#artafterphotography — Public Fediverse posts
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"Composition 10 in Black and White (Pier and Ocean)," Piet Mondrian, 1915.
While Mondrian is most famous for his graphic squares that look like maps of a city, his Abstract works took other forms as well.
Here we have a bunch of black lines against a white field, looking pretty darned random. However, the alternative title "Pier and Ocean" is a clue. The long straight vertical lines in the lower center are to indicate a breakwater or pier; the long horizontal lines around it are supposedly the waves and currents of the water washing against it.
While it represents nature and reality in a vague sense (unlike yesterday's exercise in Realism), this is mostly an exploration of intersecting opposites. Thus we move beyond representing Nature and are instead using it as a reference in graphic and abstract works....and now I wonder if photography, which gave us the chance to document nature, made Realist art superfluous, so instead we now have Abstraction? Could be...
It's an interesting image, to be sure. Sometimes I think of Mondrian as great design more than art, but that's more my own limitation than Mondrian. This is frequently reproduced; look for it at your doctor's office.
From the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.