I bet some people have looked at Piet Mondrian's paintings of lines and color, rectangles and squares, and asked themselves that very question. It's hard to explain exactly what art is, but one thing I think I can safely say is that if a maker says that the thing he or she made is art, it's art.
That doesn't mean it's good. It doesn't mean it's popular. It doesn't mean people will want to spend ten cents on it, let alone ten thousand dollars. It doesn't mean that a gallery or museum will display it......but it still counts as art, I think, if the maker intended it to be art.
Well,
today's birthday boy created paintings that ARE good. And popular.
They
have sold for up to 40 million dollars!
They
hang in museums and galleries all over the world.
Mondrian's
paintings most definitely are art!
Like
most modern artists, Mondrian (who was born in the Netherlands on
this date in 1872) could make representational art very well. His trees
looked like trees, his windmills looked like windmills, and you could
recognize piers and beaches, rivers and fields in his paintings.
 |
| This tree shows Mondrian's experimentation with cubism, on his way to his own distinct style... |
However,
cubism and Bart van der Leck's primary-colored paintings influenced
Mondrian. He began to try to express the beauties of nature through
abstraction. He thought that the proportion and composition of each
painting—the placement of the lines and shapes, and their relative
size to one another—spoke of beauty itself rather than of a beautiful
tree, a beautiful waterfall, or a beautiful something.
Mondrian
and van der Leck founded an art movement called De Stijl (the
style).
Mondrian's
last studio...
Mondrian
grew up in the Netherlands, went to Paris when he was 40 years old,
and after some back-and-forth between the two nations, finally went
to London and then the United States to escape Hitler's Nazis.
Mondrian's
last studio was in Manhattan, New York. He painted the walls and
furniture of his studio off-white—the same color that was the base
color he used in his paintings—and he painted the top of his metal
stool a bright, glossy red. He also painted the cover of his
phonograph (record player) the same red color. Finally, he had bright
colored papers that he tacked and retacked to the walls in
ever-changing compositions. Mondrian and visitors found the studio
energizing and restful, at the same time!
By the Way...
Have you heard of the latest art-in-public-places fad? It's called LEGO-bombing, and it reminds of a bit of Mondrian's wonderful art...Check it out!
Celebrate by creating Mondrian-style art yourself!
Create a piece by hand, using sharpies and colored markers and a ruler or T-square...or use a computer drawing program. Or you could create a piece using a paper cutter and colored paper. Try more than one method, and compare...
Be inspired to further experiment by looking at this Pinterest board.
Also
on this date:
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