Piet Mondrian

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I’m Quinn Rose, and I'm someone who did not go to art school, but I love to learn about the life and styles of different artists.

Betty: Hi, and I’m Betty. I'm also someone who did not go to art school. But I also love learning about all kinds of different artists. And I used to work as a gallery guide at an art gallery, but because of the pandemic that has gone on for a really long time I couldn't even go back even if I wanted to, but that doesn't stop me from researching art. 

Quinn: Well, our last episode that we put out, we talked sort of generally about abstract artists. And one of the people that we mentioned pretty briefly was an artist named Piet Mondrian, who was a foundational person in sort of the emergence of modernism in art, and both of us are fans of his work. And so we decided to come back and just spend a whole episode talking about him and his life and the philosophies behind his art and what he's really all about. And so if you are not familiar with Mondrian's work, you may have already seen it and didn't realize what it was, because his style—the style that he became most famous for that he sort of reached at the end of his life, is hugely influential in design. And so this is the style that is all straight lines and rectangles, mostly white space with black lines, as well as colored blocks that are red, yellow, and blue, the primary colors. So these were the kinds of paintings that he made and we'll get way more into in detail. But this has also been very influential, like in lots of different designers, the TV show The Partridge Family, their bus was decorated in this style. There were a pair of Nike shoes that were in this style. So once you start realizing what that thing is, you start actually seeing it all these different places and all of this came from one artist that we're talking about today.

Betty: And before we go too far, I do want to semi correct you, but it's like, it's one of these things where it's like, it's not even in my opinion that much of a correction—apparently his first name is pronounced “Pete.” In art history and in way artists' names are being pronounced, people pronounce it differently. Like I don't pronounce Van Gogh properly, but I just can't speak Dutch. So I will just refer to him as Mondrian.

Quinn: Fair enough.

Betty: But yes, like, as you said, his works are hugely influential and—but one of the reasons I actually personally became interested in Mondrian, was, surprise, I saw a show with his work in it. But not just his work, not just these ones that we're talking about that are like super modern, super sleek, that inspired like, you know, inspired generations of artists and designers. But I got really interested in, like, his whole body of work from when he was—like his earlier work, being more representational and his progression and the way he changed, not necessarily in a linear way, in my opinion, but his style definitely morphed over time. And just kind of seeing that development among his work and his style to me was hugely fascinating. And I like to do that with a lot of different artists, like study their body of work, not just what they're most well-known for, but yeah, that's kind of like the gist of why not only in that previous episode, when we talked about him, I was like, oh, I just really like this artist, but also I want to talk about things that have to do with Mondrian’s body of work that most people, and including me, had no idea existed. 

Quinn: Yeah. And this is one of the things that we talked about in the last episode where a lot of these famous abstract, modern artists, that's the, sort of the style that they came to after many years of their career, getting there through traditional study at first and then like experimenting with different art styles and then kind of pioneering their own style. At least like the most famous artists, like that is the pattern that you see with them. And so today we're going to get into like how Mondrian actually got there, because he did—similar to most other artists of this kind, like did start out in a very traditional kind of setting. He was born in 1872 in the Netherlands. And he didn't have like… I don't want to say that he didn't have a difficult life because he like, definitely went through difficult things. You know, he was alive in the World Wars and the Great Depression. Lots of really nasty stuff. However, I feel like some of the artists we've studied, it's just been like a lot of tragedy and hardship versus he seems like, pretty okay most of the time. He was born into a stable family, he was allowed to study art from a young age. His biographers say like, by the time he was a teenager, he was like studying art. His parents did make him study education as well. So he had sort of like a more sort of traditionally stable educational foundation. But that just meant like he got certified to be an art teacher, basically. And it was like, great.

Betty: Yeah, exactly. So it is actually kind of nice to have, you know, not a complete terrible tragedy, which I think again is one of these like myths that like so many artists, they have to go through hardship in order to be a good artist, which is actually probably mostly not true, like most artists or especially well-known ones is probably because they came from a pretty well off family who that can afford to send them to art school. In this case, like context is pretty important to me, or at least that's what I got interested in. So there was a show back in like 2013, 2014, that was like touring around different places in North America, including the AGO. But it was originated from, I think the Guggenheim… I want to say New York, but you know, it could have been on of the other ones, but the title of the show is The Great Upheaval, Masterpieces from the Guggenheim collection, 1910 to 1918. It featured a number of artists from the Guggenheim museum collection, like Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, who we talked about last time as well, and like Matisse, Picasso, all kinds of these people who are working in the early 20th century in mostly Europe, including Mondrian as well. And so like the show really was trying to just showcase, like here is like what artists were painting leading up to World War I and throughout World War I. And so it's not trying to tell like a definitive narrative, but it's just like, you know, like just know the context of what these artists were working in and their artworks are not necessarily about the war, but you can kind of see how it influenced them. I'm more interested—at least these days—in studying art history from the standpoint of like, context and what's going on in the world and where these artists are and what they were influenced by in society. Like I'm less interested in just studying about Cubism or Impressionism or Dadaism. And while like, I am interested in the -isms, like, it's just, it feels like to me as well as to, again, quote unquote "non-art people,” it's just much more interesting and relatable to think about it from the perspective of art history actually about history.

Quinn: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like with Mondrian's work was incredibly influenced by not only the art movements that he was around, but like the current events that he was living through. And as well as his kind of like religious philosophical beliefs in the world were a huge part of where his art style evolved to. So like, basically this man's life was, he grew up in the Netherlands. He did a lot of art there. He moved to Paris, did a bunch of art there and got really into Cubism. He came back to the Netherlands to care for his father and oops, World War I. [laughs] Is that disrespectful? It was a long time ago.

8:30

Betty: It’s fine.

Quinn: The tragedy of World War I broke out. And so he was in Netherlands for that time, went back to Paris. Then there was, you know, rising fascism in Europe, ended up moving to London to try to escape that. But then when things escalated, even in London, he moved to New York and lived in New York until he passed away at the age of 71 from pneumonia. So within all of that, he made a lot of connections with other artists. And as I said, like moving around Europe was definitely exposed to a lot of different art styles. Cubism was probably one of the biggest ones that really affected the way he thought about color and lines and painting. And then the other, like, mostly huge thing that kind of changed how he saw art and how he interpreted what art was supposed to be was actually a religious slash philosophical movement called Theosophy. And to sum it up briefly, Theosophy was a religion that was like very influenced by like Hinduism and Buddhism, but it was established like in the United States and like the late 1800s, was pretty popular in the early 1900s. And the basic message of it—this is a vast oversimplification, but the basic message of it was that there is a sort of an objective, a spiritual world that exists alongside our just sort of physical human life. And that humans go through reincarnation and the principle of karma. And that there's also these really important values of like, we are all sort of siblings and we need to improve each other's lives. And a big part that Mondrian got out of this is this belief that there is sort of an objective spiritual reality, and that art should be attempting to reflect that objective spiritual reality, rather than trying to represent things in the world. He specifically said "art should be above reality. Otherwise would have no value for man.” So we'll get into that a little bit more as we talk about his specific works, but that is kind of like the combination of like vast social upheaval and this religious affiliation that like he found as the foundation for his beliefs, like sort of combined to come out with what would become his art style.

Betty: I was like looking through some of his, the other things that he was saying, and some of his quotes. A similar one is he said “the emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore the object must be eliminated from the picture.” And as we go through his, like, progression is, yeah, he literally went from representational to eliminating the object from the picture and just going full abstraction. And while, you know, many different artists have many different reasons for doing that, and he probably had more than one, this distilling it down to a spiritual experience was definitely a huge part of it, if not the biggest part of it. And from what I gather from, you know, learning about his work and some of the things he said in his thesis, in what he's trying to establish, and it's not just him, like many artists at this time were not only, you know, going in the direction of like pure abstraction, but also inspired and/or were a part of this theosophy movement. And there are these like fundamental qualities and/or fundamental elements in, like, the universe and understanding them or depicting them or exploring them, like gets at, in their opinion anyway, the truth, or maybe not so much the truth, but some sort of like spiritual enlightenment. It doesn't even have to be spiritual enlightenment because the, the thing that I like to compare it to quite often is physics and mathematics. Like if you try to distill logic and rational thinking down to answering some of the fundamental questions of the universe, you are going into these very abstract levels of thinking. Even scientists and mathematicians cannot answer the question to life, the universe and everything with one formula. So it doesn't mean anybody has answers, but people will always try to look for these answers. So this is just kind of an artist way of trying to do that.

Quinn: So do you want to get into some of his work as examples of this?

Betty: Yes. But before I get into the examples of the Theosophy, I do want to like quickly kind of cover some of, some of his early work. So Mondrian is associated with this art movement called Luminism, which we don't have to get into exactly what that is, but it is much more representational and it's closer to like 19th century Romanticism, where people are painting landscapes in very realistic naturalists and naturalistic ways, and that is kind of where he started, but very quickly he started to like make abstractions even on that level. So this painting from 1908, it's called Molen Mill in Sunlight. And basically he’s painting, like you can definitely see, this is a mill and there's sunlight coming through because the colors are evoking that it is pretty obvious that it is abstract. You know, like it is, you can kind of see this mill and then there's the sky with sunlight. And then you can kind of see like. what it looks like to be water in the foreground and like reflections of the mill. But they're in pretty already distilled down shapes and colors. And the thing that it wasn't obvious in the beginning of it, when I kind of read the description of this painting is that he only used three colors, which is yellow, red, and blue. And he blended some a little bit, but not really like it, it is just composed of pretty much three primary colors and it’s already approaching this like geometric or at least blobby style. And some people may call this Post-Impressionism, or Fauvism, or whatever. And it is very similar to people like Matisse and maybe even Van Gogh's work. But—and he's obviously aware of these other artists and they're all influencing each other. But it’s, this I think is a pretty good example of him diverging from a more traditional style.

Quinn: I believe this is one of the first examples of him only using primary colors, which would later become the—primary colors and black and white and gray would later become his distinctive style. And here it's like, it's very different than what his paintings eventually became, but it's still it's that it's that yellow blue.

Betty: Yeah. And then actually a work of art that I should have mentioned before this, but again, I'm not going to talk about too much, is if you look at, he did paint this a year later in like—or a year or two later in 1909, 1910, which is why I said it's not like linear. He didn't go directly from painting in one way to another. He kind of went back and forth. So the painting Spring Sun from 1909, 1910 is a series of just trees in in front of a castle ruin. And this again, it's already slightly impressionistic, not totally literal, but this is much more in line with like something you would expect from the late 19th century of somebody painting a landscape with buildings and trees in front of it. So again, like when I first saw this, this show, I knew obviously Mondrian painted in different styles before, but just seeing a painting like this, I don't know if this exact one was in the show, but I was just like, oh yeah, this guy painted in more representational ways. And it's pretty good.

Quinn: One thing that we haven't mentioned yet, which is kind of a side note for his work, but he was really fascinated by trees. He thought trees were so cool. He painted so many of them. And even though like his most famous style is not representing trees, like if you look at a bunch of his tree paintings and sort of line them up, you can actually create this continuum where it's like, oh, maybe these blocks that he ended up with the end are just like flattened out trees. You can see that line being drawn. 

Betty: Like there is this pretty cool article on emptyeasel.com by Dan, who kind of summarize this in a way, like showing, okay, here’s a very representational tree that he did in the 1900s, or maybe even earlier. And then it's like a grayer blobby type trees. And this is where you can kind of start to see the Cubist influence from people like Picasso and Brock. And then it became more Cubists because you know, those artists were also becoming more and more abstract and the tree— you just see lines and it might as well be a stained glass window at this point. And then, you know, it just became okay, like more geometric, because trees are, you know, they're more organic in shape. But you know, curvy lines is what you would expect, but then the curvy lines became more rectilinear and then the curvy lines just totally left at one point. And then he's still using like these natural colors. Cause again trees usually you'll say associate like brown and like dull colors, but then he was just like, okay, well, let's start to add more color—or, sorry, not add more color. It's just mixed less color. Cause again, usually when artists are painting, they start with the more primary colors and then it just became colors, and then it just became even less colors. And then it was just squares. So we're back to squares. 

Quinn: We always come back to squares. This podcast is about squares.

Betty: So like a specific painting that I guess like, is the reason why I am a huge Mondrian fan. And I probably first saw it in an art textbook when I was like 12 or something, which is many years ago, that is a painting called Broadway Boogie-Woogie from 1944. And it, he painted it after he had already gotten to the United States. And it's obviously in reference to New York City, the Broadway in New York city. And I guess the reason why I say again, it's like, he didn't just go in a linear direction and was inspired by many things, is that this now became slightly more representational. Because he's painting Broadway, he's painting the block of the streets. And obviously again, like most of his other work, it's an abstraction of what it looks like, but yeah. It is just so—in my opinion, anyway—representative of New York, or, well, any city really, but specifically New York because of its geometric-ness in design of urban planning. And you know, all the lights that you would expect at night. I mean, I guess. One way this painting could be better is if the white was black. So you have like a more nightlight or nightlife version of Broadway, which is kind of what I think of when I think of Broadway

Quinn: Yeah. There's a couple of things about this that really stand out to me. We talk about it being more representational. Instead of being like, mostly just like very large blocks of color and like dark black lines, the lines so-called of it are actually, they're mostly yellow, but they also have all these little different tiny squares of like white and red and black in them. And so they ended up really looking like streets with cars on the blocks that appear throughout it. There's a block in there it's like mostly white rectangles, but there's also these other things that are like, there's like red rectangles or blue rectangles with different colors inside of them. So they look like buildings. It looks like you're looking at an aerial view of a grid system city, like New York City. Ironically enough Broadway—well, not the whole street, but like a large portion of a street of Broadway is actually like, diagonal across in lower Manhattan. So I don't know what's up with that. And it's also called Broadway Boogie-Woogie because in the years that Mondrian was in New York, he was very influenced by jazz music. And that was starting to very much seep into his work. And so there is this also like jazz element to this painting. Like it seems more alive. It seems like there is sort of more implied movement to it and in a very sort of typically jazz way, you know, like jazz is improvisational. Jazz is about both the music and the space between the music, the way that Mondrian is art is like about the color and the space between the colors, the white space is just as important or perhaps even more important than the colors. 

Betty: Yeah, exactly. And it's like jazz as well as a lot of other, you know, modern movements, whether it's art or music or architecture and design, like a lot of it is about quote unquote “avant-garde.” Like it's, it's not a traditional way of interpreting things or representing things. And some people think it's weird and, and too random or whatever, or at least at the time, and even now, so like incorporating these aspects into his work is like, again, just kind of reflects his environment and modernity and all these things. And I, and again, I think the reason why this episode is different from squares and some of the other talks about modern art is that while this person you could say some of his most influential work is some of the most like abstract and maybe hard to get into type of work for most people, because it's just squares. Like for me, like Mondrian, this work is deeply culturally inspired and influenced and is relevant to not only the culture that he grew up in and worked in at the time, but also today. So it's one of these examples of contemporary art and, or modern art actually, I think in my opinion, making sense.

Quinn: This painting in particular was like the stylistic shift for Mondrian. Like he was going back to like somewhat more representational. He was playing around with color in not unrecognizable ways, but definitely like sort of taking a step forward in his style. But unfortunately this was also his final piece. This was his last full piece that he completed and it's one of his most famous and hangs in the MOMA now. But he passed away soon after, as I mentioned of pneumonia at the age of 71. And so we never got to see like, would have he created like a lot more in this style, would he have taken more steps forward? We will never know. So this was kind of his last great masterpiece. 

Betty: Yeah. And speaking of masterpiece I did send you earlier an out of context picture, but I feel like it was quite self explanatory. So I, for my old apartment or flat, you know, it was one of the first times I was staying at a place for longer than a few months. So I was like, okay, I'll paint my walls and I’ll kind of make this place kind of a little bit my own, even though I'm just renting. I painted one wall, you know, nice green accent color, another color wall in a… like it’s yellow, but it's not like bright yellow. Again, people who are not designers, or just people who are even designers are like, oh my God, why would a person paint their room in like lime green and yellow, but you know, I'm unique. So, but then I decided to not paint all the walls, to just have it be an accent. And then on one of the white walls, I painted a, I guess, Mondrian inspired blocky work, but you know, it's slightly different. So I did use my green—my like sort of lime green and slightly toned down yellow but still quite bright, and then painted these—oh, sorry. I didn't paint lines. I use tape so that I would have these lines in between. But they're white lines instead of black lines. Cause the wall in behind is white. And then yeah, I had these other like geometric squares. So like I'm inspired by him, but I'm not using the primary colors that he does, but I am still using bright colors. But for me, the thing I learned from this experience, which we talked about last time, is that it is not easy to recreate even in the style of, or inspired by modern contemporary artists, even if it looks easy. Because this took me not only like so long to do, but also to figure out like how to put the squares, like how to make it kind of balanced so that there's not a giant block on one side and another side that looks off, but then obviously not make it so symmetrical that it's boring and, you know, still have it be aesthetically pleasing. And you have some white space, you know, just like all kinds of all kinds of these like decisions you make that, you know, it's not a math equation, so you, it's not, there's no right answer. But at the end of the day, like I think I did okay. Cause again, I did go to design school, so I have a bit of an idea of how to make something look good, but I still don't think it's anywhere even close to a Mondrian, like I still think, okay, those white spaces I left was a little bit too much. The little sliver on the side could have been less of a sliver, more of a sliver, I don't even know. And then there's just not that much dynamic-ness that, that a Mondrian has, but then it also isn't as simple and iconic. Some people might look at those and be like, okay, that looks nice. And some people, I look at this and be like, no.

Quinn: I love that you've gone through this exercise and tested yourself sort of accidentally putting yourself through the test of, can I recreate a modern artist? And the answer was, kind of.

Betty: Yeah. If you were to critique this, please be as honest as you can, about my recreation of a Mondrian.

Quinn: Well, I'm going to start out be brutally honest, Betty. Those are not good colors. [laughs]

Betty: That is fine. That is totally okay. That's why it was my room and not anybody else's room.

Quinn: No, exactly, exactly. Well, it's interesting because it is very sort of, like the inspiration is clear to see, but I think that like, when you, if I sit down and like, start just think about it critically comparing it to Mondrian paintings, you can see those differences and like, oh, you can see like where you have more uniform areas that like he wouldn't have had that be so uniform because he would have shaken it up more or like seeing that, you know, we mentioned like one end of the square is sort of like taken up by these little strips of paint, which is like, oh, that seems like, kind of out of place. And it's not that like, it looks bad. I think it looks cool, I think the design looks cool. But then when you try, when you compare it to someone who like spent his career doing it, you’re like, oh, you really can see the difference between an amateur and a master.

Betty: Oh, totally. Yeah. I do encourage this, one of these things I do encourage some feedback from listeners, whether it's in the form of an email or, or on the discord, if you're on there. Cause I am about your critique of my Mondrian recreation. I'm really interested in knowing and I want brutal honesty.

Quinn: This also gives me an opportunity to talk about something that I found very fascinating about Mondrian, which is sort of his working space. And so when he set up a studio, what he would do is he would have these big blocks of like colored paper in his, you know, primary colors and white and black that he loved to make paintings out of. And he would rearrange them and have them pasted all over his studio. So basically he was living and working in a Mondrian painting as he was painting them. And apparently he had gotten to this style of working where he would rearrange everything and then he would paint a ton and then he would rearrange everything and then he would paint more. And like, this is how he preferred to work. Like this was a—he did this in multiple different spaces, but it was like ultimately perfected in his New York studio, his final studio, which he said was his favorite studio he ever worked in. And so he thought that led to like a lot of his creativity and keeping his ideas fresh, which I really relate to. Because I have to rearrange the furniture in my apartment every couple months, or my brain starts to die. And literally just this week I rearranged the furniture in my apartment again. And then I was reading this and I was like, oh my God, kindred spirits. I'm a podcast producer and you're a world famous artist and we're the same.

Betty: So you're more of a Mondrian than I am. 

Quinn: And now because of this, his friend Harry Holtzman who was basically the heir to his estate and the there's a Holtzman/Mondrian estate that like manages all of their work together. But he and another friend Fritz Garner basically documented like every aspect of the studio and then put the studio up for display. So people were allowed to come in and like, see it as an exhibition. And then they have recreated that studio and shown that in different art museums over time. It's called the Wall Works, which is absolutely fascinating. And I love that like, out of all of the work he made one of the works that he didn't even intend to like go on after his death, like was the physical space that he was working in, in this perfect snapshot of the day that he passed away. So if it, if he had passed away a year later, it could have been completely different. But this is now like this settled work that we have that exist as the Mondrian Wall Works.

Betty: We will need to do a field trip once life goes back to normal. We have a million field trip.

Quinn: I know, I don’t think it's been exhibited in a long time, but hypothetically, it's still out there, could come back. If anyone hears about it, please let us know.

Betty: Wherever it is in the world, I will do my best to get there just to see it. And so speaking of like offices and like architectural spaces, like we spoke earlier about the design movements that he founded, as well as continued to inspire like designers and architects and just kind of all kinds of people around the world for. I think, you know, not going to get into it too much, but we will leave some links in the show notes that are of buildings and offices. Like I see this like, I found this really cool, like, Mondrian inspired bathroom somewhere in the US that is just like, all these tiles are done in like the red, yellow, and blue, and then the, you know, the lines are there, but of course—this one I actually really like, it's not a literal interpretation rather than some of the buildings which is just like, here's a facade and it is a Mondrian painting. I basically just Googled for like Mondrian inspired products on places like Pinterest and stuff. And there's like earrings and you know, like, furniture and of course also like t-shirts and flower vases and like toys and dish towels. And like, honestly, if you can think of an object that somebody could put one of these geometric patterns on or in it, you know, I think in some cases, pretty creative ways. You know, like these lamps and stuff it's been done. And, and you can continue to do do that yourself. Again, like I painted a poorly done Mondrian, or at least Mondrian inspired thing on my wall. Lots of people still do and it, it really like, this type of like modern art is—turns a lot of people off. And I still see people walk into galleries, looking at a Mondrian painting and go like, just WTF. Like, why is this art? And you can continue to believe in that, but you can't deny that like a huge amount of people, and I would say that the vast majority of people appreciate Mondrian designs in these, like art pieces or design pieces or earrings that they wear. So it's like, yeah, you can, you don't like this type of art, but like a lot of normal everyday non-art people do. So, you know, maybe think about why you don't like it?

Quinn: Well, it's always fun to just basically dive into an artist's work, especially an artist who is so foundational, like Mondrian and one who you can still see like very present all around us. It does like, I'm such a sucker for art museum gift shops. I rarely buy things because I—well, I mean, just in general, I try not to buy too many like things, but every time I’m in an art museum gift shop, I'm like, oh my God, they're so cute. Look, they put Mondrian art like on earrings. I want it. Anyway, but thanks for listening to this episode of Pictorial and us gushing about this art style for a while. And you can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. And you can find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod, where we will post pictures of the stuff we talked about. And also we never say this, but if you wanted to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, that would be nice. We don't really care about reviews, but I'm going to be totally honest. There's one sitting there right now that's like, really mean, and I think it would be nice if there were just like, if you enjoy the show and you want to give other people the chance to like, look at reviews and see like, oh, people enjoy this show, I could give it a shot. That would be really nice of you just so there's not just like a negative one sitting there. 

Betty: I absolutely agree. And again, I welcome constructive criticism as well. So, you know, if you have it, please do, and we want to know how we can improve, but sometimes they're not quite constructive in my opinion. And I would just like positive and constructive reviews more often. That would be nice. 

Quinn: I just want to balance in like the common section of the reviews, just so people aren't like, oh, this show looks terrible. You can also, if you want, find me on Instagram at @aspiringrobotfm, and you can leave positive or negative comments on my Instagram, I don't really care.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsV, and I'm also on YouTube at ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, you can also find Pictorial Podcasts on YouTube where like this episode that involves a lot of visual things to look at, you can listen while watching the pictures come along on the screen.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!