From 1920 onward, Mondrian’s paintings are quite clear in their intention.
Further, Mondrian and his friends, who called their movement de Stijl (“the
style”), designed furniture, interiors, and architecture that were imbued with
the same ideal order, the same intellectual and ethical rigor, that would, in
turn, be absorbed by those who used them, inhabited them, or saw them.
Mondrian never permitted diagonal lines or bars in his compositions,
because they were too violent. No violence,
indeed no interactive movement, is possible
without the diagonal, and conÀ ict and
violence were forbidden.
We see Mondrian’s Composition with
Yellow (1936). This is a tautly composed,
rigorous canvas with a white ground
traversed by four black horizontal bands
and two black verticals. In the lower right
quadrant, Mondrian seems almost to have
painted a small painting within the larger,
adding two short black horizontals and two
verticals and introducing two bright yellow
rectangles. I point out the obvious here, because it is not at all obvious. If you
could spend a quiet hour with this painting, you would understand the gift of
its certitude in an uncertain world. When it was painted, it was a response to
the social and political moment of its day.
In Spain in the 1930s, the political polarization of the country caused a
descent into violence. Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983), one of the founders
of Surrealism, was painting in and near Barcelona, the center of Catalan
culture. For several years, labor strikes and anarchist uprisings increased,
while the government became increasingly reactionary. As Miró watched the
disintegration of order, this painting, Deux Personnages (Two Personages)
(1935), was his response. In the spring of 1935, Miró’s painting, previously
poetic and witty, À uid and airy, was suddenly invaded by heavy splashes
and smudges of paint. Whereas before he had painted small À oating faces,
insectile forms, and tiny, amusing creatures, he now painted this large,
inhuman female ¿ gure with red fangs and a red eye. The ¿ gure is savage,
and it threatens a small, vulnerable ¿ gure À oating at the left, the other
The concept of found
objects incorporated
into art or presented
as art in their own right
has been around for
a century and is now
generally accepted in
the world of artists.