Another icon in the progress of Abstract Art in the twentieth century is that of Modrian's compositional pieces like the one illustrated here. Although painted some time after Malevich, this image bears a striking resemblance to the strategy used in the earlier painting. It is a 'pure' composition. It is fundamentally geometric. It's meaning is constructed through form. As such there is an implicit spiritual dimension, or at least by association, with more lofty ideas relating to the manufacture of pure form in painting - akin to similar notions in mathematics - and the divine.
These are designed compositions and there relations with the design of fabrics, of furniture and architecture are very close. In terms of the progress of abstraction, as both an artistic and philosophical ideal, the story is almost complete when it comes to Mondrian. Where else could abstraction go? We have to wait until post-war - the 50sin particular - to see how abstract art was going to relieve itself, so to speak, from the strains of projection and of geometrical space. It’s almost as of the linear perspective of the Renaissance was still hard to shake off as the very last piece of the formal puzzle away from the tyranny – the need to represent things.
It's funny I recently mention Mondrian in my essay for digital issues in regards to television and public screens:
ReplyDelete"While the internet accommodates television, certain aspects of television are now imitating the internet. Bolter and Grusin (2000) discuss what they have labelled as ‘The CNN Look’, which essentially deconstructs how TV news is now reconfigured to include sections and inserts of updates which perfectly mirror and emulate the aesthetics of an internet website or multimedia application. This has also been adapted on a much larger scale by the BBC and UK city councils ‘Big Screen’ initiatives, which again copies the almost Mondrian-esque imagery. It also makes television completely inescapable in urban life."