Page 59 - Studio International - May 1972
P. 59
Mondrian Piet Mondrian
Composition to: Pier and Ocean 1915
in Holland 85 x 108 cm. Oil on canvas
Coll : Museum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo
2 Piet Mondrian
Rudi Fuchs Composition 193o
Oil on canvas 50 x 50 cm.
Coll: Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
3 Ad Dekkers
Axis as Saw-cut 1968/71
12o X 120 cm. COB: the artist
4 Ad Dekkers
Square and Square in Transition 1971
180 x 180 cm. Coll : Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
The occasion for this article is, of course, the sixties in the work of artists like Stella and
commemoration of the centenary of Mondrian's Judd—spareness in colour and simplicity that
birth, 7 March, 1872—but the idea of writing went with so-called non-relational composition
about his relation to recent Dutch art was (a term which became popular, apparently, in
suggested to me by an essay by Barbara Rose, the circle of Stella and Judd and subsequently in
`Mondrian in New York', in Artforum, a lot of American criticism, including the
December 1971. In the essay Miss Rose tries to writings of Miss Rose, who uses it as a specific
establish an essential link between Mondrian, American asset). But the expressionist tendency
who was in New York from 1940 until his death in American art eventually proved much
in 1944, and the then nascent New York School stronger, a fact witnessed in, for example, the
—as well as its later developments. It is probable development of Stella's painting, which every
enough, I think, that Mondrian presented in year grows more exuberant and luxuriously
New York a glimpse of a rather sober and colourful, while slowly losing its original formal
delicate kind of abstractness —an abstractness tightness. In her discussion of Mondrian's
essentially and radically different from that of importance to American art, Miss Rose makes,
Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Kandinsky, the other among other things, quite an issue out of
Bauhaus artists, the Surrealists. Visually more relational painting,—and how the New York
satisfying kinds of painting for the audience School reacted to it. What New York painters
then, I suspect. For what is involved is the still did pick up, though, from Mondrian was a
rather current problem of how visually straight suggestion of 'openness' and 'flatness'
interesting or even dazzling a painting should and of the importance of the frame as a
be, or how spareness can be valid as art. The art structural agent in a picture. If this is true, and
of almost all of Mondrian's contemporaries did Miss Rose thinks it is, then the influence of
retain just this aesthetic notion of the strikingly Mondrian on American painting seems to me to
interesting picture (most directly derived, I have been rather superficial—judged, that is,
think, from Impressionism): the picture with a from what Mondrian wanted his art to be.
lot of internal variation in size, shape and colour. American artists borrowed from Mondrian
To me it is clear that Mondrian, at first, tried those elements that could conceivably
to reject this notion, though in his late work, accommodate their own feeling for large scale
done in New York, he seemed to return to it—at expressionist colour-painting. At least some of
least to some extent. An early black-and-white them like Newman and Rothko did, while
painting, e.g. Composition to: Pier and Ocean, others like De Kooning and Hofmann and
illustrates this. Apart from its beauty, this presumably Pollock must have felt much more
painting is characterized by an almost obstinate at home with Picasso, Kandinsky, Matisse or
dedication to a chosen principle in which there the Surrealists. I claim that Mondrian's
is no room to play around in the way his influence was superficial because it did concern
contemporaries were able to. His art is somehow elements which were surely there, in his art, but
too rigid, its structure too calculated and which were relatively unimportant in the
balanced. The analytical paintings by Braque context of his artistic ambition. As I have said,
or Picasso sometimes suggest a certain austerity most of Mondrian's contemporaries produced
in principle too, but almost always there are what I called dazzling pictures, and so did, I
arbitrary interventions disrupting the effect of would suggest, most post-war artists in America
very tight organization; I even think it is one of or in France, even if somewhat influenced by
the express functions of the trompe-l'oeil Mondrian. In America his influence was largely
elements in these paintings to loosen them up. superseded by all sorts of complexities in colour
Little of this kind happens in Mondrian's art. (though memories of rectilinear order remain
However, it happens again, this loosening up, in visible), while in France Mondrian's influence
much recent American art,— and that is was turned into Op Art which is another way of
something which Miss Rose failed to note or to dramatizing his purism. (It will be clear that I
mention. It makes most American art distinctly am not concerned here with the direct school of
different from Mondrian. Mondrian— Gorin in France, Glarner in
There used to be a spareness in American America, and others.)
painting and sculpture, most of all in the early Mondrian's art was, above anything else,
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