PIET MONDRIAN

In Grade 10 art class with Mr. Paterson, we were learning silk screening. I loved art class, even though I had very little discernable talent (Mr. Paterson wrote in my report card one semester: “Working hard to overcome obvious difficulties” I called him on that remark 10 years later). I decided to do a stylised nighttime cityscape, composed of only squares and rectangles. It turned out quite well, and both of us were quite surprised. He said that it reminded him of Mondrian, someone with whom I was not yet familiar. He showed me some of his painting, and a love affair was born.

Perhaps it is because my life is so often full of chaos and disorder that Mondrian appeals so much to me. On the surface, his most iconic work seems cool, controlled and distant. Set against a white background with nothing but right angles, primary coloured squares and rectangles are separated by thick black lines. That’s it. It’s the type of painting that inspires unimaginative suburban parents to declare: “That’s not art! My 6 year-old son could do that!” Well, he didn’t. And no he couldn’t. So shut up.

But look deeper. There’s something unsettling about his work.  It’s almost like the world around him was so chaotic, that the only way to quell the demons was to reduce his art to its most basic and simple elements.  The calm and order he creates is almost violent, and that very orderliness which dictates his work belies an intense turmoil.

Maybe. That’s what I feel today. Sometimes, I see an intense and palpable joy in his art. In Broadway Boogie Woogie, an earlier and more visually complex painting, the hustle and bustle of New York seems to leap off the canvas, with the grid –like lines suggesting traffic, neon lights and skyscrapers.  It actually reminds me of a row of NYC taxicabs at 8 in the morning jockeying for position.

I have been fortunate to see several Mondrians in person.  When you see them up close, you notice things that don’t come across in a book:  brush strokes, pencil marks, and occasional imperfections and deviations in the straight lines. This makes them all the more beautiful to me.