Mondrian Notes

Ordinary memos become artful on this unique pocket-sized notepad. Each edge of the notepad is dyed a different color, while the cover features a playful twist: a die-cut window that reveals a peek of the notepaper inside.

Piet Mondrian was one of the great pioneers of abstract art. This book looks at the relationship between his paintings and his theories on art.

When the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) made his first ventures into the realm of nonrepresentational art, he could hardly have imagined the impact his vision would have on twentieth-century art, architecture, and design. Internationally recognized as the leading pioneer of abstract art, the founder of Neo-Plasticism, and the ideological father of the De Stijl movement, Mondrian embodied the spirit of modernism. His unmistakable grids and angular compositions expressed his desire for order and clarity amid the chaos of industrial civilization. This comprehensive collection of his essays, letters, notes, and interviews is arranged chronologically from Mondrian's earliest De Stijl essays up to an interview conducted shortly before his death. The texts are complemented with a chronology, an intimate memoir by his close friend Harry Holtzman, an essay on Mondrian's early writings by Martin S. James, a selective bibliography, and 254 reproductions of Mondrian's paintings, works, by his contemporaries, and photographs of the artist, his family, and friends. The New Art –The New Life is the definitive source for understanding the underlying principles of Mondrian's art and life. Revealed in these writings is the self-denial, discipline, and patience of a man who modified the way we perceive the world.

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

In one of his sparkling aphorisms on the end of 'optical' art, Marcel Duchamp suggested that the title of an artwork was an 'invisible color'. John Welchman now offers the first critical history of how and why modern artworks receive their titles. He shows that titles were seldom produced and can rarely be understood outside of the institutional parameters that made them visible - exhibitions, criticism, catalogues, and even national politics.

We are living in the Age of Participation. Social media are exploding, customer cooperation is sought in product development, and customer content is even built into media. But where is the art reflecting our times? Where are the artists making this kind of art? Who were their predecessors? In this book the author traces the roots of Participatory Art from Duchamp, Mondrian and Moholy-Nagy via less well known artists like Lygia Clark and Charlotte Posenenske as well as via better known artists like Joseph Beuys and yvind Fahlstrm to contemporary artists showing an interest in participation like Olafur Eliasson and Antony Gormley. Participation is the most important thing that has happened in art Gormley said in 2009. What, then, is Participatory Art? After around 40 years of practice the author tries to distill the essential principles in 10 suggestions for a Manifesto. Most central is its focus on the unfolding creative moment itself and on the creativity of the spectator.

Piet Mondrian hat die Entwicklung der Malerei von der Figuration zur Abstraktion maßgebend geprägt. Anlässlich seines 150. Geburtstags widmet sich Mondrian Evolution seinem vielgestaltigen Werk und seiner künstlerischen Entwicklung. Zunächst in der Tradition der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei des späten 19. Jahrhunderts arbeitend, gewannen bald Symbolismus und Kubismus große Bedeutung für ihn. Erst seit Anfang der 1920er Jahre konzentrierte sich der Künstler auf eine komplett gegenstandslose Bildsprache, die sich auf die rechtwinklige Anordnung von schwarzen Linien mit Flächen in Weiß und den drei Grundfarben Blau, Rot und Gelb konzentriert. In einzelnen Kapiteln wird dieser Weg anhand von Motiven wie Windmühlen, Dünen und das Meer, sich im Wasser spiegelnden Bauernhöfen und Pflanzen in verschiedenen Formen der Abstraktion nachverfolgt.