Page 60 - Studio International - May 1972

working with relations between unequal parts, believe that abstraction was acceptable to
with the ways of making these relations Mondrian only when painting remained
expressive in terms of 'meaning'. Or, to be more something intuitive and felt in that classic way.
precise, the organizing of expressive relations A radical change in the procedure of creating a
between unequal elements was a main function work of art was not, for him and his
in painting which was in fact, according to his contemporaries, implicit in abstractness. For
own contention, concerned with the deep artists like Struycken and Dekkers it was the
experience of visual reality. I, however, am other way, almost. To them abstractness is just
interested in that function alone. The mystical procedure and something without thematic
meaning attached to it belonged exclusively to meaning whatsoever. (I think, incidentally, that
Mondrian as a person; already the co-founder of Mondrian is right in thinking that art has to be
the de Stijl movement, Theo van Doesburg, broke something felt, and I wouldn't advocate any
with it to move into the area of what I would kind of dreary systemic painting if the system
call neutral abstractness. This tradition was is more than just a structure to accommodate
picked up again in Dutch art in the early sixties, real sensibility. I also do believe that the
by several young artists, in different ways,—and systemic artists I am dealing with here use
if there can be any talk about an heritage of systems that way; I could prove that in close,
Mondrian, I think these artists are closest to it. monographic articles.)
Their work doesn't have the look of Mondrian's When painting became abstract it lost a
paintings very much, and it is also different in model for relationships : the real world. In
scale (an important difference), but it is always illusionist, figurative art there is no problem in
and sometimes exclusively concerned with picture-making, at least not so much on the
relationships between unequal parts. And what level of how things can and should relate to each
is more, most of the time it has the same other. Because in illusionism a convincing
obstinate dedication and the same spareness. representation of reality had to be constructed
The major problem in any abstract art is that (that was, ever since the first theories of Leon
of placing, of putting the formal / colouristic Battista Alberti in 1435, the basis of its aesthetic
elements in some kind of relation, or even and function) the artist let parts relate roughly in
nonrelation. Put differently : the problem of the analogy to similar relations in nature. So a horse
syntax of parts. This problem belongs almost had to be larger than a dog, a man could sit or
exclusively to abstractness as nothing else does. walk or lie on the ground, a bird could fly in the
(Things like scale or shape as such are as air, grass had to be green, and trees could not all
relevant to abstract as to figurative art.) I think of a sudden turn out to be purple. (If trees were
that Mondrian was very concerned with syntax, purple anyway, then they did signify some
he simply had to be; and with some of the special emotion or sentiment as in paintings by
younger Dutch artists, notably Peter Struycken Gauguin or Matisse.) This system of analogous
and Ad Dekkers, syntax became the central relationships constituted the grammar, so to say,
problem in their art, — or, to be more precise, the of illusionism; for abstract art such a grammar
procedure of syntactical decisions concerning was, at first, absent. When one has a man and a
composition or, more generally, ordering of tree and a ground with sky above, and also a
parts within a given and limited field. By making story to tell, then the arrangements of those
syntax an object of fixed procedure, they differed elements will be relatively simple. But when one
in a radical way from Mondrian and other early has a red triangle and a blue square and a blank
abstractionists, though there may have been field, and no story or model, then simply every
some hints of normalization of picture-making relation can be established, and every relation
in the Bauhaus. One might say that Mondrian is as arbitrary as any other, — and since the
strove to establish a certain kind of harmony by relationships don't have any special meaning the
intuition, but that his understanding of balance elements are neutral also.
between parts wasn't based upon logical At this point Mondrian did choose to follow
reasoning but on a highly personal interpretation his aesthetic instinct while later artists, like
of the types of harmony found in the old Dekkers and Struycken, found it necessary to
masters. (In most of Mondrian's pictures of the find a logic. In between, still other artists,
twenties and thirties one senses, in the contemporaries of Dekkers and Struycken, let
proportions of the lines, the coloured areas and that state of neutrality remain. In the painting
the white spaces and intervals a relationship of Reinier Lucassen it can be felt, in the careful
similar to that between figure and open space in, placing of the elements and in the ambiguous
for say, a Raphael Madonna or a still-life by mixage of figurative and abstract form, how
Willem Kalf.) Throughout Mondrian's career conscious he is of the issue of relationships. His
composition remained something felt, something ordering has the effect of all forms being separate
which could only turn out well when based on as that form at that place in that kind of abstract
intuitive intelligence rather than on a system. relation with that form. This gives Lucassen's
This was his link with the old masters, his work a laconic quality, which it shares with the
foothold on the Great Tradition—and it paintings and prints of J. C. J. van der Heyden.
probably made his art acceptable to himself. For Both artists state, in fact, that elements are
hitting on such a radical kind of abstraction interrelated by sheer virtue of their grouping
must have been no mean thing for a painter who into one image, but that these relationships (even
started out as a romantic landscapist; and I if they are based on a normalized grammar

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