What are we looking at?
If readers want to travel back and read this article “next to” Mondrian, I recommend listening to the song above, music he listened to while creating his art.
Questions we might think about when looking at Mondrian’s works for more than 5 seconds:
- Are we seeing a static work, or is it moving? If so, in which direction?
- Where are the lines going? Are they limited by the frames, or can they extend freely beyond them?
- Why are all his works made of such simple elements? Why are the lines always straight and perpendicular to one another?
These questions are a start and strong prove of how interesting Mondrian’s works could be, and how much we could dive into his work.
Here’s a simple work of his called Composition with Blue. Two lines and a blue triangle, on a white rhombus. That’s all. And yet, it provokes us, it makes us wonder. Looking closer, viewers could realize many tiny details. Such as, the lower lines is actually wider than the vertical one. Did Mondrian do that on purpose? Moreover, the title itself raises questions: “Composition with BLUE” Why is the blue so important? Some might say look at this painting without the blue, and it might start tilting or spanning in counterclockwise. So perhaps the blue is there to “save” or limit and control the black lines, to “force” them into a static view rather than a dynamic rotating motion.
In fact, Mondrian did create a painting, called Composition with Two Lines. It almost seem like he was making fun of his audience—or perhaps he became so immersed in his own world that he teetered on the edge of madness, unable to stop obsessing over every nuance. Maybe he stared at it for too long, and every tiny change became exaggerated, as if the lines and colors came alive, capable of being represented and interpreted in endless ways.
How can something be balanced? A question that leaked out from his work, challenging and awakening the audience and testing human capacity to distinguish something that is ambiguous and subtle. This in fact bring out a concept called “dynamic equilibrium”，in other words, Mondrian is a artists who “creates motions, also creates rest.” His works have made art historians wonder about what balance and imbalance means.
This actually made me remember the most notable feature in ancient Greek sculpture – Contrapposto (an Italian term that means “counterpoise”).
The Porch of the Maidens, part of an ancient Greek architecture known as the Erechtheion. As shown in the picture, the Maidens’ hips are slightly shifted to one side, creating a sense of motion and liveliness. But why don’t we feel like they are about to fall off the porch? Similar to the blue triangle in Mondrian’s Composition with Blue, the vertical lines in their drapery gave the figures a stabilizing pull that cancels out the sense of movement.
I feel like this is one of the reasons Mondrian’s style is called “the purest abstract art”, the concept he explored is so basic and fundamental that it can be traced back to the Ancient Greek.
It is actually interesting to think about the concept of “dynamic equilibrium.” Many people might have encountered it before, not in art but in science—for example, in biology, a cell achieves “dynamic equilibrium” when placed in an isotonic solution, while in physics, an object moving at a constant speed is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, experiencing balanced forces. All these concepts have concise and clear definitions.
However, the situation is quite different in art. To define “dynamic equilibrium,” we must first define “balance.” One definition from an article states, “visual balance is the capacity of a design to elicit a perceptual experience in which the viewer is satisfied with the distribution of forms, colors, and textures in the design.” From this example, it’s clear how objective science is compared to the subjectivity of art. Discussing balance itself somehow leads me to wonder how to find balance between art and science, the objective and the subjective—an endless topic that also resonates with the themes present in Mondrian’s art.
This indeed leads us to the question: “Why are most of Mondrian’s works made of simple grids? Just perpendicular lines, one after another?” For him, this contradiction created by the lines represents all kinds of opposing forces in reality—right and left, up and down, right and wrong, objective and subjective, etc. This is one of the reasons he called himself a “realist.” The “contradictory forces,” for him, are the true reality and the essence of all things. Mondrian’s works depict a utopian world where inequality exists but can reach equity. The seemingly contradictory lines, in his view, connect and coexist at one point; together, they create shapes and colors, ultimately conveying a sense of “equilibrium” in the artwork.
Mondrian, like many abstract artists, went through various art styles, starting from pure realism to fully abstract works. This change in Mondrian can be attributed to his desire to influence reality and change it for the better. The majority of artworks before this fully abstract phase followed the concept of “mimesis,” which means that artists imitate reality to create their artworks. This reality refers to the life we live in—a world full of disorder, inequality, and chaos—not the earlier “realities” Mondrian discussed. Thus, Mondrian believed that if he could stop depicting daily life, art could convey and represent a utopian world.
For works like Mondrian’s, some viewers will stand there for minutes or even hours, analyzing the balance and imbalance, the motion and stillness. Others, however, might laugh and think, “My cat could do that.”
Mondrian’s works aim to reflect the world’s bipolar and contradictory nature. At the same time, they provoke mixed reactions: some criticize, while others praise them as “the purest form of abstract art” or “a turning point in modern art.” It’s ironic to wonder whether Mondrian added more conflict to the world or, with his lines and colors, actually brought it into balance.
发表回复