Smarthistory: The Blog

One Response to “Mondrian — a podcast”

1. Jerome Says:
   January 31st, 2008 at 1:26 pm

   Dear Beth & Zucker,

   I discovered the podcast via Wikipedia’s link.

   What a fantastic idea it is! I am self teaching Art History as even with distance learning I am far too busy to take a proper course.
   ATM I read Hugh Honor’s “World history of art” (I guess the kind of book you frown upon and made you create this podcast but I would like to think that both methods complement each other very well!).

   On to Mondrian’s painting. Well, I must say as a Frenchman and before this task of self-education, (almost) all I knew about visual arts were Impressionists. But there are things I definitely feel in front of the painting. I started in photography as well, and it is true that as I stared at it, my mind, aided with those strong black lines, tried to fold thoses rectangles to see if they could make 3D forms.
   Regarding color, no question about it, the composition is so good! It is something I try to do when making a picture. Here we have this red, indeed bigger than the blue one, but also less intense. It feels like you could put your finger at the intersection of the black lines, where blue and red are close to each other, and the left and right parts would be perfectly balanced and contrasted. Fascinating.
   Now on the meaning, do you think that Mondrian and other European artists that aspired to a less chaotic world made it a conscious choice to take on the “We can bring tranquility, order and hope” task on their shoulders?
   Or is it subconscious and we can spot similar meanings in other works of art from that time?

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