ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Mondrian’s Humane Language Of Space

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31117, 21 July 1966, Page 13

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Mondrian’s Humane Language Of Space

It Is extraordinary that Mondrian ig still thought of as a cold and intellectual painter, even by his own countrymen. Several Intelligent Dutchmen I talked to in The Hague, where a Mondrian exhibition of 114 works is now running at the Gemeentemuseum, expressed this opinion, writes the art critic of “The Times.”

Of course one can point to the similarities between the art of Mondrian and that of Vermeer or Piero della Francesca the obsessive search for balance they all share—and to the fact that the qualities of Vermeer and Piero were not appreciated until very recently; but Mondrian is really an artist of a different kind. He was passionate, religious

and humane to no less a degree than Van Gogh; he was equally devoted to his materials. But his triumph was the ruthless selfdiscipline by which he channelled the romantic expressionism of his early paintings into the foundation of a completely new language of painting. There have been few Mondrian exhibitions; as a result

he is better known for his theories or by the stock image of a geometrical abstract painting, than by direct contact But however familiar one Is with the elements of his language, direct contact is always a revelation because the judgment of scale, colour and relationship in a Mondrian is as closely related to the human being as it is in the best architecture. This is no less true of the early figurative paintings, which are well represented in The Hague exhibition. After seeing only reproductions I was astonished at their freedom, at Mondrian’s ability to extract a pulsating plastic rhythm from the conventions of naturalism, without once falling back on the platitudes of those conventions to help him over difficulties. His subjects—trees, windmills, church facades, the sea and flowers—obviously had as great a personal significance for him as sunflowers, cypresses and stars did for Van Gogh. But although he occassion-

ally Indulges in a mannered emotionalism which he was to reproach himself with later on, generally speaking the subjects are completely transformed by his miraculous feeling for simplicity and his sense of space. The colours are rarely beautiful in themselves. You can see from very early on Mondrian subordinating the idea of colours or shapes beautiful in isolation, for the relationships which knit the surface into a rhythmic whole. When, with the impact of cubism, he comes to the end of his naturalistic painting, one really feels he has exhausted it. Mondrian progressed from cubism to complete abstraction over a period of five years from 1911 to 1916. He made almost day-to-day advances with complete clarity and conviction and, so far as one can see, never a false move. The elements of his language which he had isolated by 1916—horizontal-vertical black bars and squares of primary colour—he went on using until the early forties,

when the black bars suddenly disappeared in the staccato energy of his last paintings made in New York when he was 70. The actual means had become impersonal, but the personality expressed in the abstract paintings is the same one that stares out in the extraordinary self-portrait of forehead and eyes which Mondrian drew in 1908. SEARCH FOR UNIVERSALS Mondrian's is an intensely religious art which grows out of the secular traditions of Dutch painting and works towards a universal expression of spirituality. What happens on the pic-ture-surface from year to year is a precise account of this search for universals, and it is fascinating to see, as one can at The Hague, the link-up between Mondrian’s spiritual development and the actual innovations he made. The task he set himself was the destruction of the material character of painting. He was not against nature, as many people think, but against the naturalistic style of painting. He was against it because it was concerned with the natural roundness of things and alluded to this by the use of painterly modelling on the surface. Mondrian on the other hand, wanted absolute flatness and non-descrlptive colour, with no reference to material things, because he felt it was closer to the purity of music. Immateriality was identified in his mind with “Inwardness” and this led him to emphasise relations (again as in music) rather than forms. There is no “form” in a Mondrian painting; the” are only spaces related to one another in an organic whole. It was so important to him to establish this concrete and self-sufficient language that he tried to blot out of his

mind the early natural props he had used to form it Travelling by train, he used to change seats to avoid seeing trees through the window. FLEXIBILITY Seeing many of Mondrian’s abstract paintings together makes one aware also of the flexibility of his language. Although basically from painting to painting he changed only the relationships between horizontal and vertical bars, the whole emotional effect of the painting changed with it—by degrees to which he was extremely sensitive. If a long line is unchecked by another at right angles or by several shorter ones along its length, the effect of the painting is tragic. Mondrian himself described it in human terms as “suffering through the domination of the one over the other.” These changes are like entries in a diary. Long lines begin to multiply in his painting as the Second War approaches and he moves to London; they then evaporate at his joy at reaching New York. This Canadian exhibition should destroy once and for all Mondrian's reputation as a cold theorist. His spirituality has no trace of sanctimoniousness about it His experiments are rooted in life. One early nearabstract painting he made from the facade of a halfdemolished building near his Paris studio has the word “KUB,” taken from a bouillon poster, wittily incorporated into the verticals and horizontals of the design. One should not forget either that the last and probably the most revolutionary, paintings of Mondrian were called “Boogie-Woogie,” after the rebellious music of an outcast section of society, which the old Dutchman used to go and hear himself in Harlem.