism (or sometimes science or logic) while at the same time it provides us with a release into belief (or illusion,or fiction)".