Pure Abstraction
Shapes
and colors have always had their own emotional force: the designs on ancient
bowls, textiles, and furnishings are abstract, as are whole pages of medieval
manuscripts. But never before in Western painting had this delight in shape as
such, in color made independent of nature, been taken seriously as a fit
subject for the painter. Abstraction became the perfect vehicle for artists to
explore and unversalize ideas and sensations.
Several
artists claimed to be the first to paint an abstract picture, rather as early
photographers had wrangled over who had invented the camera. For abstract art,
the distinction is most often given to Wassily Kandinsky, but certainly another
Russian artist, Kasimir Malevich, was also among the first.
Kandinsky's
late style had a geometrical tendency and Suprematist abstraction revolved
largely around the square, but the real artist of geometry was the Dutchman
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). He seems to be the absolute abstract artist, yet his
early landscapes and still lifes were relatively realist.
The Grey Tree (1912; 79 x 108 cm (31 x 42 1/2 in))
adumbrates the abstractions that were a half-way house to his geometrical work,
yet it also has a foothold in the real world of life and death. The Grey Tree is realist art on the
point of taking off into abstraction: take away the title and we have an
abstraction; add the title and we have a grey tree. He claimed to have painted
these pictures from the need to make a living, yet they have a fragile delicacy
that is precious and rare. Mondrian sought an art of the utmost probity: his
greatest desire was to attain personal purity, to disregard all that pleases
the narrow self and enter into divine simplicities. That may sound dull, but he
composed with a lyrical sureness of balance that makes his art as pure and
purifying as he hoped.
Mondrian
imposed rigorous constraints on himself, using only primary colors, black and
white, and straight-sided forms. His theories and his art are a triumphant
vindication of austerity. Diamond
Painting in Red, Yellow, and Blue (c. 1921-25; 143 x 142 cm (56
1/4 x 56 in)) appears to be devoid of three-dimensional space, but it is in
fact an immensely dynamic picture. The great shapes are dense with their
chromatic tension. The varying thicknesses of the black borders contain them in
perfect balance. They integrate themselves continually as we watch, keeping us
constantly interested. We sense that this is a vision of the way things are
intended to be, but never are.
Список
литературы
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