TEACHERS’ RESOURCE MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL

COVER IMAGE: Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937 Top: Piet Mondrian Composition C (No III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935 Private collection, on loan to Tate © 2012 Mondrian/ Holtzman Trust c/o HCR International Washington DC Bottom: Ben Nicholson 1937 (painting) The Courtauld Gallery, London, Samuel Courtauld Trust © Angela Verren Taunt. All rights reserved DACS 2012 WELCOME

I: MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL The Courtauld Institute of Art runs an exceptional programme of activities II: GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH suitable for young people, school teachers and members of the public, III: 1937 whatever their age or background. We offer resources which contribute IV: DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONS: to the understanding, knowledge and BEYOND THE SINGULAR ARTIST enjoyment of art history based upon the world-renowned art collection and the V: MONDRIAN AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION expertise of our students and scholars. I hope the material will prove to be both OF MODERN SCIENCE useful and inspiring.

VI: LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS Henrietta Hine ON PAPER Head of Public Programmes

VII: REGARDE!: MONDRIAN À PARIS (1911 – 1940) The Teachers’ Resources are intended for use by secondary schools and colleges VIII: GLOSSARY OF TERMS and by teachers of all subjects for their own research. The essays are written by early career academics from The Courtauld Institute of Art and we hope the material will give teachers and students from all backgrounds access to the academic expertise available at a world renowned college of the University of London. Each essay is marked with suggested links to subject areas and key stage levels.

We hope teachers and educators will use these resources to plan lessons, organise visits to the gallery or gain further insight into the exhibitions at The Courtauld Gallery.

Joff Whitten Gallery Education Programmer The Courtauld Institute of Art

Cover Image: Front cover of J.L. Martin, Ben Nicholson and N. Gabo (eds) Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937, Faber and Faber. Copy belonging to Barbera Hepworth, courtesy of Bowness

TEACHERS’ RESOURCE MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL Compiled and produced by Joff Whitten and Meghan Goodeve

SUGGESTED CURRICULUM LINKS FOR EACH ESSAY ARE MARKED IN ORANGE. To book a visit to the gallery or to discuss any of the education projects at The Courtauld Gallery please contact: e: [email protected] t: 0207 848 1058 I: MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL

Left: Piet Mondrian in the garden of 6 The Mall, Hampstead c.1939-40 Photographer: John Cecil Stephenson Tate Archive, London

Right: Ben Nicholson in his studio, 7 The Mall, Hampstead c.1935 Photographer: Humphrey Spender National Portrait Gallery, London MONDRIAN AND NICHOLSON PURSUED A REFINED FORM OF ABSTRACTION WITH A RESTRAINED VOCABULARY OF COLOURS AND GEOMETRIC FORMS, OFFERING AN ALTERNATIVE MODERN VISION FOR ART.

This exhibition tells the remarkable story he found powerful confirmation of his In 1938, with war appearing imminent, of the creative relationship between Piet artistic convictions through the Dutchman’s Nicholson sent an invitation to Mondrian ”Mondrian, one of the most celebrated example. Over the following years enabling him to leave Paris for London. painters of the 20th century, and Ben Nicholson would produce some of his Once Mondrian arrived, he was Nicholson, one of this country’s greatest greatest works, including a major group of welcomed into an international community modern artists. It will show work from coloured abstracts and his famous series of avant-garde artists and writers living the decade of their friendship, which of pure white reliefs. He hand-carved these close by in Hampstead, including Henry culminated with Mondrian moving from reliefs from solid wooden panels, making Moore, Naum Gabo, Herbert Read, John Paris to London in 1938, at Nicholson’s planes of different depths to create shadow Cecil Stephenson and Nicholson’s future invitation, and the two working in lines of varying thicknesses. At the same wife, Barbara Hepworth. Nicholson found neighbouring studios in Parkhill Road, time, Mondrian was taking new directions him a studio-cum-bed-sitting-room at 60 Hampstead, when for a short period in his painting, making greater use of Parkhill Road, overlooking Nicholson’s London was an international centre of expanses of white space in combination studio. Mondrian immediately set modernist art. with small but intensive areas of vibrant about transforming the room, having it colour. He also renewed the possibilities whitewashed before adding patches of Nicholson first visited Mondrian in his Paris of his famous horizontal and vertical black colour, as he had in Paris: ‘his wonderful studio in the spring of 1934. Stepping into lines, sometimes bringing them together squares of primary colours climbed up the purity and calm of its white-painted as double lines, to enhance the dynamism the walls’, Hepworth remembered. He interior, from the hustle and bustle of the of his compositions. Mondrian opened up installed his few possessions, including street, was an extraordinary experience, new aesthetic possibilities that Nicholson his gramophone on which he played his Nicholson later recalled: made his own in highly original and beloved jazz records. Finally, he arranged imaginative ways, which the Dutchman his unfinished canvases, which he had His studio was an astonishing room, admired greatly. Nicholson, in turn, offered brought from Paris and set up a trestle he’d stuck up on the walls different sized Mondrian new artistic stimulation and table that Nicholson had given him to paint squares painted with primary red, blue considerable support, which fostered on. and yellow… I remember after this first creative sharing between the friends. visit sitting at a café table on the edge Initially, Mondrian was a little overwhelmed of a pavement for a very long time with The two artists contributed to several by the vast scale of London and the deep an astonishing feeling of quiet and groundbreaking exhibitions and escalators of the underground scared him repose… avant-garde publications in the 1930s, at first. But he quickly settled into London with their work often presented together. life and confessed to a friend that the city The visit marked the beginning of an London was becoming an important was actually having a liberating effect: enduring friendship and sparked an battleground for modern art and, together extraordinary creative relationship, lasting with his first wife Winifred, Nicholson was I’ve noticed that the change has had until Mondrian’s death ten years later. instrumental in bringing Mondrian’s work a good influence on my work… The When they met, Nicholson was a rising star to England. Winifred was Mondrian’s artistic situation doesn’t differ greatly of modern British art and Mondrian, twenty first English buyer when she purchased here from that in Paris. But one is even years his senior, was already recognised Composition with Double Line and Yellow more ‘free’ – London is big. as a leading artist of his generation. Their in 1935. They were instrumental in finding friendship spanned a turbulent decade other patrons for Mondrian among their Mondrian lived in London for almost of 20th century history as Europe headed circle of friends and associates at a time exactly two years. He was included in towards the Second World War. In the when securing sales was increasingly two further exhibitions during his time art world different movements vied for difficult. Nicholson also helped arrange for in the city and he worked on a number prominence on this fraught international Mondrian’s work to be exhibited in England of major canvases. The outbreak of war stage with surrealism becoming a powerful for the very first time, with three paintings finally separated Mondrian and Nicholson force. Against this backdrop, Mondrian being included in the seminal Abstract who moved to New York and Cornwall and Nicholson pursued a refined form of and Concrete exhibition, organised by respectively. After settling in America, and abstraction with a restrained vocabulary Nicolete Gray in 1936. The following year with war underway in Europe, he wrote to of colours and geometric forms, offering Mondrian contributed to the avant-garde Cecil Stephenson, ‘I do like New York but an alternative modern vision for art. They publication, Circle, which Nicholson in London I was of course more at home. I believed in the potential of abstraction to co-edited. Circle, published in 1937, always believe in the victory of Britain.’ attain the highest aesthetic and spiritual aimed to unite an international modernist power, with the balance and harmony of movement of artists, designers and their compositions offering an antidote to architects with an ambitious agenda to the violent discord of the modern world. revitalise modern civilisation. In both examples, the work of Mondrian and CURRICULUM LINKS: KS3+ Nicholson was already exploring Nicholson were presented as a pair. Art and Design, History, Art History, and abstraction before he met Mondrian but other Humanities II: GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH

Writing in 1932, Paul Nash set out a Other artists in Britain, for example Percy painting; the realist depictions of labour fundamental problem faced by his fellow Wyndham Lewis, who had spearheaded and heroic struggle that would be created artists: Vorticism, the first radically modernist could then unite and inspire the working movement in England in the 1910s, classes in revolutionary action. Finally, Whether it is possible to ‘go modern’ launched scathing attacks on Fry and Bell. abstraction was pioneered by artists in and still ‘be British’ is a question Yet the critics marginalised his alternative Britain, such as Ben Nicholson, who was vexing quite a few people today… vision of modern art, Bell suggesting that included in the first all-abstract exhibition in the battle lines have been drawn up: Lewis had only gained a reputation as a October 1935. On the other hand, he also internationalism versus an indigenous painter because of the general lack of exhibited with both surrealist and socialist culture; renovation versus conservatism; talent in England: realist art in socialist shows. In this sense all the industrial versus the pastoral; the three of the movements tapped into left functional versus the futile. In the Salon d’Automne or the Salon des wing revolutionary politics, and a utopian Indépendants a picture by him would internationalism that viewed modernity as a As the decade progressed the choice neither merit nor obtain from the most chance to shape the future of the world for between abstract and figurative art was generous critic more than a passing the better. Looking back from our current often described as one of ‘internationalism word of perfunctory encouragement. position, the scale and passion of the versus an indigenous culture’. But even arguments that took place between these Nash himself is an example of how such As the decade continued Fry and Bell’s rival groups can make it seem like the most distinctions were really far more complex. assumptions of the superiority of French urgent contemporary debate was not over This essay takes a very brief look at the art were adopted into wider discussions, modernism and nationalism, but simply context for the debates over modernism Lewis thought the situation so bad by the which form of international modernism was and nationalism in twenties and thirties mid twenties that he largely abandoned best for Britain. Britain. On the one hand, certain groups painting for writing. showed a desire to embrace modernity and However, this period had a strong and an international sense of artistic culture. On The scope for debate about international dominant current of nationalism both in the the other, there were many who hoped to modern art broadened significantly from arts and elsewhere. This was most obvious look to the national past and its traditions this Britain/France dichotomy in the years in the conservative anti-modernism that can for inspiration – a position which itself had 1931-1934, as important artists and critics be seen in national politics and institutions. its modernist and anti-modernist versions. were joined in London by European The Tory prime minister Stanley Baldwin, émigrés such as Walter Gropius and who dominated British politics over the Marred by a widespread lack of financial Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. During this interwar years, was observed to have ‘a support and a national audience that period of transition, in 1933, Paul Nash shiver run down the spine’ in May 1925 as demanded the sentimental or the pastoral co-founded the artist group Unit One with he unveiled a sculpture by the modernist in their art, in the wake of the First World the intention of using the latest trends in artist Jacob Epstein. The next year he War there were few real options for the continental modernism to inject new life expressed a desire ‘that art should be our ‘modern’ painter or sculptor in Britain. For into British art. This group, however, did native British art. I hope…that we may pass many at the time it seemed that Roger not have one set style of modernism, and through that curious snobbish subjection to Fry and Clive Bell, two writers associated by the mid 1930s there were three viable foreign names and tastes which has been with the Bloomsbury group, more or less choices for artists who hoped to be part rife in this country so long.’ dictated the terms in which modern art of a truly international modern movement: was discussed. They took Paul Cézanne abstraction, surrealism, and socialist Also in 1924 Frank Dicksee, a man as their model figure of modern art, which realism. described by historian Brandon Taylor grew from a supposed ‘classicism’ now as ‘both emotionally and professionally best represented in France. This had The poet André Breton had originally anti-Semitic’, was elected president of the natural consequences for contemporary launched surrealism in France in the Royal Academy. Dicksee’s mission was to painting, as ‘Englishness’ was denigrated 1920s. It brought together influences reverse the partial modernisation of the as provincial and backwards, while the that included the thought of the Austrian institution that had taken place under the classical French tradition was held up as a founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud previous president. This action points to model. and the German philosopher Karl Marx, to the right wing and even proto-fascist views suggest that the power of the unconscious held by certain members. Throughout the Clive Bell went as far to assert that: mind could be utilised in art. Socialist period the Academy remained a bastion realism was also based on the philosophy of so-called ‘traditional’ art. Naturalism ...to talk of modern English painting of Karl Marx, but had been developed in enhanced with occasional loosely worked as though it were the rival of modern Soviet Russia as opposed to France, and brushstrokes that suggested personal French is silly…At any given moment the took a very different form. In direct contrast artistry was the preferred style, and the best painter in England is unlikely to be to the stylistic radicalism of surrealism, it most favoured subject matter revolved better than a first rate man in the French proclaimed the necessity of an art that around portraiture and the countryside. second class. reverted to the traditions of figurative As late as 1949 the Royal Academy This interest in modernism and the embracing modernism in a slightly less president felt confident in the support for traditional were hard to separate in other radical form. his rejection of modern ‘foreign’ styles: particular examples. The fascination with the genre of landscape was not just the Ultimately the question of ‘going modern I am right — I have the Lord Mayor on preserve of the conservatives, but was and being British’ asked by Nash in 1932 is my side and all the Aldermen and all the equally urgent for modern artists who felt not one that can be resolved. The debate City Companies... and on my left I have that planned modernisation was the only continues in writing to the present day, and the famous newly elected extra-ordinary way to protect English countryside from although modern art in interwar Britain was member of the Academy — Winston the ravages of industry. In the twenties and composed of a small group of avant-garde Churchill. He, too, is with me… thirties an enormous number of countryside artists, they now take up a large percentage guides and travelogues appeared to of scholarly investigation. While it is easy In the thirties this traditionalist element cater for landscape tourists in their newly to describe a narrative of the traditional was carried into the heart of the modern acquired motorcars. Artists joined forces neo-romantics battling against the British avant-garde. Their major critic and with archaeologists, government, and dominant types of modernism (abstraction, champion Herbert Read had produced corporate sponsors in these investigations, surrealism, and social realism), it is more books on English pottery and English and Shell guidebooks were illustrated and successful to understand all of these stained glass in the 1920s, and in 1933 archaeological sites and aerial photography movements working together in the task of praised the English cultural tradition adopted as subject matter. In paintings detangling how to be ‘modern’ and still be both in a long article for The Burlington by Paul Nash and John Piper in particular, ‘British’. Finally, looking back to this time of Magazine and in his book The English modernist stylistic concerns blended with artistic and political instability remains an Vision. Moreover, Nash and a number of interest in the landscape as newly revealed. extremely fruitful way to examine our own other English artists felt that surrealism was Nash proclaimed the importance of the feelings about ‘modern’ art and ‘national’ not just a continental movement, but that genius loci – the spirit of the place that identity. its stress on dream and imagination linked resided in the English land, and which art it firmly with the English romantic tradition could reveal. A painting exhibited by Nash of William Blake and Samuel Palmer. As the in the Unit One exhibition as Landscape FURTHER READING art historian Malcolm Yorke has written, it Composition was later renamed with its Alexandra Harris, Romantic Moderns: was a regular feature of writing at the time full and evocative title Landscape of the English Writers, Artists and the Imagination to describe ‘the true native vision’ of British Megaliths, a reflection of the part that sites from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, 2010 art as ‘lyrical emotional and literary rather of ancient English history had played in this than preoccupied with formalism’. David Peters Corbett, Ysanne Holt, ‘modern’ picture. Fiona Russell, (eds.), Geographies of The search for a ‘British’ element, or a Englishness: Landscape and the National In light of this, it seems inevitable that Past 1880-1940, 2002 connection to British art of the past, was the journal Axis, founded in 1935 to also apparent in discussions of abstraction support abstract art in Britain, would David Peters Corbett, The Modernity of in Britain. Even in the apparently austere quickly be consumed from within by English Art, 1914-30, 1997 white reliefs of Ben Nicholson, some have romantic-traditional tendencies. By Michael Saler, The Avant-Garde in Interwar seen the influence of England’s ‘climate’; 1937 John Piper wrote of the ‘valuable the homely arts and crafts tradition has England: Medieval Modernism and the object’ that had been lost in the pursuit London Underground, 1999 been detected in the ‘truth to materials’ of abstraction, and began to turn away of the roughly carved and whitewashed from modernism into a neo-romanticism surfaces of the works. Moreover, there was fully supported by conservatives such as at times a reconciliation of the socialist Kenneth Clark, and seen as an absolute realists with the English tradition of realist betrayal by Nicholson. But politically painting. For example, a firm supporter of it was neither simply those who were socialist realism in Britain, Anthony Blunt Royal Academicians and traditional, nor held political views fundamentally opposed those who were surrealist or social realist to the right-wing National Gallery director that had rendered pure abstraction a Kenneth Clark, yet both stood together ‘luxury’. Instead it can be understood as in attacks on Picasso and ‘inaccessible’ a case of the artists in the interwar period abstract art. Therefore, all three types attempting to negotiate the ‘British’, or of modernist art in Britain were linked the conventional, with the ‘modern’. This together by an interest in more traditional allowed these neo-romantic artists to join types of being ‘British’. the long tradition of romantic British artists, and its continuing individualism, while

Left: Ben Nicholson 1934 (painting), 1934 Oil on canvas © Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH Written by Sam Rose; a PhD candidate at The Courtauld Institue of Art.

CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+ Art and Design, History, Art History, and other Humanities III: 1937 THE 1930S SAW A CERTAIN KIND OF INTERNATIONAL MODERNISM REACH A HIGH POINT [...] A BELIEF IN THE INTEGRATION OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCE FOR A BETTER, INTEGRATED SOCIETY...

The 1930s saw a certain kind of environment where both artists could international modernism reach a high push their art towards the” highest echelons point with the achievement of a totally of modernism, namely to abstraction. non-representational painting. That art Nicholson was said to have achieved this was based on new forms of spirituality, a in 1933-4 with his white reliefs, (Fig. 1). belief in the integration of the arts and The use of geometric shapes, such as science for a better, integrated society, circles and rectangles, plus the use of and political internationalism. white – the signature colour of international Chris Stephens, Ben Nicholson, 2008 modernism – marked his full transition into abstraction and propelled Britain’s avant- 1937 was an important year for Ben garde into the international playing field Nicholson, Piet Mondrian and art in Britain. of modern art. These early developments After meeting in Mondrian’s studio in create a foundation for Britain’s affiliation Paris in 1934, by 1938 both artists were with modernism, which would expand in living and working in Hampstead, yet it the following years. was the years between these moments when the landscape of British art changed This period also marks a shift in both significantly. Inspired by The Courtauld Mondrian and Nicholson’s artistic Gallery’s 1937 (painting) by Nicholson, this relationship, as Nicholson began to travel essay will look at a series of key events to France regularly, and, on the 5 April and publications that took place prior, 1934, first visited Mondrian’s studio at 26 during and after this year. In particular, Rue du Depart. Though short, the visit the exhibition Abstract and Concrete in captured Nicholson’s interest, evident 1936, where artworks by Nicholson and in his description of viewing Mondrian’s Mondrian were hung next to each other, paintings for the first time: The‘ paintings and the publication Circle, co-edited were entirely new to me and I did not by Nicholson, including Mondrian’s understand them on this first visit… they ‘Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art’ essay. To were merely, for me, a part of the very understand these instances, this essay lovely feeling generated by the room...’. will look at why advances in modernist art Here, Nicholson describes not the details in Britain were possible at this particular of Mondrian’s artwork, such as subject time, looking at the political and artistic matter, composition, or colour, but the Fig. 1. Ben Nicholson, 1934 (White Relief), 1934 contexts in both Britain and the continent, atmosphere generated by the paintings in such as the threat of war and the 1937 the setting of his studio. This nod towards exhibition Degenerative Art organised by the relationship between modernism in the Nazi party. Finally, this essay will finish painting and its surroundings is one that by discussing the onset of the Second was evident in Nicholson’s own work. His World War and Nicholson’s subsequent white reliefs in isolation are sophisticated move to the quiet fishing village of St Ives, examples of abstraction, yet are often disbanding the environment of avant- discussed in relation to modernist gardism that had flourished in earlier years. architecture and interior design of the time. This study will ultimately argue that 1937 The pairing of architecture and painting, was a vital year for modernism in Britain seen both in Britain and abroad, gave during the interwar period. modernist art a context in which it could prosper as the decade continued towards Art Historian Charles Harrison described 1937. art in Britain as a ‘hiatus’ during the 1920s. This gap, while problematic, does Besides London’s architectural highlight the shift seen in Britain’s art advancements, the city provided safety and its international connections in the to artists from abroad, which created 1930s. In Paris, although Mondrian had international artistic circles and shaped 1937 been producing abstract art since 1919, the capital’s interaction with modern art. Written by Meghan Goodeve; a recent MA his signature double line composition Fleeing from fascism, émigré artists were Art History graduate from The Courtauld first emerged and engrossed the artist in settling in Britain alongside the country’s Institue of Art and gallery educator. 1932. Across the Channel, Nicholson was emerging avant-garde. Hampstead offered embarking on both an artistic and personal this cosmopolitan group an ideal setting for CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+ relationship with the sculptor Barbara the innovative abstract art being produced Art and Design, History, Art History, and Hepworth, this partnership creating an in Britain’s capital. A contemporary art other Humanities critic, Herbert Read, described this group a book that seeks to reassess Nicholson’s Britain’s nature, claiming a certain trajectory as ‘a gentle nest of artists’, which has work outside the 1930s, it could be claimed for a Hampstead-based modernism. been argued as highlighting the group’s that Stephens lends too much emphasis on turn towards nature to find abstraction. Nicholson’s earlier work, yet, Nicholson’s In the same year that this painting was However, this ‘gentle nest’ was more abstract paintings do hold a basis in produced, Nicholson also created a significant due to its weaving twigs and the conventional still-life, with a circle theoretical journal that placed British building materials, a metaphor for the representing a simplified apple or rounded abstraction onto the map of international close and nurturing relationship found in plate, while the rectangles evoke an modernism. Circle: An International Survey the artists, writers, and philosophers living abstracted table edge or fold of material. of Constructive Art (Fig. 4) was a journal and working closely together. Moreover, On the other hand, Mondrian represents conceived and co-edited by Nicholson, the by 1934 Hampstead had its own modernist the ‘concrete’, or, the creation of forms Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo and the architecture to rival that of Paris and that have no basis in perceivable reality. young Architect Leslie Martin to counter provided a space for this group of artists This exhibition, therefore, demonstrates the impact of the International Surrealist to create work for. Well Coates’ Lawn Road how Britain fostered an abstract art that Exhibition held in London a year before. Flats (Fig. 2) offered Nicholson a specific was separate from Mondrian and the more Surrealism was an international movement architectural context for his paintings. ‘concrete’ international modernism. It was that met enthusiasm from several of instead an abstraction that emerged from Britain’s leading modernists such as Paul an earlier tradition of landscapes and still- Nash and Henry Moore. Although it can be lives in which Nicholson was well versed. argued that both these artists engaged in both abstraction and surrealism, Nicholson, Gabo, and Martin’s editorial claims that abstraction is an ‘organic growth in the mind of society’, ‘an essential part of the cultural development of our time’, and not ‘the temporary mood of an artistic sect’. This subtle criticism of the surrealist movement underscores the social and political basis of abstraction, which provides a tool with which to consider Fig. 2. Well Coates’ Lawn Road why 1937 was such an important year for modernism in Britain. An art critic and friend of Nicholson, Adrian Stokes, was living in one of these flats and Artists such as Gabo had fled their native Nicholson wrote to Winifred, his first wife, homes to escape an increasing presence in 1934 describing his joy at seeing his Fig. 3. Ben Nicholson, 1937 (painting), 1937 of fascism in Europe. In particular, the Nazi artwork in a ‘clean, fresh and clear’ living attack on modern art, shown by the staging space. Just as Nicholson was overwhelmed Ben Nicholson’s 1937 work (Fig. 3) from of the 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst, by the atmosphere created by Mondrian’s The Courtauld Collection, continues this or to use the English term ‘Degenerate studio in the same year, there was now exploration of the abstract from still-lives. art’, in Munich. This term was used to an architectural setting in London that he The geometric shapes are an example describe virtually all modern art, and the was able to feel his art was at home in. It is of a birds-eye-view of a tabletop linking exhibition included paintings, sculptures, simultaneously the creation of modernist this work to his earlier oeuvre, but this and prints from German museums and architecture in London and an established painting is more often associated with collections. These included names such as group of international avant-garde artists Nicholson’s entry into international Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Vincent and thinkers in Hampstead that established modernism. The colours of this painting van Gogh, artists whose works can all be a framework in which the seminal events of point simultaneously to his own visual viewed in The Courtauld Collection today. 1937 could take place. development as an artist and the work of The display of these works were meant to Mondrian. The yellow square, now faded, entice anger in the German public due to Abstract art in Britain began to leave the would of once matched the vibrant yellow their ‘un-German’ or ‘Jewish’ nature, yet boundaries of Hampstead and find a used in Mondrian’s palette, moreover the the anger created outside Germany and place in public exhibitions and journals use of a central red square develops this in Britain produced a vital environment for later in the decade. 1936 marked a key visual connection to Mondrian’s paintings. the development of a socially-orientated year in Britain’s exhibitions with the first Yet where Mondrian used thick black lines abstract art. The Artists International international exhibition of abstract art in to delineate his squares and rectangles, Association (AIA) was an anti-fascist and Britain. Abstract and Concrete was curated Nicholson allows the viewer to trace the leftwing artist group based in London, and by a young art historian, Nicolete Gray, and process of painting itself by revealing in direct response to the Munich exhibition, opened on the 15 Feb 1936 at 41 Giles, where the soft tones of cream and grey staged an exhibition of banned German Oxford, then travelled to the School of meet the pencil lines drawn beneath the Architecture, Liverpool, London’s Lefevre paint. This revealing of the layers of the Gallery, then to Cambridge. This touring painting process – Nicholson stretching the exhibition was also the first time Mondrian’s canvas over board, using a ruler and pencil work had been displayed in this country. to complete the under-drawing, and then His paintings were tellingly hung next to painting each square individually – denies Nicholson’s work producing a narrative any modernist ‘flatness’ of the painting. of formal similarities. However, it is the Nicholson’s 1937 (painting), therefore, differences rather than the similarities, can be argued to derive more directly which demonstrate the theme of the from his white reliefs, where the process exhibition as a whole, which sought to of carving is visibly present in the organic display two types of non-figurative art. shapes produced by Nicholson seeking The first ‘type’ was abstract art, an image out geometric shapes from a natural that was a simplification of a recognisable material. Furthermore, the curator of this object. Chris Stephens stresses the sources exhibition, Barnaby Wright, claims that of Nicholson’s work as both his landscape the 1937 painting’s composition suggests art from the 1920s and the genre of still-life. ‘a gently spiralling motion’, producing a In fact, Stephens argues that, ‘Nicholson natural and non-mathematical quality to continued to work on still-life compositions Nicholson’s abstraction. Hence, in 1937 throughout this period, indicating there Nicholson was concurrently able to engage was little doctrinaire about his non- with international modernism and produce representational paintings and reliefs.’ In abstraction that was deeply connected to Fig. 4. Front cover of Circle, 1937 art in the capital of Britain. This political to Britain was to increase his sale of work. this year, it must be remembered that this response was repeated in a number of Before his move to London, Mondrian sold approach can be problematic and brings exhibitions in 1937, which championed mostly to Britain, USA and Switzerland but to light the judgement values that artists, modernist art as a tool for fighting fascism. not France, and by 1936 he estimated that art historians, critics and curators utilise Both Nicholson and Hepworth exhibited Britain and USA had become the most when considering modernism in Britain. work in these exhibitions, suggesting a important art markets. Yet by the time he However, in the context of this Mondrian political aspect to abstraction in Britain in arrived in 1938, Britain had lost its drive to and Nicholson exhibition, the work of these 1937. buy art, due to both the political situation two artists meet most closely in the year and the majority of money being tied up in of 1937. A year when following Nicholson’s On the other hand, the exhibition preparation for the impending war. 1937, last visit to Mondrian on the Constructive Art, which was held in July therefore, was a particularly fruitful year 21 January 1936, and before Mondrian 1937 at the London Gallery to accompany for abstract art in Britain both theoretically moved to London, the pair did not the publication of Circle, strayed from and financially, but due to the increasingly physically meet, and instead developed an overt political purpose. It was an threatening political landscape of 1938 this artwork, exhibitions and journals through opportunity for Nicholson to stage an status began to decrease. cross-channel communication. Nicholson exhibition of abstract art that made claimed that in his last visit to Paris in physical what appeared in the journal. For In the following year and the outbreak 1936, other modernist artists in Paris example, Nicholson’s 1936 (white relief), of war in 1939 both Nicholson and such as Constantin Brâncusi were looking was placed directly opposite Mondrian’s Hepworth followed other Hampstead backwards but Mondrian was working 1936 painting in the opening pages of residents in moving outside London. ‘very much in the present and in relation Circle. This pairing was then replicated in With this relocation of a selection of to the future’. It is this look to the future in the staging of the exhibition. In addition to Britain’s avant-garde to the remote and 1936, and before, shared by Nicholson and this visual interest, Read published a book quiet fishing village of St Ives on the Mondrian, which allowed 1937 to be a vital Art and Society in the same year, where Cornish coast, came a slow erosion of year for modernism in Britain. he argued art came from an autonomic the international modernism that was experience, therefore, should stray from flourishing in Hampstead in 1937. While the propaganda demands of political Mondrian remained in his London studio FURTHER READING struggle. This segregation of the political until his passage to New York was finalised Chris Stephens, Ben Nicholson, 2008 and the artistic produces the question: in 1940, Nicholson tried to negotiate his John Leslie Martin, Ben Nicholson, Naum did abstraction have to be apolitical to change in setting by re-engaging with Gabo, (eds), Circle: International Survey of be successful in Britain in 1937? Or, did its the British landscape while continuing to Constructive Art, 1937 (see cover image) apolitical nature produce its failure when experiment with abstraction. For example, Britain was heading towards the Second a clear demonstration of this can be Marty Bax, Complete Mondrian, 2001 World War? In other words, there was a seen in a later painting 11 November Virginia Button, Ben Nicholson, 2007 need for abstract art in Britain to support 1947 (Mousehole), which takes a piece the political agenda of the anti-fascist of cubist-like abstraction and places it movement yet remain aloof in its aesthetic directly on top of a seaside landscape. autonomy, which became increasingly This painting demonstrates the displaced difficult to negotiate as Britain moved Hampstead artist’s decision to discontinue closer to war in 1939. with an abstraction that was completely non-figurative. Instead, the surroundings Mondrian’s arrival in London in 1938 on 20 of Cornwall enter the painting, perhaps for September, following Ben and Winifred the simple reason that, to borrow the critic Nicholson plea for him to escape the Lawrence Alloway’s words, ‘the landscape politically turbulent Paris for the haven of St Ives is so nice that nobody can quite of Hampstead, did not signal for Britain bring themselves to leave it out of their art’. a climax in abstract art. 1937 remained the year of abstraction’s triumph in This essay has demonstrated why 1937 Britain, with Nicholson completing and was a key year for abstraction in Britain exhibiting influential works, in addition to through outlining the key events leading conceiving and co-editing a seminal text up to and in this year, plus the social, of constructivist art. Mondrian, however, political, and geographic reasons why did find the move to London successful Nicholson and Britain’s connection to claiming, ‘the air also is good for my health, international modernism shifted in the above all the spiritual surrounding is here years approaching the Second World War. better than in Paris to me’. One specific Although helpful to think of Nicholson’s advantage Mondrian foresaw by moving work reaching its peak of abstraction in

Left: View of the exhibition “Abstract and Concrete” at 41 St Giles Street, Oxford, 1936 including Mondrian Composition B (No.II) with Red; Composition C (No. III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935 © Mondrian/ Holtzman Trust and Nicholson 1935 (Painted relief), 1935 © Angela Verren Taunt (Previous page) Fig. 1 Ben Nicholson October 2 1934 (white relief - triplets), 1934 Oil on carved board, Private collection © Angela Verren Taunt. Fig. 3 Ben Nicholson 1937 (painting), 1937 Oil on canvas The Courtauld Gallery, London Samuel Courtauld Trust © Angela Verren Taunt. All rights reserved Fig. 4 See cover image IV: DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONS: BEYOND THE SINGULAR ARTIST

In the exhibition Mondrian || Nicholson: discussed their work together. Although allowed each artist to be informed by the In Parallel, we find two artists working Mondrian was twenty-two years older other, to see each others’ paintings as alongside each other. These artists are than Nicholson, and became established points from which to depart in an opposite recognised as figureheads of modernism, as an artist before his younger friend, direction. and have frequently been the subjects of the relationship between the two artists monographs and solo exhibitions. Indeed, was not one of a master and a follower. In the 1912 essay ‘Art and Socialism’, the histories of art are often dominated by Indeed, Mondrian was just as much an English painter and art critic Roger Fry timelines of individuals’ names. Singular admirer of Nicholson’s work as Nicholson wrote that ‘the greatest art has always figures are recognised to be especially was of Mondrian’s, and Nicholson made been communal’. This resonates with his innovative, to break with the past in a his first radical abstract ‘white reliefs’ interest in collaborative mural painting. In radical, ‘original’ way. But behind these two in 1934, before he made his important 1911 he organised the Borough Polytechnic major ‘names’ of modernism in painting first visit to Mondrian’s studio. Mondrian Murals, which were painted by pairs of was an important personal relationship, a used the term ‘mutual equivalence’ to artists working together. Talking about context that may have spurred each of our describe what he saw as an ideal sort of the experience in an interview, he claimed protagonists to create works in relation to relationship between two people. For him, that the artists involved refused to sign the other. From investigating the dialogue it was important for individuals to remain the works, stating ‘I think it very important that existed between these two artists, separate and independent, for differences that they should work together in this way, we can pursue these questions further, to be maintained and celebrated rather and that we should cease to insist on the considering instances in which individuals than erased. Green recognises this concept extreme individuality of artists’. This belief relinquished their solo identities to produce of ‘mutual equivalence’ as the key to in anonymous, collaborative workshop objects in collaboration with others, or understanding the relationship between production informed the founding produced new works that were ‘copies’ Mondrian and Nicholson. It could be principles of the Omega Workshops when of earlier paintings. Many art objects are argued, however, that the relationship that they were established in 1913. The aim of in fact the product of many hands, the existed between Mondrian and Nicholson the Omega Workshops was to provide results of relationships, collaborations and dialogues that were still often characterised by difference, conflict and rivalry. This essay will draw attention to selected examples of works in The Courtauld Gallery and elsewhere that cast doubt on the idea of the singular artist as ‘originator’, where working together produced artistic dialogues and objects that bear the traces of multiple collaborators. The relationships between the artists explored in this essay were often defined by rivalry and tension. Importantly, Mondrian and Nicholson did not work together in pursuit of shared goals. In his essay for the exhibition catalogue, Christopher Green makes the point that despite apparent similarities on the surface, their paintings were in fact separated by great differences of approach to the idea of geometric abstraction. While in Mondrian’s paintings, balance is sought between a very limited series of colours arranged in a shifting black and white grid, Nicholson’s reliefs and abstract paintings combined circles and rectangles, playing with depth and surface in a different way to Mondrian. Mondrian and Nicholson did not collaborate on shared paintings, and their works retained individual characters that make it hard to mistake the work of one for that of the other. Nevertheless, the two artists were close and often Fig. 1. Omega Workshop Omega plate with overglaze geometric design enclosing Omega symbol Fig. 2. Roger Fry Copy of a Self-Portrait by Cézanne, 1925 Anthony Bond, the process of creativity is struggling artists with a regular source represented in self-portraits by ‘the trace of of income, and it counted among its the artist’s hand, the signature brushwork FURTHER READING members major British artists such as that proclaims originality and individuality, Christopher Green, ed., Art Made Modern: Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. Every acting as evidence of the artist’s touch’. Roger Fry's Vision of Art, 1999 product made in the workshop was to be But by reproducing this work, Fry seems to signed with the Omega symbol rather challenge these long-established notions Rosalind Krauss, ‘The Originality of the than the individual artist’s name, and many of the meaning of self-portraiture. Cézanne Avant-Garde’ in The Originality of the products were made by a combination of was extremely important for Fry, and in Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, hands. An Omega plate (Fig. 1) features the 1927 he published a monograph on the 1981 Omega symbol alongside abstract, hand artist. Fry’s version of the Cézanne self- Jeremy Wood, Rubens Copies and printed decoration in the house style of the portrait is roughly thirty percent smaller Adaptations from Renaissance and Later workshops that cannot be attributed to any than the original, and it is painted in oil on Artists, 2010 one of the members. Rather than revealing cardboard as opposed to canvas. Perhaps tensions within the workshop, different as a result of attempting to mix colours to hands were brought together under the correspond with those used by Cézanne, Omega symbol and thus individual styles Fry’s individual brushstrokes have a more continuous tone throughout, while those Fig. 1: were combined and shared. Omega Workshops in the Cézanne seem to contain different Omega plate with overglaze geometric design Beyond the Omega Workshops, Roger tones taken from the palette and remaining enclosing Omega symbol, 1913 Fry was interested in copying paintings by separate on the brush. But despite these Glazed earthenware with painted decoration earlier artists, not simply in order to learn minor differences, which apparently Fig. 2: from them, but to produce new works emanate from the additional layer of Roger Fry that could say something different to the mediation of Fry working from a finished Copy of a Self-Portrait by Cézanne, 1925 Oil on cardboard originals. The practice of copying itself can painting, as opposed to Cézanne painting be understood as a sort of collaborative from a mirror-image, the two pictures are Fig. 3: remarkably alike. Most astonishing in Fry’s Peter Paul Rubens procedure, as it involves ‘working with’ Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (after Raphael), a previous artist in creating a new work painting is his near-precise replication of 1630 of art. The Courtauld Collection includes Cézanne’s brushstrokes, which we can Oil on panel a near-exact copy of a self-portrait by observe most clearly on the forehead. The all © The Courtauld Gallery, London the French post-impressionist painter fact that Fry deemed it appropriate to Samuel Courtauld Trust Paul Cézanne (Fig. 2). The self-portrait re-create Cézanne’s highly personal self- Fig. 4: is an artistic form that seems to connect portrayal so painstakingly, creating a work Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Breugel the Elder, Madonna on Floral Wreath, c. 1619. most profoundly to the myth of the artist that might pass for the ‘original’, seems to Oil on panel as individual and original genius. For challenge our conventional understanding © Alte Pinakothek, Munich IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, A PECULIAR TYPE OF PAINTING DEVELOPED THAT RELIED ON THE BRINGING TOGETHER OF THE WORK OF TWO ARTISTS IN THE SAME FINISHED OBJECT ” of the earlier artist’s work. The term ‘copy’ in these circumstances, notions of the often has negative connotations when used original, or of the singular artist-genius, to refer to paintings. It is associated with are called into question. The copying the idea of the ‘fake’, with plagiarism and of an earlier work of art by another fraudulent behaviour. But this example artist might be seen to challenge that suggests that the copy could be something artist’s dominance: it could be seen as a much more free, that paid homage to the subversive gesture. But it can also reveal original work while creating something a sense of respect or deference towards that also conveyed the identity of the new the earlier artist, as we might recognise in painter, Rubens. the case of the Fry/Cézanne relationship. Working together, in parallel, or ‘following’ Rubens acted as a collaborator in a another artist can result in both difference different way in a group of works that and sameness, in the pursuit of shared belong to a vey specific genre. In the or conflicting aims. Within the Omega early seventeenth century, a peculiar type Workshops, individual designs were left of painting developed that relied on the behind in the pursuit of a collective style. bringing together of the work of two artists The personal signature was abandoned in in the same finished object. These works, favour of the communal symbol. However of which Figure 4 is an example, depicted for Mondrian and Nicholson, working the Madonna and child surrounded by alongside each other did not mean taking an extremely detailed and elaborate on each others’ ideas, or even entering garland of flowers and, often, cherubs. In into a rivalry. By remaining independent, this example, the Madonna and child was each artist could pursue his own ends to Fig. 3. Rubens Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, 1630 painted by Rubens, while the additional produce a style of geometric abstraction of the self-portrait. The work can be seen elements were added by Jan Breugel the that was entirely his own. It is by seeing to reveal a dialogue between Fry and Elder. This painting avoids the conventional them in parallel that we can recognise Cézanne, demonstrating the admiration rules of perspective by creating different their fundamental differences, leading us and sense of kinship that Fry felt for the planes. Within the central section, the two to question whether it was their proximity earlier artist. figures ‘make sense’ and are grounded in that allowed each artist to react against the their space. But by surrounding them in a other in order to follow their own path. The Courtauld collection contains another garland, the figures become an image, a fascinating example of a portrait emerging ‘picture-within-a-picture’, like a flat object from a relationship between two distinct removed from reality. The flowers are artists. This is the Flemish painter Peter Paul painted in an intricate, highly detailed way, Rubens’ copy of the Portrait of Baldassare seeming almost real, but recognisable as Castiglione (Fig. 3), originally by the Italian an illusion that plays with the flatness of sixteenth-century artist Raphael. Like Fry’s the canvas. The flowers were intended to version of Cézanne’s self-portrait, Rubens’ be physical manifestations of the beauty painting bears a striking resemblance to of God’s creation, reminding viewers of the original. But on closer examination, we material beauty alongside the spiritual notice several key alterations. The brownish meaning of the Madonna and child. The tones used by Rubens are much warmer different levels of reality in this painting than the greys used by Raphael. Crucially, do not appear in conflict. The particular Rubens has given his subject hands, which skills of each artist are evident: Rubens are omitted in the earlier version. This bold was renowned for his ability to paint flesh, decision may suggest a sense of rivalry while Breugel was especially well known Fig. 4. Rubens and Bruegel Madonna on Floral Wreath, c.1619 with the earlier artist, Rubens implying for his detailed flower paintings. Despite that Raphael’s portrait may be improved the strangeness of these compositions by opting for a different composition. to our eyes todays, these elements are We might even suggest that Rubens was not at odds with each other; instead, the demonstrating his skill by choosing to two artists appear to have collaborated in DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONS paint those notoriously difficult body parts, harmony in order to produce the work. Written by Lauren Barnes; a recent MA the hands. One hundred years after the Art History graduate from The Courtauld original work was painted, Rubens could These examples have drawn attention Institue of Art. not restage his sitter, thus this work is an to some of the complex ways in which invention, presenting another subject’s artists may become entangled with each CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+ hands as those of Baldassare Castiglione. other in instances of collaboration, rivalry Art and Design, History, Art History, and It is clear that this is not a simple recreation and artistic dialogue. It can be seen that other Humanities V: MONDRIAN AND A NUMBER OF AVANT GARDE ARTISTS, WHO THE FOURTH DIMENSION CREATED MODERN OF MODERN SCIENCE ART IN THE EARLY 1900S, SOUGHT TO INCORPORATE DRAMATIC SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS IN SOME FORM WITHIN THE ARTS

In our contemporary perspective, it is Parkinson identified the astrophysicist important part in the early days of relativity, often neglected that Einstein’s Theory of Arthur Eddington, the artist Wolfgang therefore Mondrian would have had a more Relativity had an immense impact, similar Paalen, the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, developed understanding of Einsteinian to that of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and the writer and art critic Carl Einstein, physics than most of his international as both doctrines appeared to advocate as some of the leaders in this realm for contemporaries. In other words, instead a new understanding of the world their writing on the new theories of modern of incorrectly thinking that the fourth and the self. While Freud advocated physics to a broader audience, one that dimension referred to a purely spatial the split psyche and the unconscious, especially included avant-garde artists and ”fourth dimension (as so many artists at this Einstein’s theories established that our philosophers. A number of avant-garde time point believed), Mondrian understood visual perspective of the world was artists, who created modern art in the that the fourth dimension was irreversibly incorrect; that what we see as three- early 1900s, sought to incorporate these linked with the space-time continuum. As dimensional Euclidean space is, in dramatic scientific developments in some early as 1917, Mondrian wrote in the first fact, four-dimensional, non-Euclidean form within the arts. issue of De Stijl, ‘The rhythm of relationship space-time. More importantly, Einstein’s of colour and dimension (in determinate theories militated against the current One of the first artistic groups to do this proportion and equilibrium) permits the anthropocentric vision of the world, was the De Stijl group that Mondrian absolute to appear within the relativity suggesting that in our minds the central was a key part of. De Stijl, a name that of time and space.’ Thus, an artistic role of society (that is, church and translates literally to ‘The Style’, was revolution ensued, whereas painting was government) should be displaced by a formed in the summer of 1917 by a group once confined to the spatial realm and comprehensive vision of the universe and of artists centred about the painters music to the temporal, Einstein’s Theory of its cosmic laws. Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Bart Relativity fused time and motion into art for van der Leck, and Vilmos Huszar. They those artists, like Mondrian, who sought to The artwork of Mondrian coincided with regularly published their own periodical express the fourth dimension. the ground breaking developments of titled De Stijl with the first issue appearing modern science, beginning largely with in October 1917. From the inception of Einstein’s 1906 Theory of Special Relativity their journal, modern science was a key which advocated for a non-Euclidean fourth component. For instance, in one of the dimension and later led to Einstein’s 1916 first issues, the main section was entitled Theory of General Relativity which had ‘Mesuration de l’espace et la 4e dimension’ immense cosmological implications, such (measurement of space and the fourth as that the universe was expanding. The dimension). This article encouraged lively consequences of these new theories on discussion on the artistic understanding modern thought were immense in both and expression of the fourth dimension the sciences and humanities. According to in art and due to high interest ran as a Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, space can continuing article in the following two take on completely new dimensions; due issues. to the curvature of space, parallel lines no longer need to be parallel, and the three In the early 1900s scientific understanding angles of a triangle no longer need to add of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and thus up to 180 degrees, as well as many other what the fourth dimension was, remained aspects of Euclidean geometry, which can muddled. This was even more the case in similarly be violated. These conditions the realm of the humanities and arts, since became most noticeable in the cosmos, most people interested in this field did since space takes on a curvature due to the not have the mathematical background gravitational pull of nearby planetary or to understand Einstein’s equations on stellar masses. their own. As a result, artistic expression differed according to the individual artist’s Many varying publications targeted at understanding or the understanding of the the public covered these new scientific artistic movement or group they belonged developments and their applications to. Mondrian’s understanding of the fourth and impacts on the humanities. In Gavin dimension of space-time relied heavily Parkinson’s book Surrealism, Art and Most artists who sought to incorporate on the relationships of mathematics, as Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum the fourth dimension into their artwork at is evidenced in the writing of Mondrian’s Mechanics, Epistemology, Parkinson this time period mistakenly understood colleague Van Doesburg in the journal De discusses the role of several figures in the fourth dimension to be purely Stijl. bridging the gap of knowledge regarding spatial and depicted it as such. However, the advancements in modern physics because Mondrian was Dutch and the When the new plastic artists use between the sciences and humanities. Dutch physicists Lorentz had played an mathematics, they may be compared to a Renaissance artist using anatomy. earlier quotation. For Mondrian and Van other, the technical givens of our age, No more can we make a Renaissance Doesburg, the use of these negative that have called Dimensionism to life. work of art by a great deal of anatomical colours within their artwork had particular knowledge, than a modern work with significance. This idea was explained in The significance of this manifesto is a thorough knowledge of mathematics the December 1917 letter from Mondrian threefold. Firstly, the manifesto effectively (including the four-dimensional). By to Van Doesburg, ‘Maybe later you could demonstrates a universal desire to mere mathematics we shall never be write on the four-dimension matter better incorporate modern science in the artwork able to compose a painting- with (the than I do. I have much sympathy for your of the avant-garde. This is supported by aid of) mathematics, however, we may idea that “the negative” represents the the wide variety of artists who endorsed do very well. fourth dimension, but I am unable to write the manifesto, reflecting a range of about it. I do, however, have this approach styles and artistic affiliations. Secondly, it This interest in mathematics as a in my work.’ Thus, it is within this negative demonstrates quire remarkably how ahead means toward deciphering the new background space that Mondrian ascribes of his time Mondrian really was. Although fourth dimension was essential since this new fourth dimension in his artwork. Mondrian did not sign this manifesto, the understanding modern physics, especially ideas behind it, and even the writing of it, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, required Although Mondrian left De Stijl in 1924, echo Mondrian’s writing of 1917, almost an extensive background in mathematics. his interest in expressing modern science twenty years before the Dimensionist From an early point, Mondrian’s paintings within his artwork remained, and is evident Manifesto was written. Lastly, it is quite were conceptually built upon these ideas. in his involvement in the group Abstraction- critical that Ben Nicholson did endorse Even as his artwork evolved, and in 1919 Création. Mondrian’s presence in the group this manifesto. By the time this manifesto Mondrian adopted a new two-dimensional inspired many younger artists to join, was written and published, that is in neoplastic style of painting, this interest including the sculptor Alexander Calder. 1936, Mondrian had a very close working in the fourth dimension persisted, as is Calder’s introduction to Mondrian led him relationship with Nicholson, a central evidenced by his 1920 essay ‘Natural and to renounce his figurative artwork in favour theme to this current exhibition. Thus, Abstract Reality’ in De Stijl, which strongly of abstraction. He later became well known Nicholson’s endorsement establishes that reaffirms the importance of the fourth for his ‘Mobiles’ of the mid-1930s, which he shared Mondrian’s interest in modern dimension in his artwork: sought to express the fourth dimension of science and sought to express the fourth space-time through their kinetic properties. dimension in his artwork as well. This A projection on a flat surface is This interest in modern science began shared belief in incorporating the universal far superior to a natural, visual to become quite popular in the arts. For laws of modern science into art, unites representation; also, it makes us see instance, by 1936, Einstein’s Theory of the work of Mondrian and Nicholson, purer relations. The Cubists understood Relativity had already conceptually inspired providing their artwork with a common goal that perspective representation disturbs the artwork of the avant-garde, such as and placing, once again, Mondrian and and weakens the appearance of things, the Rotoreliefs of Marcel Duchamp and Nicholson in parallel. while two-dimensional representation the Space-Light Modulator of László renders them more purely… It is a Moholy-Nagy. According to Moholy-Nagy, FURTHER READING heartening fact that modern painting relativity theory was ‘emblematic of a Gavin Parkinson, Surrealism, Art and displays an even more conscious fundamental cultural shift toward a more Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum tendency towards a purer and many- dynamic worldview to which artists must Mechanics, Epistemology, 2008 sided representation of things, for respond by replacing the static methods this shows that the spirit of the age of the past with an art of motion and time.’ Hans Ludwig Jaffe, De Stijl, 1917-1931: The is seeking the universal with more These artistic developments were reflected Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, 1986 consciousness of the fourth dimension; in the 1936 Dimensionist Manifesto Michel Seuphor, Piet Mondrian: Life and and in fact, the idea of the fourth published in Paris by the Hungarian poet Work, 1956 dimension manifests itself in the new art, Charles Sirató in Revue N+1 in French, through the total or partial destruction with later international editions appearing Linda Henderson, ‘Einstein and 20th of the three-dimensional or natural in Hungarian and English. This manifesto Century Art’, in Einstein for the 21st order, and through the construction of a called for modern art to incorporate Century: His Legacy in Science, Art and new plasticism in accordance with a less the new theories of modern science, Modern Culture, 2008 limited view. specifically Minkowski’s fourth dimension of space-time based upon Einstein’s Theory of According to Mondrian’s statement, an Relativity. Finding wide support, it bore the attempt to paint in flat two-dimensions signatures of a variety of artists including brings his art closer to the fourth Calder, Arp, Duchamp, Kandinsk, Miró, dimension. Mondrian sought this approach László Moholy-Nagy and Ben Nicholson. to the fourth dimension because he was Sirató, the founder of the manifesto, was a anxious about not knowing what the Paris-based Hungarian poet interested in fourth-dimension actually looked like and the Dada movement and advancements thereby did not have the ability to paint it in the avant-garde. Through his interest in realistically. modern science and his observations of the avant-garde art circles in Paris, Sirató However Mondrian did seek to express deduced that one common law could the fourth dimension in his paintings. explain and relate all modern art. This For instance, in looking at Mondrian’s law, which he expressed formulaically as Image: Cover of De Stijl, September 1921. Composition A, with Red and Blue, 1932 N+1 and explained in the preface to his the use of parallel and intersecting lines inc. Theo van Doesburg Kompositie 17, 1919 manifesto, was based on the assumption De Stijl 1921–1932. Complete Reprint 1968. create a block grid-like pattern within that all modern art sought to expand itself Amsterdam: Athenaeum, Den Haag the painting. These blocks, which are by an additional dimension. The manifesto either coloured with red or blue, or left explains how the advancements of modern void, create a tension within the painting. science are the foundation for this common MONDRIAN AND THE FOURTH Mondrian referred to the red, blue and law, as the following quote from the DIMENSION OF MODERN SCIENCE yellow as positive colours and grey, white manifesto explains: Written by Vanja Malloy; a PhD candidate and black as negative. Thus, as the viewer’s from The Courtauld Institue of Art and eye looks from the figure (positive) to It is, on the one hand, the modern gallery educator. the background (negative), a shifting spirit's completely new conception of effect occurs. This shifting effect creates space and time (the development of CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+ the illusion of a rhythmic movement in which, in geometry, mathematics and Art and Design, History, Science, Maths, space-time, likely referring to the rhythmic physics -- from Bólyai through Einstein Philosophy, Art History, and other movement Mondrian described in his -- is ongoing in our days), and on the Humanities VI: LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS ON PAPER

A grid is defined as a network of repeated 1979 article ‘Grids’ defines the grid within a horizontal and vertical lines that cross modernist, 20th century lens and each other to form a series of squares or describes it as an unnatural, non-narrative, rectangles. The drawing exhibition in The stagnant structure. This provides an Courtauld Gallery, entitled Lines Crossed, alternative definition of the grid as interprets this definition while investigating being an intentional, solitary form that how the grid establishes proportion and developed in abstract art as a result balance, and helps create and measure of society’s attempts to scientifically space in drawings and prints from the organise and classify the natural word. Courtuald Collection. The display contains While appropriate to consider in context seventeen works dating from the 16th to Mondrian || Nicholson: In Parallel, to the 21st century and represents both the majority of the works within this preliminary drawings and fully finished display do not fall within Krauss’ relatively works. The pieces are grouped into five contemporary scope. different categories corresponding to the various ways in which the grid has emerged MECHANICAL GRID: SQUARING in art production and include: mechanical, Squaring is a transfer method where perspectival, design, narrative, and mise a measured grid is drawn on top of en page. This essay will explain each of the a preliminary drawing. The grid on a categories in more detail while elaborating drawing proportionally matches a grid on the works themselves. made on the final surface onto which the drawing will be transferred. The grid acts Linda Karshan’s Untitled (Fig. 1) serves as a guide for where to place elements as an aesthetic and conceptual bridge of the drawn composition on the final between the Mondrian || Nicholson: In surface and is not a direct or exact transfer Parallel exhibition and Lines Crossed. method. In squaring, the grid truly is a All three artists – Karshan, Mondrian and tool, an objective mechanism that guides Nicholson – portray grid forms in their two-dimensional replication. Mechanical work but to different ends. Mondrian’s squaring is still used today and the long compositions display a more apparent history of the method can be traced back grid through the intersection of black lines to the 18th Egyptian Dynasty (1550-1292 on the surface of a predominantly white BCE), where sketches on papyrus, stone, canvas. Nicholson was more involved or wood were transferred to the wall and with rectilinear shapes in space– or the painted. While squaring drawings presents square created by the grid. Karshan’s one method of transfer for painting, grid is not an appropriated or intentional squaring compositional drawings are often form but instead, a manifestation of her associated with the process of producing internal rhythm; the marks she makes on large-scale works such as frescoes, murals, the page correspond to the reach of her and tapestries. arm. Each artist also placed importance on the connection between rhythmic body The 16th century depiction of Jonah and movements (dance, sport, and heart beat) the Whale represents the most traditional and art making and felt that keen natural and widespread application of the intuition was key for successfully balancing squaring grid in preparatory drawing. It is their grid compositions. Mondrian a completed composition that the artist specifically theorised that in order to invented and developed from imagination; produce a successful composition, all of the it does not represent an actual event. The components of the image – each vertical image derives from a popular biblical and horizontal line, colour plane, and narrative and portrays the moment at negative space - must be equally dominant which the repentant Jonah is ejected from in order to reach, what he termed, ‘dynamic the belly of the whale. In the background, equilibrium’. The importance of rhythm and Christ is shown resurrecting from the tomb movement in Mondrian and Nicholson’s – a miracle that Jonah’s story is commonly work is further discussed in Christopher thought to foreshadow. As was common Green’s entry in the Mondrian || Nicholson: practice in the Renaissance, a carefully In Parallel catalogue. composed drawing such as this one would likely be drawn by a master artist while the Art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss’s actual transfer might have been undertaken Fig 1. Linda Karshan, Untitled, 1995 by a member of the artist’s workshop. of the picture to the vanishing point. In both Gasper van Wittel’s View of Tivoli, Perpendicular lines are then drawn across 1700-10, and Frank Auerbach’s Studies the diagonals to create a structural grid for Oxford Street,1957-59, the images that serves to organise the image and represent observed landscape and urban determine the scale objects within the scenes and are associated with finished illusionistic space (fig. 2). paintings. These drawings are not a part of the same workshop tradition as the earlier Jonah composition and the artists themselves would have likely undertaken the actual process of transferring the sketches to the painting surface.

Squaring is the clearest use of a pure grid in the display and the only example where the grid bears no significance to the formation of the drawing it is transferring – it is purely a tool. The squaring grid places an objective measurement on top of a subjective image. In the process of transferring, the image will lose its coherence and each square of the grid will acts as an individual piece of the compositional puzzle. The grid then gives order to an otherwise complicated transfer Fig. 2. Circle of Canaletto Parlatorium in a Venetian Convent, process. 18th century. With overlaid grid, vanishing point and horizon.

PERSPECTIVE GRID The measured harmony and balance In a perspective drawing, the artist achieved through accurate perspective attempts to create the illusion of three- is exemplified in three of the four works dimensional space in a two-dimensional included in this category. Pier Leone image. In mathematical perspective Ghezzi’s Palazzo Sacchetti, 1735, and Hans systems, known as linear perspective, Bol’s Jerusalem, 1575, can be considered the grid acts as an exact measure for a pairing; both use a birds-eye linear determining the relative size of objects one-point perspective to represent extant as they recede into space. In Circle of and celestial architectural formations on Canaletto’s Parlatorium in a Venetian the land below. Bol’s representation of Convent, 1700s, for example, the Jerusalem as a symmetrical, balanced underlying perspective grid is made grid coincides with the description of the clearly visible as structures that establish holy city in the Book of Revelation, while depth and volume, while simultaneously Ghezzi’s drawing records an actual villa in portraying the balance, proportion and the seaside city of Ostia, outside of Rome, accuracy of single vanishing point linear built by architect Pietro da Cortona from perspective. Although the Greeks and 1626-9. The symmetry of the villa itself Romans had devised a perspectival system, corresponds to ideals of Italian Renaissance the development of linear perspective is and Baroque architecture while also attributed to the Florentine painter Filippo incorporating functional fortification Brunelleschi and was described in the elements necessary to fend off occasional writings of Leon Battista Alberti in his 1435 pirate attacks. The grid of the palazzo’s treatise, De Pitura. layout is one of aesthetic and functional design. The basic concept for one-point, or single vanishing point, linear perspective In opposition to Bol, Ghezzi, and Circle is relatively simple. First the artist must of Canaletto, the etching Gothic Arch (Fig. establish a horizontal line that signifies 3) by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from his the horizon in the image. The artist picks series of sixteen etchings titled Invenzeioni a vanishing point along the horizon Carpricci di Carceri (or Invention of line (typically in the center), and then Imaginary Prisons, 1745), presents a diagonal lines are drawn from the edges disorientating architectural calamity.

SQUARING IS THE CLEAREST USE OF A PURE GRID AND THE ONLY EXAMPLE WHERE THE GRID BEARS NO SIGNIFICANCE TO THE FORMATION OF THE DRAWING – IT IS PURELY A TOOL.

LINES CROSSED Written by Allison Wucher; a recent MA Art History graduate from The Courtauld Institue of Art

CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+ Art and Design, Maths, History, Art History ” and other Humanities a page of scenes from the Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles. Because this drawing is intended as a design for an engraved print, the images are actually reversed. When printed, the image reads as a partially chronological sequence of events from the Book of Kings (the top row depicts chapters 23-25 of the second Book of Kings) and the Books of Chronicles (the bottom row shows chapters 20 and 10 from the second Book of Chronicles and chapter 22 from the first Book). The purpose of these images was to perhaps remind the readers of the most important events from each of these chapters. The decorative, faux architectural elements framing each of the scenes provide windows into the individual pictorial spaces, while also allocating a small space for the corresponding biblical verses to be written (the small rectangular boxes beneath each image contains a verse in the final print). The grid here allows for illusionistic and flat, two-dimensional space to coexist.

The other example of a narrative grid is in Frans van Stampart and Anton Fig. 3. Giovanni Battista Piranesi Gothic Arch grid as a design element it can certainly Joseph von Prenner’s engraved page be found in prehistoric civilisations that The balance and measurement of from the Prodromus, 1735, which is an incorporated geometric design into their linear perspective is ignored and there early type of presentation catalogue adornment and possessions. is no perspectival grid recessing into reproducing highlights from the Imperial Habsburg collection installed in the the distance. Instead, Piranesi created The three ceiling designs on display all Stallburg Gallery in Vienna. Prodromus ‘impossible objects’, where the multiple have unique characteristics but their means “introduction”, and, as such, this corridors and brick archways produce an common feature, besides the fact that they publication offered an introduction to irrational, vast space without indication are all ceilings, is that they elaborate upon the collection. The Prodromus is directly of a vanishing point. The Gothic Arch the ornamental embellishments of a larger linked to a tradition established by David is summed up well by art historian structure. The fourth design, a tray design Teniers who ‘originated’ the illustrated Malcolm Campbell, who stated that the from the Omega Workshop, is different catalogue through the publication of disharmony of architectural elements, ‘… in that it presents a design for an entire engraved reproductions from Archduke conspire to underscore Piranesi’s assault object. However its function, similar to Leopold Wilhelm’s Italian collection in his on perspectival convention and to mock that of the ceiling designs, is to describe a Theatrum Pictorium, 1660. These same our ocular - and intellectual - efforts to decorative surface design rather than the Italian works became part of the extensive rationalise this space as ‘real’ architecture.’ construction of the object itself. The grid within the Gothic Arch is seen in and significant Habsburg collection, and the repetition of architectural forms that NARRATIVE GRID were again reproduced in the Prodromus. are informed by accurate perspective but The narrative grid utilises vertical and The orientation of the paintings in the actively avoid following it. horizontal lines to divide a single page engraving is completely fictive, but the into multiple pictorial spaces that can be Prodromus still reflects the installation style DESIGN GRID viewed together, regardless of whether or of the 17th century, which was to blanket The grid, as a network of horizontal and not the series of scenes are narrative. The the entire wall with as many objects as vertical lines, is the underlying structure grid organises the space and provides an possible. Rigid symmetry and balance necessary for coherently organising and elegant solution to static pictorial imagery were also ideal when hanging paintings, drafting preliminary, instructional designs by enabling artists to not only portray a so much in fact that many were ruthlessly for the production of material objects. sequence of events across a single page, ‘formatised’, meaning they were either In this context, the grid is the objective but also use different sized boxes within cut down or another piece of canvas was foundation from which the innovation of the grid to create a hierarchy of relative stuck onto them, to allow them to fit the design is developed. The grid reflects importance. The history of narrative art can trend of symmetrical hanging. Of the the physical and structural restrictions be considered the history of art itself and Stallburg collection, forty percent of the necessary to produce a functional object, the partition of a single surface in order to pieces were apparently ‘formatised’ in and it is scaled proportionately to the size create narratives has continued through this manner. Also, paintings were hung and shape of the final product. Of the the centuries. The use of narrative friezes with consideration for how their pictorial design drawings in this display, three are and scenes are found in Ancient Egypt and space related to neighbouring paintings. plans for ceiling ornaments, and one is a Greece, a more grid-like formation of space For example, two pieces with figures that decorative design for a domestic object. is seen in early Christian frescoes and icons, were scaled in differently, or had conflicting and continued into illustrations of biblical horizon lines would not be hung next to While the origin of architectural design texts and interior decorative painting in each other. drawings can be found in ancient Greece, it the Renaissance. Today, we can see the could be argued that technical architectural narrative grid the most clearly in mediums The Prodromus page reflects the same drawings, specifically those based in like comic books, but the grid as a way ideals and considerations of hanging geometrically accurate scaling and of organising space is also visible in the a physical gallery, but only represents proportion became common in the Gothic typographical design of websites. the most important objects in the period. Design drawings were then further collection. The central image depicting developed with linear perspective during Of the two examples of a narrative grid the Expulsion from the Garden is flanked the Renaissance. Technical drawings of on display neither is an example of a by two reproductions of paintings based luxury objects run parallel to the history of continuous narrative ‘storyboard’, but on Michelangelo’s famed presentation architectural drawings and there are many both function as part of larger narrative drawings, The Dream (in The Courtauld examples of extant design proposals for publications. The first is a preliminary Collection) and The Rape of Ganymede, commissioned objects from Renaissance drawing for an engraving by Johann Jakob and is topped by Titian’s Rape of Europa, workshops. However, when considering the von Sandrart, 1680s, and represents half now in the National Gallery. The grid used in the Prodromus is created by the frames enacted through the rhythm of repeated around the paintings and allows them to forms across the page. Within the drawing MEASURE IS THE be organised, categorised, and recorded in there seem to be couplets of forms; BASIS OF BEAUTY a systematic and coherent way. The grid is two outstretched arms grasping a cloth, not narrative in the sense that it delineates two female busts with their elbows held PLATO a series of events, but instead narrates high and forefingers grazing their lips, trends in picture collecting and the history two thumbs clutching fabric. The artist is of these paintings as significant objects searching for the perfection proportion and worthy of reproduction and distribution. placement in their renderings and rather than erasing or throwing away the paper, MISE EN PAGE: COMPOSITIONAL GRID they simply repeat the form and draw Mise en page is French for ‘placement on another line. the page’, and describes the way an artist lays out forms across a two dimensional The Le Brun Sheet of Studies is very much surface. It is applied specifically to connected to Linda Karshan’s Untitled, drawings that are not worked up into a full 1995. Karshan’s drawing is also a search composition but are rather an assortment for balance and perfection, but instead of of multiple doodles floating in space. It is searching through figurative renderings, ” argued that mise en page originated in the her drawing is an expression of her own late 15th century when paper became more body’s rhythm and measurements. The widely available and drawing developed drawing was made by marking the page into a process of artistic invention and as she walked around it - turning each freedom rather than a necessary technical corner after counting to eight. This pattern step for the design of paintings (squaring), of counting and repetition is said to luxury objects, or architecture (design represent her internal tempo. Each line drawings). By the 18th century mise en Karshan draws corresponds to the reach page was an aesthetic ideal that was of her arm and the placement of the lines perfected by Late-Baroque French artists. is a reflection of her body’s position in The term mise en page in the context of relation to the page. Nothing is measured this display describes works where the using a ruler or an external tool. Every placement of forms on the page is not line drawn is deliberate and aims at bound by a visible structure and instead accurately transcribing her body’s balance appears to be purely intuitive. However, and proportion onto the surface. The final the grid is still intimated, especially in the product of her movements reveals the form Stefano Della Bella Studies of Animals, of a grid. Karshan, like the Le Brun Sheet mid-17th century, and Giovanni Battista of Studies, did not intend to produce this Piranesi Figure Studies, mid-18th century, in exact image, however, this is the image that how the forms are composed in an orderly, came out of her creative movements. balanced, equally spaced manner across the page. It is as if a grid frame is invisibly Mise en page seems to reveal a true transcribed onto the negative space in the compositional grid; an innate tendency image, creating boundaries between Della artists have for placing forms on a sheet Bella’s animals and Piranesi’s figures. The that always seem to reflect the nature of the function of both of these sheets is perhaps grid as a repetitive, organising, underlying as a collection of models to be used as structure that balances and makes sense of minor characters in the engravings by the the image on the page. respective artists.

Studies by the workshop of Charles Le FURTHER READING Brun, mid-17th century, (Fig. 4) suggest the Kosme de Baranano, Linda Karshan, 2002 grid in a slightly different way than Della Rosalind Krauss, ‘Grids’, October, vol.9, Bella and Piranesi. This drawing could 1979 either be a page of practice sketches or a result of the artist working out aspects of Fig 1. a composition. The grid in this drawing is Linda Karshan Untitled, 1995. Pencil on Paper Fig 2. Circle of Canaletto Parlatorium in a Venetian Convent, 18th century Pen and ink, watercolour, chalk (black) on paper. Superimposed horizon line (red), vanishing point (yellow), and diagonal lines from edge to vanishing point (black) with structural grid (blue). Illustration by Allison Wucher Fig. 3 Giovanni Battista Piranesi Gothic Arch, 1745 Etching Fig 4. Charles Le Brun Sheet of Studies, 17th Century Red chalk and graphite on paper all © The Courtauld Gallery, London Samuel Courtauld Trust

LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS ON PAPER curated by Allison Wucher, is on view at The Courtauld Gallery for the duration of Fig 4. Charles Le Brun, Sheet of Studies MONDRIAN||NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL. VII: REGARDE! MONDRIAN À PARIS (1911 – 1940)

Cette chanson de Josephine Baker des Mondrian aime sortir le soir et faire Ru-h-ru-h-h-h. Poeoeoe. Tik-tik-tik-tik. années 1930 illustre la relation de Mondrian l’expérience de Paris, que ce soit dans les Pre. R-r-r-r-r-ruh-u. Huh! Pang. Su-su- à Paris. Mondrian, qui avait vu Josephine cafés et restaurants proches de chez lui su-su-ur. Boe-a-ah. R-r-r-r. Automobiles, Baker se produire dans la Revue Nègre comme le Dôme ou la Rotonde ou encore bus, trolleys, charrettes, taxis, la foule, au Théâtre des Champs Elysées, vécut dans les restaurants à la mode, comme le les lampadaires, les arbres…tous à Paris pendant plus de vingt ans et prit Boeuf sur le Toit. mêlés: entre les cafés, les magasins, les part à l’émulation artistique, urbaine et bureaux, les posters, les vitrines : une cosmopolite de la capitale française. Durant presque tout son séjour à Paris, multiplicité de choses. Le mouvement Exposant au Salon des Indépendants en Mondrian garde son studio du 26 rue du et l’immobile: mouvements divers. 1911, Piet Mondriaan s’installe à Paris Départ, où grand nombre de ses amis Multiples images et multiples idées, l’année suivante et commence à signer ses et d’artistes lui rendent visite. C’était un etc… L’endroit transforme l’homme œuvres ‘Mondrian’, avec un seul ‘a’ plus atelier fantastique, agencé comme l’une et l’homme transforme la nature. Sur français, ‘qui donnait un son et un rythme de ses propres peintures avec très peu les boulevards il y a déjà beaucoup plus agréable [à son nom]’ . Un an plus de meubles, souvent minimalistes et des ‘d’artifice’ mais il n’y a pas encore ‘d’art. tard, il abandonne la peinture figurative murs blancs et gris. De fines étagères et pour s’adonner à ce que Guillaume de petits meubles en bois rappellent ses Frans Postma écrit: propres peintures divisées par des lignes Apollinaire avait appelé son ‘Cubisme Paris et la ville moderne et animée abstrait’ qui dans les années 1920 évoluera noires. Son atelier est une composition de l’inspiraient. L’environnement de vers son esthétique du Néo-Plasticisme. murs verticaux blancs où sont accrochés Mondrian jouait un rôle important dans des rectangles amovibles faits de couleurs son travail. Son atelier, là où il vivait et Peu de temps après son arrivée à Paris, primaires, et d’un plancher noir. C’est, l’atmosphère des rues de son quartier Mondrian s’établit dans son atelier (où en d’autres termes, un ‘Mondrian’ à part étaient des conditions nécessaires à il vit et travaille) au 26 rue du Départ, entière. Michel Seuphor, artiste et ami son développement, quelque chose derrière la Gare Montparnasse, dans les du peintre, décrit son atelier comme un dont il était constamment conscient. arrondissements sud de Paris. Après la ‘studio-sanctuaire’. ‘Quand vous entriez Comme la plupart des choses dans sa Première Guerre Mondiale, Montparnasse [dans son atelier], c’était sombre mais vie, son travail et sa vie étaient devenus devient un quartier très animé où Mondrian quand vous passiez la seconde porte, secondaires à son développement participe à l’atmosphère de renaissance qui quand l’espace s’ouvrait à vous, vous artistique. domine les années 1920 à Paris. ‘Une des passiez de l’enfer au paradis. Magnifique conséquences de cette renaissance était ! […] L’atelier était blanc et gris. Mondrian Ceci est clairement visible dans une bonne infrastructure pour les artistes. avait pris soin de préciser quelles teintes l’évolution esthétique de Mondrian à Il y avait beaucoup d’expositions et de utiliser: seulement du gris, du gris clair Paris. Les dynamiques entre mouvement galeries d’art. Les marchands d’art venaient et du blanc. Pour Mondrian, son atelier et immobilité sont de plus en plus de partout dans le monde. Mondrian lui avait toujours été spécial.’ Après significatives quand ses peintures se exposa régulièrement durant cette la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, avec réduisent aux trois couleurs primaires, période’. A Paris, il rencontre la plupart l’expansion de la Gare et du quartier au noir, au blanc et sont composées de des artistes importants de l’époque; les Montparnasse, l’immeuble du 26 rue rectangles ou de carrés divisés en damiers. fauves et les cubistes dans les années du Départ est détruit dans les années La profondeur du champ de vision est 1910, les peintres plus abstraits des années 1960. L’espace fait maintenant partie des supprimée. Ses compositions, souvent 1920 et 1930. Il devient aussi proche fondations de la tour Montparnasse, qui rectangulaires, deviennent des quadrillages d’artistes célèbres tels que Le Corbusier, jusque dans les années 1990, est le plus qui ne doivent pas être encadrés. Le les Delaunay, les Arp, Jean Hélion et plus grand gratte-ciel de bureaux construit en blanc est souvent peint, couche après particulièrement Theo Van Doesburg avec Europe. couche avec des coups de pinceau allant qui il commence à collaborer en 1915. dans différentes directions, créant une En 1923, Van Doesburg lui –même écrit: En 1926, Mondrian rédige son manifeste du certaine profondeur. Après 1930, des lignes Neo-Plasticisme: Neo-Plasticism: La Maison noires fines et parallèles deviennent plus La vie est vraiment agréable ici, on . Son amour pour la vie – La Rue – La ville fréquentes, créant un nouveau dynamisme peut travailler tranquillement, sans être urbaine moderne est le mieux illustré dans dans ses toiles. dérangé. On vous laisse en paix et en ses derniers commentaires: soirée, on se rencontre dans un café En 1940, fuyant le régime collaborateur d’artistes ou sur la bute de Montmartre, Le Neo-Plasticisme est le plus chez de Vichy, Mondrian déménage à Londres où, en face du Sacré-Cœur, il y a un lui dans le métro qu’à Notre Dame, et où il continue d’explorer l’abstraction café avec une vue splendide de Paris. préfère la Tour Eiffel au Mont Blanc. géométrique aux cotés de Ben Nicholson. [,,,] Ce qu’il y a de mieux, c’est ‘l’esprit’ L’animation des villes, leurs sons et leurs que l’on trouve nulle part ailleurs qu’à Dans l’une de ses deux ‘esquisses’ urbaines rythmes continueront de l’influencer Paris. L’atmosphère qui prévaut est (ou écrits urbains) de 1920, Les Grands profondément jusqu’à sa mort à New York différente des atmosphères des autres Boulevards, il décrit l’atmosphère de la ville en 1944. villes. On sent l’histoire, le passé dans active: les moindres choses. The title of this song, sung by Josephine still dark, but when you went through Baker in the 1930s illustrates Mondrian’s that second door, when that opened, relationship with Paris. Mondrian, who you went from hell to heaven. Beautiful! had seen Josephine Baker perform in […] The studio was white and grey. La Revue Nègre, at the Théâtre des Mondrian indicated which tints to be Champs Elysées on a few occasions, used: only grey, light grey and white. To lived in Paris for over twenty years and Mondrian, his studio was always special. fully engaged with the artistic, urban and cosmopolitan atmosphere of the French Unfortunately, as the Gare Montparnasse capital. Exhibiting in 1911 at the Salon des and its surrounding area expanded after Indépendants, Piet Mondriaan moved to the Second World War, the building at 26 Paris in 1912 and starts signing his work rue du Départ was destroyed in the 1960s. ‘Mondrian’ with a single, more French This was to provide foundations for the sounding ‘a’, ‘since the sound and the Tour Montparnasse, one of the highest rhythm struck him as nicer’. A year later, he office sky scrapers to be built in Europe abandons figurative painting forever and until the 1990s. starts working on his ‘very abstract Cubism’ In 1926, Mondrian writes his Neo-Plasticism which will in the 1920s become the Manifesto, Neo-Plasticism: The Home – backbone to his Neo-Plasticism aesthetics. The Street – The City. His love for modern Shortly after arriving in Paris, Mondrian city life is made clear in one of his final establishes himself in his studio (where he remarks: ‘Neo-Plasticism is more at home ‘J’AI DEUX AMOURS, both lives and works) at 26 rue du Départ, in the Metro than in Notre Dame, prefers behind the Gare Montparnasse in the the Eiffel Tower to Mont Blanc’. In one of MON PAYS ET PARIS?’ southern parts of the city. After the First his two urban ‘sketches’ (or writings) from 1920, Les Grands Boulevards, he describes Josephine Baker World War, the area became very vibrant and Mondrian enjoyed the atmosphere of the atmosphere of the busy city: renewal which dominated 1920s Paris. ‘ One Ru-h-ru-h-h-h. Poeoeoe. Tik-tik-tik-tik. of the consequences of this revival, was a Pre. R-r-r-r-r-ruh-u. Huh! Pang. Su-su- good infrastructure for the artists. There su-su-ur. Boe-a-ah. R-r-r-r. Automobiles, were a lot of exhibitions and galleries. buses, carts, cabs, people, lampposts, Art dealers came from all over the world. trees…all mixed : against cafes, shops, Mondrian also regularly exhibited in this offices, posters, display windows : a .’ In Paris, he meets most of the period multiplicity of things. Movement and influential artists of his time; the fauve standstill: diverse motions. Manifold and cubist painters in the 1910s, the more images and manifold thoughts, abstract artists of the 1920s and 30s. He etc… Place transforms man and man also becomes closely acquainted with transforms nature. On the boulevard famous artists such as Le Corbusier, the there is already much ‘artifice’, but it is Delaunays, the Arps, Jean Helion and more ” not yet ‘art’. specifically with Theo Van Doesburg who will work closely with Mondrian from 1915 As Frans Postma writes: onwards. In 1923, Van Doesburg writes: Paris and the busy modern city inspired Life is truly pleasant here, since you can him. Mondrian’s surroundings played work so quietly and undisturbed. They an important role in his work. His leave you in peace and in the evenings workplace, the situation of his home you can meet each other in an artist’s and the atmosphere of the streets in café or up on the hill of Montmartre, his neighbourhood were necessary where opposite the Sacré-Coeur, there’s conditions for his development, a café with a splendid view of Paris. […]. something which he was thoroughly The nicest thing is the ‘spirit’ which you aware of. Like almost everything else in find nowhere else but here in Paris. The his life, he had made every change in his prevalent mood here is totally different working and living place subordinate to from the mood of any other city. You feel his artistic development. there’s history, the past in the smallest thing. These accounts are visible in Mondrian’s aesthetic evolution during his time in Paris. Mondrian himself liked to go out in Paris The dynamics between movement and most evenings. Whether it was at his local standstill take on a new meaning when his eating places and cafés such as the Dôme paintings become increasingly reduced to or the Rotonde or at the fashionable Boeuf the three primary colours, black and white, sur le Toit restaurant, he experienced Paris and composed of rectangles and squares fully. in simple asymmetrical grids. Depth is completely eliminated. His compositions, Mondrian keeps his studio at 26 rue du often rectangular, become grids which Départ for most of his stay in Paris , which FURTHER READING are meant to be left unframed. The white many of his friends and artists visit. It was a Frans Postma, 26 rue du Départ, 1989 is often painted in layer after layer with wonderful space, arranged like one of his brush strokes going in different directions, own paintings with very little and minimalist creating a sense of depth. After 1930, furniture and white and grey walls. Thin Image: thinner and double lines become more Piet Mondrian shelves and wooden structures, provided a frequent, offering new dynamisms to the Photograph from De Stijl, vol. 5, Dec 1922 visual reminder of the black lines dividing canvases. Photographer anonymous his paintings. Mondrian's atelier was a composition of vertical white walls and a In 1940, fearing the Nazi collaborative REGARDE! MONDRIAN A PARIS horizontal black floor, its walls hung with regime of the Vichy government, Mondrian Written by Alice Odin; The Oak Foundation rectangles of primary colours that could moves to London, where he continues to Young People’s Programme Coordinator, be moved about. It was, in other words, a explore geometric abstraction alongside The Courtauld Institute of Art ‘Mondrian’. Michel Seuphor, a fellow artist Ben Nicholson. Busy city atmospheres, and friend, called the room a ‘studio- sounds and rhythms will continue to CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+ sanctuary’: influence him until his death in New York MFL French, Art, Art History and other in 1944. When you entered [his studio], it was humanities.

VIII: GLOSSARY OF TERMS

ABSTRACTION: Genius Loci: Surrealism: The style of simplifying recognisable Translates as ‘the spirit of the place’. Used A literary, artistic and cultural movement, objects into geometric shapes, colours, or by modernist British artists to explain which began in 1920s France. It took other non-representational forms. the inherent feeling or history in specific Freud’s psychoanalytical theories as its core landscapes such as standing stones or sites and was a highly international movement, Bauhaus: of ancient history. with artists in Britain and abroad creating An art school in Germany that operated dream-like paintings, sculptures and from 1919 to 1933. It specialised in bringing Marxism: performances. together arts, architecture and crafts in A critique of capitalism pioneered in the creating a complete modernism in design. 19th century by two German philosophers Theory of Relativity: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The theory A name given to Albert Einstein’s two The Bloomsbury Group: investigated the system of dependence theories Special Relativity and The Theory A group of artists and writers who worked of the majority of classes on the economic of General Relativity. Special Relativity around Bloomsbury in London during the base controlled by the upper classes, states that it is impossible to determine 1910s. Included Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, resulting in a class struggle. whether or not you are moving unless Clive Bell, Duncan Grant and Virginia you can look at another object. General Woolf. Committed to bring modern French Naturalism: relativity is a geometrical theory that art to Britain and developing styles of A style of painting where the artist suggests the presence of mass and energy abstract painting. represents realistic objects, or figures, in a ‘curves’ space, which we interpret as a natural setting. Classicism: gravitational force. This changed the A style of painting that took the culture Neo-plasticism: way people thought about space and of classical antiquity and its sculptures, A word used to describe the style of the time, and about the forces of gravity and architecture and art as its inspiration. Dutch group of artists De Stijl, or ‘The acceleration. Style’. Founded in 1917 the group sought Constructivism: Truth to materials: to express a utopian ideal of spiritual and A phrase that originates with the Arts and An artistic and architectural philosophy artistic harmony through abstraction. that aimed to use abstraction for social Crafts Movement at the turn of the 20th purposes. It originated in Soviet Russia in Neo-romanticism: century. It explains artists who attempted to 1919 with artists such as Naum Gabo, and A style of art and literature that originated create work that ‘listened’ to the material greatly inspired abstraction in Britain. in the 1930s and remained popular until the they were using. For example, if carving a 1950s. It looked to romantic artists, such as piece of wood an artist like Ben Nicholson Dadaism: Samuel Palmer, and their place in Britain’s would follow the curves of the natural A movement of art, literature, and national heritage. Mainly revolving around structure of the piece of wood. performance that aimed to create anti- the integration of modernism and Britain’s Vorticism: art. It rebelled against previous artistic visionary landscapes and history. conventions and is famous for the use of A group of radical artists led by the writer ‘found objects’ pioneered by the artist Romanticism: and artist Percy Wyndham Lewis. They Marcel Duchamp. An artistic, literary and intellectual aimed to create art that was anti-humanist, movement in reaction to the mechanical, abstract and at times pro-war. Euclidean space: industrialisation of the 18th century. It They are renowned for the creation of the A mathematical term describing the three- looked to visualise emotions using strong journal Blast in 1914 and 1915. It was a dimensional space of Euclidean geometry. colours and expressive brushstrokes. short-lived group, which began in 1913 and It is named after the Greek mathematician dissolved within the first few years of the Euclid of Alexandria. Socialism: First World War (1914-1918). An economic and political system based Fascism: on social ownership of the economy. Often A radical nationalist politics where people described as a working class movement, it of one nation are tied together through was often manifested in art through anti- ancestry, culture and blood. The most fascist politics. notable example of a fascist regime is Adolf Hilter and the Nazi party and their Socialist realism: crimes to people of Jewish heritage. The dominant art form used by the Soviet Union and other communist countries. It Formalism: took form in ‘realistic’ and often figurative A way to judge artwork purely on its visual art such as the figure of the working class attributes. It emphasises elements such as ‘hero’. It was adopted by British socialists composition, colour, line, shape, texture as a form to create art for all classes and and tone. was often politically charged.

WITH THANKS

I: MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL Ed. Meghan Goodeve

II: GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH Sam Rose

III: 1937 Meghan Goodeve

IV: DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONS: BEYOND THE SINGULAR ARTIST Lauren Barnes

V: MONDRIAN AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION OF MODERN SCIENCE Vanja Malloy

VI: LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS ON PAPER Allison Wucher

VII: REGARDE!: MONDRIAN À PARIS (1911 – 1940) Alice Odin

VIII: GLOSSARY OF TERMS Meghan Goodeve

TEACHERS’ RESOURCE MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL Web Edition

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