4.2 Abstracting the essence of nature!
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Mondrian would take a long walks in nature and then retreat to his studio without windows to focus his work on the expression of his memory of nature, rather that direct depiction of it. By reducing the complex forms of the visual world to their essential forms they were simplifying them down to a universal essence of form. Subsequently he developed the skill of reducing the complexity of a tree to a few lines, then linking those lines to the surrounding space. For example, in the artwork simply entitled Tree , 68 there is a natural curvature to the branches that intersect with the very angular surrounding space. The space itself seems to be sculpted in shades of grey and black paint, as if carved in concrete. The artist has been described as using a:
´reductionist approach to preserve what he considered to be the essence of the mystical energy that governs nature and the universe.
In constructing his perception of the essence of an image and freeing it from content, he enables the viewer to construct his or her own perception of the image´ . 69
Distilling the lines to their most elemental forms until perspective was entirely eliminated and he developed essentially non-representational pictures devoid of the obviously natural, and composed of straight lines and bold squares of colour. By excluding oblique angles and focusing on only vertical and horizontal
Mondrian, P. The trees (1912), Oil on Canvas, 75 x 111.5 cm.
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Kandel, E. (2016), p80.
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lines, it is suggested that the imagination and curiosity of the viewer can be focused on the omissions. In 1959, an important scientific discovery was made by David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel in the John Hopkins University (then Harvard) in the USA regarding the biological basis for Mondrian´s reductionist language. They discovered that the nerve cells in the primary visual cortex of the brain responded directly to horizontal, vertical or oblique lines as the building blocks of contour and form. That these angles and edges were assembled into geometric shapes within the higher regions of the brain to become representative of more complex images. These physiological findings were revolutionary at the time, and were described in the context of the appreciation of the artworks of Mondrian:
´In a sense, our quest and conclusions are not unlike those of Mondrian and others. Mondrian thought that the universal form, the constituent of all other, more complex forms, is the straight line:
physiologists think that cells that respond specifically to what some artists at least consider to be the universal form are the very ones that constitute the building blocks which allow the nervous system to represent more complex forms. I find it difficult to believe that the relationship between the physiology of the visual cortex and the creations of artists is entirely fortuitous´ . 70
It can be therefore said that by reducing the complexity of the visual world into the essential lines and simple representation the artist connected to the rules of the brain to prescribe form. That by omitting the oblique and natural curvature of line, the brain of the viewer was given the space and the opportunity to fill in the blanks with its own creativity. From the 1920´s till Mondrian´s death in 1944, he
Kandel, E. (2016), p80.
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can be shown to have applied the same reductionism technique to colour. By focusing on the three primary colours, the essential simplicity of the choice of the artist could be said to facilitate the creativity of the viewer to transcend the oversimplification of the image.
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The artwork of Mondrian spanned the end of the First World War, saw the start and the majority of the Second World War from a perspective of relative safety in the UK and then the States, but died before it concluded. He lived in a period that encompassed the loss of life on the battlefield and the horrors of the Holocaust, but was spared the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He must have questioned how at could still be of value and considered meaningful in the aftermath of such a tragic period in world history. Picasso´s Guernica could be described as the ultimate expression of the human landscape of suffering, and issues of the expression of the horrors of war and the reality of continued world conflict, will be enduring and reoccurring themes throughout this thesis.
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Miró has been described as walking through a landscape with a ´crown of eyes
´ , absorbing subtleties through observation, touch and knowledge. The artist 71 in the landscape can be described as being inspired by the spectrum of colours;
naturally observing how the water vapour in the air changes from green in the foreground towards a pale blue hue at the horizon. It is possible to imagine the water vapour molecules as part of the global hydrologic cycle, itself being connected to a global climate system, which can describe how the climate was in the past, and how it may be in the future. How the Landscapes that have
Permanyer, K. (2003), p18.
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inspired artists for generations will be transformed, and how artists will respond to this transformation within their artworks.