Two weeks ago at Centre Pompidou, I chose a favourite amongst the Mondrian pieces on display in the gallery.
It was a ‘study’; a piece so contrary to how Mondrian’s final pieces usually appear, it couldn’t help but stand out in the crowd.
The study is something I’m guessing Mondrian himself might not have chosen to show in public. In fact, I can’t believe this piece even made it into the gallery.
The painting showed brush stroke, line quality & process; the hand of Mondrian was clearly visible and the process and decision making of this creative process were visible in the erased and ‘whited out’ lines on the paper.
Amazing! Amongst the rooms and rooms (and rooms) of highly restrictive, regulated paintings, this piece showed something else! – and now that I think about it, I wonder why this piece wasn’t given more attention and description. THIS! This piece showed the hand of the artist!
But I need to stop, in my ruminating about this piece of art. I need to stand back from the colouring of my own artistic perspectives and preferences, which favour art created in a manner of expressivity vs. that of Mondrian’s style, the De Stijl movement.
As outlined by Wikipedia, the De Stijl movement “…sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. [Proponents of the De Stijl movement] advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used onlyprimary colors along with black and white…”
Whatever it may be the De Stijl artists were seeking, I felt very little harmony or utopian sensation from the rigorously confined compositions on display in the Mondrian exhibit. I found, aside from the painting study (as discussed above), there was no point of recognition, connection or attraction with or to these paintings.
And I feel 
a certain guilt about saying this because there seems to be a disconnect.
How is it that I feel nothing for the mondernist De Stijl art movement yet the evolving architecture of the time makes my heart and mind leap and yearn?
JJP Oud / Petit Maison Semi-permanente / Rotterdam, Holland / 1923
originally posted 2011/04/03
