[edraket]

Ok I just read the whole http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?t=30950"My Latest Work - A Comment on "Modern" Art"[url] thread and I was thinking maybe it would be more usefull to try to delve into the subject art instead of trying to either ridicule or defend it.
So lets just forget about whether or not it is "art" and just talk about what this man has done.

First of all. I don't like Mondriaans later work. It doesn't appeal to me in the least. I would even say it's some of the ugliest art I've seen. So I decided it was time to read up on him. Why..because if I think when something is that unattractive that says something about my own personal taste. And since your own personal taste is the basis of everything you create you should always strive to understand it.

So here is what I found out. Feel free to dispute me since this is only my own interpretation of the interpretation of the writer. So it can be far from the truth.
Mondriaans work (I am, for right now, talking about his later, abstract work)is all about order. It explores how far a man can order the world around him. His works were all made with the same geometric formula. One that he felt expressed the most balance. With this he hearkens back to the Greek, Roman and Medieval traditions where art was only considered art when it was based on geometry..on numbers.
Compare this to the way a tree grows or the way the random splatters of paint form Pollocks paintings. There is a whole different, more natural, kind of order there. (One that by many people would be called chaos, poignant isn't it?)
So there you have it..it is a matter of what kind of order you personally like best. I myself like a more natural, organic order. To me Mondriaans work is dead. There is no feeling, no emotion left in it. (Which was of course exactly what he was trying to achieve)
Knowing this does help me help me to realize what my own personal taste, and thus, style is.

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[HaRdC0rePixxX]

nice thread concept
know, i really think i should have paid more attention to my history of art lessons...tsss tsss.

to me, mondrian's work is an attempt to "kill" symbolism in his artwork.
i've posted a few pics here.
i think his works are good exemples of what the process of abstraction can be.
his earlier works were figurative and we can clearly see "steps" toward a new graphic vocabulary that seems more "simple".
basically, he came to : vertical and horizontal lines + primary colors are the basic elements that structure 'pictures' and the way we 'see' them (i'm reducig it to the max...).

to understand that, we have to take into account a number of facts :
his works are linked with kandinsky's theory about basic elements (line, point, shapes). it's also a period where progress in science and philosophy ( cognitive psychology, the theory of Gestalt, etc) have influenced a lot af artists at that time.
"Early this century German and Austrian psychologists developed a school of thought known as Gestalt, a German word meaning "shape." It was their goal to learn how the mind perceived and processed visual input. The result was a theory of principles, supposedly free from subjective aesthetic bias, that artists have been able to use to present visual information - whether it be the printed page, painting or photography."
(basically, the gestalt theory concentrates on the way in which the mind insists on finding patterns in things).
the gestalt theory defines some basic rules : laws of proximity, similarity,...
check some basic examples here.
a better intro to gestaltism here
Gestalt theory
about art, design & gestalt therory
Gestalt theory by M. Wertheimer
(recent progress in cognitive psychology invalidates some of the first gestalt theories)

also a major change took place around 1800-1850 (Manet and others).
the major shift is that the some painters 'think' the painting as a physical object (linen + wood + painting, basically a window+frame) with an 2D image on it. whereas since the quatrocentto, a painting "was" a simulation of 3d space. the shift from "3d" to 2d leads to a more "graphical" approach.

so i think mondrian was upset with the codes and symbolism that were linked with every figurative image. he tried to depict how the mind worked, in a very 'technical' and 'computerized' way (see edracket's post).
of course as it's still a painting, symbolism is present. it's just that he tried to define a new vocabulary, stripped from the old cultural references (that's way it's called 'modernism' i guess).

any 'history of art' teacher here ?
_________________
Wet tentacles, horny chixxx & scary designs
www.hpx1.com

[JFreak]

I've always been a fan of Mondrians work, even before I've understood it. It's a bit of a matter of taste. One thing that he was trying to do was, as Hardcore said, reduce the two dimension planar surface of a painting to it's bare essentials, verticals and horizontals with only the primaries and black ad white. I'll admit, it's limiting, but simplifying so much let him play with the elements of design such as balance and equilibrium within his paintings. If you look at his paintings in terms of acheiving "perfect balance" in design rather than expressing a feeling or emotion. They are quite fascinating. For this reason Mondrian is often appreciated more by designers such as architects, typographers, graphic designers etc.

Another interesting thing about Mondrian is that even though his painting appear very mathematical, he did it all by hand. He never actually measured the balance, it was all just eye-balled. Speaking of doing his paintings by hand. My art teacher once told us that it's very easy to spot a fraud from a true mondrian, because his brushstrokes are apparant in the flat areas of colour.

BTW: Thanks so much for the earlier pics of his Hardcore, I've looked for some of his earlier paintings before... very beautiful stuff. Where did you find them?
_________________
Mike
Nahum 1:7

[edraket]

Thanks hardcorepixxx. I will check out what you had on gestalt. That was still something on my "need to know more about" list. What I saw so far was pretty interesting.
I read somewhere that kandinsky was the first truly abstract painter. Although painting objects in an abstract fashion had been done before. Kandinsky's work seems to come directly from the subconscious. There is no serious attempt to paint "something".
Another thing that connects Mondriaan and Kandisky is that they were both into occultism. Mondriaan was an avid freethinker. (I don't remember what kandinsky was..maybe a rosecrucian)

Jfreak. Actually what I read was that Mondriaan didn't eyeball it but constructed it with a certain geometric "formula". They also had the whole process described. I could see if I can get that book again but I guess posting a page from it here wouldn't be legal.
What you said about the brush strokes. Yeah..we are just all so used to his work being reused on clothes and bread boxes (probably from the eighties:) ) And work like his would nowadays be associated with computers. When you see one for real it really isn't as tight as you would have expected.

I guess, for me, it is still really hard to understand the charm in his art. I can see, and respect, that balance that he was striving for. But to sacrifice all feeling for it...well he was probably striving for that actually...to me it just feels wrong. Probably because I am more of an "intuitive" person.

Do you guys have an opinion on what I said about the randomness in nature..(a tree, a cloud etc) That forms a balance too...In my opinion at least. And its one that can catch my eye and that I can just stare at for ever.
Do you see the connection...the contrast?

[Steven Stahlberg]

I think I know what you mean. If we look without using our higher cortex, just the 'baser' parts of our brains, we usually find it more pleasing to look at a tree than - for instance - a 'bauhaus' type hospital or prison, you know that kind of horrific plain boxy things they started building in the 50's and 60's... and still do, whenever they run out of money for a good architect... well there's lots of them in Sweden anyway...

I think it's the same effect as the discomfort we feel at sensory deprivation, like pilots forced to fly for hours over a flat wintry landscape, or miners - there was even something called 'miner's nystagmus', caused by lack of visual stimulus. Our eyes and our visual centers need stuff to look at, it's what it's there for. 'Stuff' can be any kind of small contrast, details - but not just details. If all details are the same it can get even more uncomfortable than emptiness, certain patterns (like 60's Op-art) have been known to make people nauseous, and even cause epileptic seizures. And the details can't simply be fractal in nature either.

Like a tree or a cloud or any earthly landscape for that matter, the most pleasant type of view for a human would be something with a balance between order and chaos, with details that vary, and with a variation that varies... if you see what I mean. It's hard to explain. It's a bit like harmonics in music, not just a flat sine wave, but much more complex than that, changing and varying and modulating... A cloud, a tree or a mountain isn't just a fractal pattern, it's so much more complex than that. I drove through Arizona once, and the rock formations there astounded me with the way each one looked different from the next... some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen...

Of course if we look and use our cortex, then we can appreciate what Mondriaan was trying to do. But it's a bit of a dead end, at least to me, because no one else can go in his footsteps, and expect to go further. He went as far as it's possible to go down that road, somebody had to do it, but now that it's done, I guess one thing we can learn from it is that that level of simplification hurts to look at for a long time...

[Gort]