Page 34 - Studio International - December1996
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delicacy of a cat. its boundaries which it rules, it acquires a second, illusory,
Mondrian wanted the infinite, and shape is finite. A scale by which the distances between points on the canvas
straight line is infinitely extendable, and the open-ended seem measurable in miles.
space between two parallel straight lines is infinitely `The positive and the negative are the causes of all
extendable. A Mondrian abstract is the most compact action. . . . The positive and the negative break up one-
imaginable pictorial harmony, the most self-sufficient of ness, they are the cause of all unhappiness. The union of
painted surfaces (besides being as intimate as a Dutch the positive and the negative is happiness.' The palpable
interior). At the same time it stretches far beyond its oneness of the solitary flower or tower, being subject to
borders so that it seems a fragment of a larger cosmos or time and change, had to give way to the subliminal one-
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so that, getting a kind of feedback from the space beyond ness of a vivid equilibrium.
