De Stijl 1917 1931 New York 1953

A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes recognizes that change is a driving force in all the arts. It covers major trends in music, dance, theater, film, visual art, sculpture, and performance art--as well as architecture, science, and culture.

There is no shortage of books about Le Corbusier, or Mies van der Rohe, or De Stijl. However, this book considers them in relation to each other, observing how a study of one can illuminate the works of the others. Going beyond a superficial look at the end-products of these architects, this book examines the philosophical foundations of their work, taking as its central theme the aim of universality, as opposed to the individual and the particular. Each of these three aimed at universality, but for each this concept took on a different form. The universality of De Stijl and artists like Van Doesburg and Mondrian resembled that of the universe itself: it was boundless, going beyond the limits of the canvas and seeking to abolish the wall as the boundary between interior and exterior space. In contrast, each of Le Corbusier’s creations was a self-contained universe within a clear frame, while Mies fluctuated between these two perspectives.

FRANCIS BULHOF "What was Modernism?" That is the title of an address delivered in June of 1960 by the eminent comparatist Harry Levin at Queen's University in King ston, Ontario.1 Apparently, more than a decade ago, in the eyes of this per ceptive analyst of literature and the arts, the modernist movement had become a thing of the past. Having acquired full citizenship in the republic of letters, modernism had outlived itself. The title of Harry Levin's lecture bears an obvious resemblance to that of Fritz Martini's book-length essay Was war Expressionismus?,2 which dealt exclusively with the German variant of the expressionist movement. In the case of German expressionism there is much dispute concerning the precise moment of its decline and fall, but the political conditions provide at least a crucial dividing line in the year 1933. The end of modernism, however, a far more comprehensive movement which was not just limited to one country, is not so easy to determine. And there is also still much discussion about its roots.

This volume investigates the meaning of visual rhythm through Piet Mondrian’s unique approach to understanding rhythm in the compositional structure of painting, drawing reference from philosophy, aesthetics, and Zen culture. Its innovation lies in its reappraisal of a forgotten definition of rhythm as ‘stasis’ or ‘composition’ which can be traced back to ancient Greek thought. This conception of rhythm, the book argues, can be demonstrated in terms of pictorial strategy, through analysis of East Asian painting and calligraphy with which Greek thought on rhythm has identifiable commonalities. The book demonstrates how these ideas about rhythm draw together various threads of intellectual development in the visual arts that cross disparate aesthetic cultural practices. As an icon of early 20th Century Modernism, Mondrian’s neoplasticism is a serious painterly and philosophical achievement. In his painting, Mondrian was deeply influenced by Theosophy, which took its influence from Eastern aesthetics; particularly East Asian and Indian thought. However, Mondrian’s approach to visual rhythm was so idiosyncratic that his contribution to studies of visual rhythm is often under-recognized. This volume shows that a close inspection of Mondrian’s own writing, thinking and painting has much to tell scholars about how to understand a long forgotten aspect of visual rhythm. Rodin’s famous criticism of photography (“athlete-in-motion is forever frozen”) can be applied to Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope, the Futurists’ rendition of stroboscopic images, and Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase.” Through a comparative study between Mondrian’s painting and these seminal works, this volume initiates a new convention for the cognition of the surface of painting as visual rhythm. “Mondrian’s simultaneous emphasis on the static and the rhythmic is hardly fodder for a publicist. Eiichi Tosaki has taken on the challenge of elucidating Mondrian’s theories of rhythm, and particularly his conception of “static” rhythm. The result is a tour de force that will forever alter the reader’s encounter with the works of Mondrian.” Prof. Kathleen Higgins