Ah 208 - Black and White

Carolina Bettencourt

AH 208

February 22, 2018

BLACK AND WHITE

Piet Mondrian is one of the pioneers of abstract art in the 20th century. His journey as an artist took him from representational painting to the artistic vocabulary of simple geometric elements^[1].  In his lifetime, he traveled between the Netherlands, Paris, London and New York. He lived in the Netherlands during World War I and traveled back to Paris after the war was over. In France he was able to take in a completely abstract style as Paris embraced a wave of post-war artistic innovation.^[2] The two paintings that I chose, Pier and Ocean (Composition No. 10), 1915 (figure 1) and Tableau I: Lozenge with Four Lines and Gray, 1926 (figure 2) represent the road to total abstraction of the form. While one gives us a hint of what we are looking at by reading the title, the second one its striped down to the simplest matter that then brings us to analyze not only what we see on the canvas but how it relates to our spiritual life and everything else that surrounds us.

Pier and Ocean (Composition No. 10) (figure 1) is striking because of its simplicity, it is mainly composed of black horizontal and vertical lines against a white canvas. The naturalness of seeing these basic forms is welcomed by the eyes and able to be processed as simple geometric lines and subdued tones. There is not much to see here, at least at first sight because is its simplicity that captures the attention of the observer. It is true that the brain tends to quickly asses and make assumptions of what it sees at first sight, like a shortcut to the understandable, but after the initial glimpse it starts becoming something more. The edges in this painting have been softened with a darker shade of grey or brown and it is not defined, but instead faded strokes that start darker in the corners and fade in as they reach towards the center. It gives the illusion of weightlessness, almost like a dark cloud that it is holding the light in the center. This representation of a dark cloud now becomes the background of what will be the central most important piece in the composition. Bright white defines what seems to be the ocean in the shape of an egg that has fallen on its side and it even appears to be rounded. The white tones fade and get darker as they move outward to meet with the darker gray in the corners that fades in the opposite direction. This subtle change in toning down the brightness of the white creates shadows and therefore, the appearance of a rounded 3-dimensional surface in the canvas.  Horizontal and vertical lines cover the entire central composition and at first look they seem to be accidental, like a child that just found a line stamp and had fun playing with it, but at a closer look, they don’t seem to be at random at all. The thin black lines are longer in the perimeter of the ellipse but get shorter as they come to the center. The shorter black lines also appear in other parts of the ellipse, more specifically in a vertical and horizontal axis that meets in the middle forming an X. Suddenly, this stop being just a painting and now it triggers curiosity. Can this have a hidden message? How can simple thin horizontal and vertical lines start reading as if it was a new written language? Whether this painting has an encrypted message or not, it’s probably only known by Mondrian, yet it is known that Mondrian explored the Cubist movement between 1912-1917 and it was then, when he produced the Pier and Ocean series.^[3]  Composition No. 10 (figure 1) was the last one of this series and is considered one of the main steps towards pure abstraction.^[4] 

If Pier and Ocean (Composition No. 10) (figure 1) was striking because of its simplicity, we have arrived at a total minimalist style with Tableau I: Lozenge with Four Lines and Gray (figure 2). The canvas has been tilted at a 45-degree angle and immediately this move alone incorporates the angles of the canvas into the composition. It is no longer about just the paint that will be applied on it, but the canvas as a physical material that will now become part of Mondrian’s ensemble of parts. The painting consists of four lines paired parallel to each other creating a grid. The lines are black, and they each have their own thickness, they give the illusion of being continuous but their continuity is interrupted by the diagonal edges of the canvas. The lines could stand for themselves if they wanted to, they seem to each be individuals with their own personality represented by their thickness. They stand perfectly vertical or lay perfectly flat, but they seem sturdy. They connect almost by chance like they have meet each other and are able to live in harmony with one another in that position. The places where the two lines meet are not visible except on the top left diagonal of the canvas and even then, there is no sense of hierarchy between the two lines. While the lines have a life of their own, the spaces that they create have another. There is one space that is clearly defined in the center as a square and four others that continue around the edges of the canvas. The lines make us believe that the same rhythm will continue endlessly and therefor, the spaces that surround the canvas will also be squares or rectangles but there is no clear evidence that this will be the case. Regardless of what is beyond, the spaces created by the lines are real. They contain nothing but the nature of having a frame, a beginning and an end, suggest that they could contain things if they wanted to. These spaces in between could be a room, a lot, a parcel, a box, a window, a blank canvas. These empty spaces could be anything we want them to be they are created by the connections of other things, lines in this case. Once the balance is found between the individuals or lines, other opportunities can arise, the spaces in between.