TEACHERS’ RESOURCEMONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL

COVER IMAGE:Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937

Top:Piet MondrianComposition C (No III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935Private collection, on loan to Tate © 2012 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c/o HCR International Washington DC

Bottom:Ben Nicholson1937 (painting)The Courtauld Gallery, London, Samuel Courtauld Trust © Angela Verren Taunt. All rights reserved DACS 2012

The Courtauld Institute of Art runs an exceptional programme of activities suitable for young people, school teachers and members of the public, whatever their age or background.

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The Teachers’ Resources are intended for use by secondary schools and colleges 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.

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Joff WhittenGallery Education ProgrammerThe Courtauld Institute of Art

WELCOME

I: MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL

II: GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH

III: 1937

IV: DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONS: BEYOND THE SINGULAR ARTIST

V: MONDRIAN AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION OF MODERN SCIENCE

VI: LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS ON PAPER

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

VIII: GLOSSARY OF TERMS

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’ RESOURCEMONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLELCompiled 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: education@courtauld.ac.ukt: 0207 848 1058

I: MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON:IN PARALLEL

Left:Piet Mondrian in the garden of 6 The Mall, Hampsteadc.1939-40Photographer: John Cecil StephensonTate Archive, London Right:Ben Nicholson in his studio, 7 The Mall, Hampsteadc.1935 Photographer: Humphrey SpenderNational 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 of the creative relationship between Piet Mondrian, one of the most celebrated painters of the 20th century, and Ben Nicholson, one of this country’s greatest modern artists. It will show work from the decade of their friendship, which culminated with Mondrian moving from Paris to London in 1938, at Nicholson’s invitation, and the two working in neighbouring studios in Parkhill Road, Hampstead, when for a short period London was an international centre of modernist art.

Nicholson first visited Mondrian in his Paris studio in the spring of 1934. Stepping into the purity and calm of its white-painted interior, from the hustle and bustle of the street, was an extraordinary experience, Nicholson later recalled:

His studio was an astonishing room, he’d stuck up on the walls different sized squares painted with primary red, blue and yellow… I remember after this first visit sitting at a café table on the edge of a pavement for a very long time with an astonishing feeling of quiet and repose…

The visit marked the beginning of an enduring friendship and sparked an extraordinary creative relationship, lasting until Mondrian’s death ten years later. When they met, Nicholson was a rising star of modern British art and Mondrian, twenty years his senior, was already recognised as a leading artist of his generation. Their friendship spanned a turbulent decade of 20th century history as Europe headed towards the Second World War. In the art world different movements vied for prominence on this fraught international stage with surrealism becoming a powerful force. Against this backdrop, 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. They believed in the potential of abstraction to attain the highest aesthetic and spiritual power, with the balance and harmony of their compositions offering an antidote to the violent discord of the modern world.

Nicholson was already exploring abstraction before he met Mondrian but

he found powerful confirmation of his artistic convictions through the Dutchman’s example. Over the following years Nicholson would produce some of his greatest works, including a major group of coloured abstracts and his famous series of pure white reliefs. He hand-carved these reliefs from solid wooden panels, making planes of different depths to create shadow lines of varying thicknesses. At the same time, Mondrian was taking new directions in his painting, making greater use of expanses of white space in combination with small but intensive areas of vibrant colour. He also renewed the possibilities of his famous horizontal and vertical black lines, sometimes bringing them together as double lines, to enhance the dynamism of his compositions. Mondrian opened up new aesthetic possibilities that Nicholson made his own in highly original and imaginative ways, which the Dutchman admired greatly. Nicholson, in turn, offered Mondrian new artistic stimulation and considerable support, which fostered creative sharing between the friends.

The two artists contributed to several groundbreaking exhibitions and avant-garde publications in the 1930s, with their work often presented together. London was becoming an important battleground for modern art and, together with his first wife Winifred, Nicholson was instrumental in bringing Mondrian’s work to England. Winifred was Mondrian’s first English buyer when she purchased Composition with Double Line and Yellow in 1935. They were instrumental in finding other patrons for Mondrian among their circle of friends and associates at a time when securing sales was increasingly difficult. Nicholson also helped arrange for Mondrian’s work to be exhibited in England for the very first time, with three paintings being included in the seminal Abstract and Concrete exhibition, organised by Nicolete Gray in 1936. The following year Mondrian contributed to the avant-garde publication, Circle, which Nicholson co-edited. Circle, published in 1937, aimed to unite an international modernist movement of artists, designers and architects with an ambitious agenda to revitalise modern civilisation. In both examples, the work of Mondrian and Nicholson were presented as a pair.

In 1938, with war appearing imminent, Nicholson sent an invitation to Mondrian enabling him to leave Paris for London. Once Mondrian arrived, he was welcomed into an international community of avant-garde artists and writers living close by in Hampstead, including Henry Moore, Naum Gabo, Herbert Read, John Cecil Stephenson and Nicholson’s future wife, Barbara Hepworth. Nicholson found him a studio-cum-bed-sitting-room at 60 Parkhill Road, overlooking Nicholson’s studio. Mondrian immediately set about transforming the room, having it whitewashed before adding patches of colour, as he had in Paris: ‘his wonderful squares of primary colours climbed up the walls’, Hepworth remembered. He installed his few possessions, including his gramophone on which he played his beloved jazz records. Finally, he arranged his unfinished canvases, which he had brought from Paris and set up a trestle table that Nicholson had given him to paint on.

Initially, Mondrian was a little overwhelmed by the vast scale of London and the deep escalators of the underground scared him at first. But he quickly settled into London life and confessed to a friend that the city was actually having a liberating effect:

I’ve noticed that the change has had a good influence on my work… The artistic situation doesn’t differ greatly here from that in Paris. But one is even more ‘free’ – London is big.

Mondrian lived in London for almost exactly two years. He was included in two further exhibitions during his time in the city and he worked on a number of major canvases. The outbreak of war finally separated Mondrian and Nicholson who moved to New York and Cornwall respectively. After settling in America, and with war underway in Europe, he wrote to Cecil Stephenson, ‘I do like New York but in London I was of course more at home. I always believe in the victory of Britain.’

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CURRICULUM LINKS: KS3+Art and Design, History, Art History, and other Humanities

II: GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH

Writing in 1932, Paul Nash set out a fundamental problem faced by his fellow artists:

Whether it is possible to ‘go modern’ and still ‘be British’ is a question vexing quite a few people today…the battle lines have been drawn up: internationalism versus an indigenous culture; renovation versus conservatism; the industrial versus the pastoral; the functional versus the futile.

As the decade progressed the choice between abstract and figurative art was often described as one of ‘internationalism versus an indigenous culture’. But even Nash himself is an example of how such distinctions were really far more complex. This essay takes a very brief look at the context for the debates over modernism and nationalism in twenties and thirties Britain. On the one hand, certain groups showed a desire to embrace modernity and an international sense of artistic culture. On the other, there were many who hoped to look to the national past and its traditions for inspiration – a position which itself had its modernist and anti-modernist versions.

Marred by a widespread lack of financial support and a national audience that demanded the sentimental or the pastoral in their art, in the wake of the First World War there were few real options for the ‘modern’ painter or sculptor in Britain. For many at the time it seemed that Roger Fry and Clive Bell, two writers associated with the Bloomsbury group, more or less dictated the terms in which modern art was discussed. They took Paul Cézanne as their model figure of modern art, which grew from a supposed ‘classicism’ now best represented in France. This had natural consequences for contemporary painting, as ‘Englishness’ was denigrated as provincial and backwards, while the classical French tradition was held up as a model.

Clive Bell went as far to assert that:

...to talk of modern English painting as though it were the rival of modern French is silly…At any given moment the best painter in England is unlikely to be better than a first rate man in the French second class.

Other artists in Britain, for example Percy Wyndham Lewis, who had spearheaded Vorticism, the first radically modernist movement in England in the 1910s, launched scathing attacks on Fry and Bell. Yet the critics marginalised his alternative vision of modern art, Bell suggesting that Lewis had only gained a reputation as a painter because of the general lack of talent in England:

In the Salon d’Automne or the Salon des Indépendants a picture by him would neither merit nor obtain from the most generous critic more than a passing word of perfunctory encouragement.

As the decade continued Fry and Bell’s assumptions of the superiority of French art were adopted into wider discussions, Lewis thought the situation so bad by the mid twenties that he largely abandoned painting for writing.

The scope for debate about international modern art broadened significantly from this Britain/France dichotomy in the years 1931-1934, as important artists and critics were joined in London by European émigrés such as Walter Gropius and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. During this period of transition, in 1933, Paul Nash co-founded the artist group Unit One with the intention of using the latest trends in continental modernism to inject new life into British art. This group, however, did not have one set style of modernism, and by the mid 1930s there were three viable choices for artists who hoped to be part of a truly international modern movement: abstraction, surrealism, and socialist realism.

The poet André Breton had originally launched surrealism in France in the 1920s. It brought together influences that included the thought of the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and the German philosopher Karl Marx, to suggest that the power of the unconscious mind could be utilised in art. Socialist realism was also based on the philosophy of Karl Marx, but had been developed in Soviet Russia as opposed to France, and took a very different form. In direct contrast to the stylistic radicalism of surrealism, it proclaimed the necessity of an art that reverted to the traditions of figurative

painting; the realist depictions of labour and heroic struggle that would be created could then unite and inspire the working classes in revolutionary action. Finally, abstraction was pioneered by artists in Britain, such as Ben Nicholson, who was included in the first all-abstract exhibition in October 1935. On the other hand, he also exhibited with both surrealist and socialist realist art in socialist shows. In this sense all three of the movements tapped into left wing revolutionary politics, and a utopian internationalism that viewed modernity as a chance to shape the future of the world for the better. Looking back from our current position, the scale and passion of the arguments that took place between these rival groups can make it seem like the most urgent contemporary debate was not over modernism and nationalism, but simply which form of international modernism was best for Britain.

However, this period had a strong and dominant current of nationalism both in the arts and elsewhere. This was most obvious in the conservative anti-modernism that can be seen in national politics and institutions. The Tory prime minister Stanley Baldwin, who dominated British politics over the interwar years, was observed to have ‘a shiver run down the spine’ in May 1925 as he unveiled a sculpture by the modernist artist Jacob Epstein. The next year he expressed a desire ‘that art should be our native British art. I hope…that we may pass through that curious snobbish subjection to foreign names and tastes which has been rife in this country so long.’

Also in 1924 Frank Dicksee, a man described by historian Brandon Taylor as ‘both emotionally and professionally anti-Semitic’, was elected president of the Royal Academy. Dicksee’s mission was to reverse the partial modernisation of the institution that had taken place under the previous president. This action points to the right wing and even proto-fascist views held by certain members. Throughout the period the Academy remained a bastion of so-called ‘traditional’ art. Naturalism enhanced with occasional loosely worked brushstrokes that suggested personal artistry was the preferred style, and the most favoured subject matter revolved around portraiture and the countryside.

As late as 1949 the Royal Academy president felt confident in the support for his rejection of modern ‘foreign’ styles:

I am right — I have the Lord Mayor on my side and all the Aldermen and all the City Companies... and on my left I have the famous newly elected extra-ordinary member of the Academy — Winston Churchill. He, too, is with me…

In the thirties this traditionalist element was carried into the heart of the modern British avant-garde. Their major critic and champion Herbert Read had produced books on English pottery and English stained glass in the 1920s, and in 1933 praised the English cultural tradition both in a long article for The Burlington Magazine and in his book The English Vision. Moreover, Nash and a number of other English artists felt that surrealism was not just a continental movement, but that its stress on dream and imagination linked it firmly with the English romantic tradition of William Blake and Samuel Palmer. As the art historian Malcolm Yorke has written, it was a regular feature of writing at the time to describe ‘the true native vision’ of British art as ‘lyrical emotional and literary rather than preoccupied with formalism’.

The search for a ‘British’ element, or a connection to British art of the past, was also apparent in discussions of abstraction in Britain. Even in the apparently austere white reliefs of Ben Nicholson, some have seen the influence of England’s ‘climate’; the homely arts and crafts tradition has been detected in the ‘truth to materials’ of the roughly carved and whitewashed surfaces of the works. Moreover, there was at times a reconciliation of the socialist realists with the English tradition of realist painting. For example, a firm supporter of socialist realism in Britain, Anthony Blunt held political views fundamentally opposed to the right-wing National Gallery director Kenneth Clark, yet both stood together in attacks on Picasso and ‘inaccessible’ abstract art. Therefore, all three types of modernist art in Britain were linked together by an interest in more traditional types of being ‘British’.

This interest in modernism and the traditional were hard to separate in other particular examples. The fascination with the genre of landscape was not just the preserve of the conservatives, but was equally urgent for modern artists who felt that planned modernisation was the only way to protect English countryside from the ravages of industry. In the twenties and thirties an enormous number of countryside guides and travelogues appeared to cater for landscape tourists in their newly acquired motorcars. Artists joined forces with archaeologists, government, and corporate sponsors in these investigations, and Shell guidebooks were illustrated and archaeological sites and aerial photography adopted as subject matter. In paintings by Paul Nash and John Piper in particular, modernist stylistic concerns blended with interest in the landscape as newly revealed. Nash proclaimed the importance of the genius loci – the spirit of the place that resided in the English land, and which art could reveal. A painting exhibited by Nash in the Unit One exhibition as Landscape Composition was later renamed with its full and evocative title Landscape of the Megaliths, a reflection of the part that sites of ancient English history had played in this ‘modern’ picture.

In light of this, it seems inevitable that the journal Axis, founded in 1935 to support abstract art in Britain, would quickly be consumed from within by romantic-traditional tendencies. By 1937 John Piper wrote of the ‘valuable object’ that had been lost in the pursuit of abstraction, and began to turn away from modernism into a neo-romanticism fully supported by conservatives such as Kenneth Clark, and seen as an absolute betrayal by Nicholson. But politically it was neither simply those who were Royal Academicians and traditional, nor those who were surrealist or social realist that had rendered pure abstraction a ‘luxury’. Instead it can be understood as a case of the artists in the interwar period attempting to negotiate the ‘British’, or the conventional, with the ‘modern’. This allowed these neo-romantic artists to join the long tradition of romantic British artists, and its continuing individualism, while

Left:Ben Nicholson1934 (painting), 1934Oil 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

embracing modernism in a slightly less radical form.

Ultimately the question of ‘going modern and being British’ asked by Nash in 1932 is not one that can be resolved. The debate continues in writing to the present day, and although modern art in interwar Britain was composed of a small group of avant-garde artists, they now take up a large percentage of scholarly investigation. While it is easy to describe a narrative of the traditional neo-romantics battling against the dominant types of modernism (abstraction, surrealism, and social realism), it is more successful to understand all of these movements working together in the task of detangling how to be ‘modern’ and still be ‘British’. Finally, looking back to this time of artistic and political instability remains an extremely fruitful way to examine our own feelings about ‘modern’ art and ‘national’ identity.

FURTHER READINGAlexandra Harris, Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, 2010

David Peters Corbett, Ysanne Holt, Fiona Russell, (eds.), Geographies of Englishness: Landscape and the National Past 1880-1940, 2002

David Peters Corbett, The Modernity of English Art, 1914-30, 1997

Michael Saler, The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: Medieval Modernism and the London Underground, 1999

III: 1937

The 1930s saw a certain kind of international modernism reach a high point with the achievement of a totally non-representational painting. That art was based on new forms of spirituality, a belief in the integration of the arts and science for a better, integrated society, and political internationalism. Chris Stephens, Ben Nicholson, 2008

1937 was an important year for Ben Nicholson, Piet Mondrian and art in Britain. After meeting in Mondrian’s studio in Paris in 1934, by 1938 both artists were living and working in Hampstead, yet it was the years between these moments when the landscape of British art changed significantly. Inspired by The Courtauld Gallery’s 1937 (painting) by Nicholson, this essay will look at a series of key events and publications that took place prior, during and after this year. In particular, the exhibition Abstract and Concrete in 1936, where artworks by Nicholson and Mondrian were hung next to each other, and the publication Circle, co-edited by Nicholson, including Mondrian’s ‘Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art’ essay. To understand these instances, this essay will look at why advances in modernist art in Britain were possible at this particular time, looking at the political and artistic contexts in both Britain and the continent, such as the threat of war and the 1937 exhibition Degenerative Art organised by the Nazi party. Finally, this essay will finish by discussing the onset of the Second World War and Nicholson’s subsequent move to the quiet fishing village of St Ives, disbanding the environment of avant-gardism that had flourished in earlier years. This study will ultimately argue that 1937 was a vital year for modernism in Britain during the interwar period.

Art Historian Charles Harrison described art in Britain as a ‘hiatus’ during the 1920s. This gap, while problematic, does highlight the shift seen in Britain’s art and its international connections in the 1930s. In Paris, although Mondrian had been producing abstract art since 1919, his signature double line composition first emerged and engrossed the artist in 1932. Across the Channel, Nicholson was embarking on both an artistic and personal relationship with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, this partnership creating an

environment where both artists could push their art towards the highest echelons of modernism, namely to abstraction. Nicholson was said to have achieved this in 1933-4 with his white reliefs, (Fig. 1). The use of geometric shapes, such as circles and rectangles, plus the use of white – the signature colour of international modernism – marked his full transition into abstraction and propelled Britain’s avant-garde into the international playing field of modern art. These early developments create a foundation for Britain’s affiliation with modernism, which would expand in the following years.

This period also marks a shift in both Mondrian and Nicholson’s artistic relationship, as Nicholson began to travel to France regularly, and, on the 5 April 1934, first visited Mondrian’s studio at 26 Rue du Depart. Though short, the visit captured Nicholson’s interest, evident in his description of viewing Mondrian’s paintings for the first time: ‘The paintings were entirely new to me and I did not understand them on this first visit… they were merely, for me, a part of the very lovely feeling generated by the room...’. Here, Nicholson describes not the details of Mondrian’s artwork, such as subject matter, composition, or colour, but the atmosphere generated by the paintings in the setting of his studio. This nod towards the relationship between modernism in painting and its surroundings is one that was evident in Nicholson’s own work. His white reliefs in isolation are sophisticated examples of abstraction, yet are often discussed in relation to modernist architecture and interior design of the time. The pairing of architecture and painting, seen both in Britain and abroad, gave modernist art a context in which it could prosper as the decade continued towards 1937.

Besides London’s architectural advancements, the city provided safety to artists from abroad, which created international artistic circles and shaped the capital’s interaction with modern art. Fleeing from fascism, émigré artists were settling in Britain alongside the country’s emerging avant-garde. Hampstead offered this cosmopolitan group an ideal setting for the innovative abstract art being produced in Britain’s capital. A contemporary art

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...

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Fig. 1. Ben Nicholson, 1934 (White Relief), 1934

1937Written by Meghan Goodeve; a recent MA Art History graduate from The Courtauld Institue of Art and gallery educator.

CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+Art and Design, History, Art History, and other Humanities

a book that seeks to reassess Nicholson’s work outside the 1930s, it could be claimed that Stephens lends too much emphasis on Nicholson’s earlier work, yet, Nicholson’s abstract paintings do hold a basis in the conventional still-life, with a circle representing a simplified apple or rounded plate, while the rectangles evoke an abstracted table edge or fold of material. On the other hand, Mondrian represents the ‘concrete’, or, the creation of forms that have no basis in perceivable reality. This exhibition, therefore, demonstrates how Britain fostered an abstract art that was separate from Mondrian and the more ‘concrete’ international modernism. It was instead an abstraction that emerged from an earlier tradition of landscapes and still-lives in which Nicholson was well versed.

Fig. 3. Ben Nicholson, 1937 (painting), 1937

Ben Nicholson’s 1937 work (Fig. 3) from The Courtauld Collection, continues this exploration of the abstract from still-lives. The geometric shapes are an example of a birds-eye-view of a tabletop linking this work to his earlier oeuvre, but this painting is more often associated with Nicholson’s entry into international modernism. The colours of this painting point simultaneously to his own visual development as an artist and the work of Mondrian. The yellow square, now faded, would of once matched the vibrant yellow used in Mondrian’s palette, moreover the use of a central red square develops this visual connection to Mondrian’s paintings. Yet where Mondrian used thick black lines to delineate his squares and rectangles, Nicholson allows the viewer to trace the process of painting itself by revealing where the soft tones of cream and grey meet the pencil lines drawn beneath the paint. This revealing of the layers of the painting process – Nicholson stretching the canvas over board, using a ruler and pencil to complete the under-drawing, and then painting each square individually – denies any modernist ‘flatness’ of the painting. Nicholson’s 1937 (painting), therefore, can be argued to derive more directly from his white reliefs, where the process of carving is visibly present in the organic shapes produced by Nicholson seeking out geometric shapes from a natural material. Furthermore, the curator of this exhibition, Barnaby Wright, claims that the 1937 painting’s composition suggests ‘a gently spiralling motion’, producing a natural and non-mathematical quality to Nicholson’s abstraction. Hence, in 1937 Nicholson was concurrently able to engage with international modernism and produce abstraction that was deeply connected to

Britain’s nature, claiming a certain trajectory for a Hampstead-based modernism.

In the same year that this painting was produced, Nicholson also created a theoretical journal that placed British abstraction onto the map of international modernism. Circle: An International Survey of Constructive Art (Fig. 4) was a journal conceived and co-edited by Nicholson, the Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo and the young Architect Leslie Martin to counter the impact of the International Surrealist Exhibition held in London a year before. Surrealism was an international movement that met enthusiasm from several of Britain’s leading modernists such as Paul Nash and Henry Moore. Although it can be 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 why 1937 was such an important year for modernism in Britain.

Artists such as Gabo had fled their native homes to escape an increasing presence of fascism in Europe. In particular, the Nazi attack on modern art, shown by the staging of the 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst, or to use the English term ‘Degenerate art’, in Munich. This term was used to describe virtually all modern art, and the exhibition included paintings, sculptures, and prints from German museums and collections. These included names such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh, artists whose works can all be viewed in The Courtauld Collection today. The display of these works were meant to entice anger in the German public due to their ‘un-German’ or ‘Jewish’ nature, yet the anger created outside Germany and in Britain produced a vital environment for the development of a socially-orientated abstract art. The Artists International Association (AIA) was an anti-fascist and leftwing artist group based in London, and in direct response to the Munich exhibition, staged an exhibition of banned German

critic, Herbert Read, described this group as ‘a gentle nest of artists’, which has been argued as highlighting the group’s turn towards nature to find abstraction. However, this ‘gentle nest’ was more significant due to its weaving twigs and building materials, a metaphor for the close and nurturing relationship found in the artists, writers, and philosophers living and working closely together. Moreover, by 1934 Hampstead had its own modernist architecture to rival that of Paris and provided a space for this group of artists to create work for. Well Coates’ Lawn Road Flats (Fig. 2) offered Nicholson a specific architectural context for his paintings.

Fig. 2. Well Coates’ Lawn Road

An art critic and friend of Nicholson, Adrian Stokes, was living in one of these flats and Nicholson wrote to Winifred, his first wife, in 1934 describing his joy at seeing his artwork in a ‘clean, fresh and clear’ living space. Just as Nicholson was overwhelmed by the atmosphere created by Mondrian’s studio in the same year, there was now an architectural setting in London that he was able to feel his art was at home in. It is simultaneously the creation of modernist architecture in London and an established group of international avant-garde artists and thinkers in Hampstead that established a framework in which the seminal events of 1937 could take place.

Abstract art in Britain began to leave the boundaries of Hampstead and find a place in public exhibitions and journals later in the decade. 1936 marked a key year in Britain’s exhibitions with the first international exhibition of abstract art in Britain. Abstract and Concrete was curated by a young art historian, Nicolete Gray, and opened on the 15 Feb 1936 at 41 Giles, Oxford, then travelled to the School of Architecture, Liverpool, London’s Lefevre Gallery, then to Cambridge. This touring exhibition was also the first time Mondrian’s work had been displayed in this country. His paintings were tellingly hung next to Nicholson’s work producing a narrative of formal similarities. However, it is the differences rather than the similarities, which demonstrate the theme of the exhibition as a whole, which sought to display two types of non-figurative art. The first ‘type’ was abstract art, an image that was a simplification of a recognisable object. Chris Stephens stresses the sources of Nicholson’s work as both his landscape art from the 1920s and the genre of still-life. In fact, Stephens argues that, ‘Nicholson continued to work on still-life compositions throughout this period, indicating there was little doctrinaire about his non-representational paintings and reliefs.’ In Fig. 4. Front cover of Circle, 1937

art in the capital of Britain. This political response was repeated in a number of exhibitions in 1937, which championed modernist art as a tool for fighting fascism. Both Nicholson and Hepworth exhibited work in these exhibitions, suggesting a political aspect to abstraction in Britain in 1937.

On the other hand, the exhibition Constructive Art, which was held in July 1937 at the London Gallery to accompany the publication of Circle, strayed from an overt political purpose. It was an opportunity for Nicholson to stage an exhibition of abstract art that made physical what appeared in the journal. For example, Nicholson’s 1936 (white relief), was placed directly opposite Mondrian’s 1936 painting in the opening pages of Circle. This pairing was then replicated in the staging of the exhibition. In addition to this visual interest, Read published a book Art and Society in the same year, where he argued art came from an autonomic experience, therefore, should stray from the propaganda demands of political struggle. This segregation of the political and the artistic produces the question: did abstraction have to be apolitical to be successful in Britain in 1937? Or, did its apolitical nature produce its failure when Britain was heading towards the Second World War? In other words, there was a need for abstract art in Britain to support the political agenda of the anti-fascist movement yet remain aloof in its aesthetic autonomy, which became increasingly difficult to negotiate as Britain moved closer to war in 1939.

Mondrian’s arrival in London in 1938 on 20 September, following Ben and Winifred Nicholson plea for him to escape the politically turbulent Paris for the haven of Hampstead, did not signal for Britain a climax in abstract art. 1937 remained the year of abstraction’s triumph in Britain, with Nicholson completing and exhibiting influential works, in addition to conceiving and co-editing a seminal text of constructivist art. Mondrian, however, did find the move to London successful claiming, ‘the air also is good for my health, above all the spiritual surrounding is here better than in Paris to me’. One specific advantage Mondrian foresaw by moving

to Britain was to increase his sale of work. Before his move to London, Mondrian sold mostly to Britain, USA and Switzerland but not France, and by 1936 he estimated that Britain and USA had become the most important art markets. Yet by the time he arrived in 1938, Britain had lost its drive to buy art, due to both the political situation and the majority of money being tied up in preparation for the impending war. 1937, therefore, was a particularly fruitful year for abstract art in Britain both theoretically and financially, but due to the increasingly threatening political landscape of 1938 this status began to decrease.

In the following year and the outbreak of war in 1939 both Nicholson and Hepworth followed other Hampstead residents in moving outside London. With this relocation of a selection of Britain’s avant-garde to the remote and quiet fishing village of St Ives on the Cornish coast, came a slow erosion of the international modernism that was flourishing in Hampstead in 1937. While Mondrian remained in his London studio until his passage to New York was finalised in 1940, Nicholson tried to negotiate his change in setting by re-engaging with the British landscape while continuing to experiment with abstraction. For example, a clear demonstration of this can be seen in a later painting 11 November 1947 (Mousehole), which takes a piece of cubist-like abstraction and places it directly on top of a seaside landscape. This painting demonstrates the displaced Hampstead artist’s decision to discontinue with an abstraction that was completely non-figurative. Instead, the surroundings of Cornwall enter the painting, perhaps for the simple reason that, to borrow the critic Lawrence Alloway’s words, ‘the landscape of St Ives is so nice that nobody can quite bring themselves to leave it out of their art’.

This essay has demonstrated why 1937 was a key year for abstraction in Britain through outlining the key events leading up to and in this year, plus the social, political, and geographic reasons why Nicholson and Britain’s connection to international modernism shifted in the years approaching the Second World War. Although helpful to think of Nicholson’s 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. 1Ben NicholsonOctober 2 1934 (white relief - triplets), 1934Oil on carved board,Private collection © Angela Verren Taunt.

Fig. 3Ben Nicholson1937 (painting), 1937Oil on canvasThe Courtauld Gallery, LondonSamuel Courtauld Trust© Angela Verren Taunt.All rights reserved

Fig. 4See cover image

this year, it must be remembered that this approach can be problematic and brings to light the judgement values that artists, art historians, critics and curators utilise when considering modernism in Britain. However, in the context of this Mondrian and Nicholson exhibition, the work of these two artists meet most closely in the year of 1937. A year when following Nicholson’s last visit to Mondrian on the 21 January 1936, and before Mondrian moved to London, the pair did not physically meet, and instead developed artwork, exhibitions and journals through cross-channel communication. Nicholson claimed that in his last visit to Paris in 1936, other modernist artists in Paris such as Constantin Brâncusi were looking backwards but Mondrian was working ‘very much in the present and in relation to the future’. It is this look to the future in 1936, and before, shared by Nicholson and Mondrian, which allowed 1937 to be a vital year for modernism in Britain.

FURTHER READINGChris Stephens, Ben Nicholson, 2008

John Leslie Martin, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, (eds), Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937 (see cover image)

Marty Bax, Complete Mondrian, 2001

Virginia Button, Ben Nicholson, 2007

IV: DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONS: BEYOND THE SINGULAR ARTIST

In the exhibition Mondrian || Nicholson: In Parallel, we find two artists working alongside each other. These artists are recognised as figureheads of modernism, and have frequently been the subjects of monographs and solo exhibitions. Indeed, histories of art are often dominated by timelines of individuals’ names. Singular figures are recognised to be especially innovative, to break with the past in a radical, ‘original’ way. But behind these two major ‘names’ of modernism in painting was an important personal relationship, a context that may have spurred each of our protagonists to create works in relation to the other. From investigating the dialogue that existed between these two artists, we can pursue these questions further, considering instances in which individuals relinquished their solo identities to produce objects in collaboration with others, or produced new works that were ‘copies’ of earlier paintings. Many art objects are in fact the product of many hands, the 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

discussed their work together. Although Mondrian was twenty-two years older than Nicholson, and became established as an artist before his younger friend, the relationship between the two artists was not one of a master and a follower. Indeed, Mondrian was just as much an admirer of Nicholson’s work as Nicholson was of Mondrian’s, and Nicholson made his first radical abstract ‘white reliefs’ in 1934, before he made his important first visit to Mondrian’s studio. Mondrian used the term ‘mutual equivalence’ to describe what he saw as an ideal sort of relationship between two people. For him, it was important for individuals to remain separate and independent, for differences to be maintained and celebrated rather than erased. Green recognises this concept of ‘mutual equivalence’ as the key to understanding the relationship between Mondrian and Nicholson. It could be argued, however, that the relationship that existed between Mondrian and Nicholson

allowed each artist to be informed by the other, to see each others’ paintings as points from which to depart in an opposite direction.

In the 1912 essay ‘Art and Socialism’, the English painter and art critic Roger Fry wrote that ‘the greatest art has always been communal’. This resonates with his interest in collaborative mural painting. In 1911 he organised the Borough Polytechnic Murals, which were painted by pairs of artists working together. Talking about the experience in an interview, he claimed that the artists involved refused to sign the works, stating ‘I think it very important that they should work together in this way, and that we should cease to insist on the extreme individuality of artists’. This belief in anonymous, collaborative workshop production informed the founding principles of the Omega Workshops when they were established in 1913. The aim of the Omega Workshops was to provide

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

struggling artists with a regular source of income, and it counted among its members major British artists such as Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. Every product made in the workshop was to be signed with the Omega symbol rather than the individual artist’s name, and many products were made by a combination of hands. An Omega plate (Fig. 1) features the Omega symbol alongside abstract, hand printed decoration in the house style of the workshops that cannot be attributed to any one of the members. Rather than revealing tensions within the workshop, different hands were brought together under the Omega symbol and thus individual styles were combined and shared.

Beyond the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry was interested in copying paintings by earlier artists, not simply in order to learn from them, but to produce new works that could say something different to the originals. The practice of copying itself can be understood as a sort of collaborative procedure, as it involves ‘working with’ a previous artist in creating a new work of art. The Courtauld Collection includes a near-exact copy of a self-portrait by the French post-impressionist painter Paul Cézanne (Fig. 2). The self-portrait is an artistic form that seems to connect most profoundly to the myth of the artist as individual and original genius. For

Anthony Bond, the process of creativity is represented in self-portraits by ‘the trace of the artist’s hand, the signature brushwork that proclaims originality and individuality, acting as evidence of the artist’s touch’. But by reproducing this work, Fry seems to challenge these long-established notions of the meaning of self-portraiture. Cézanne was extremely important for Fry, and in 1927 he published a monograph on the artist. Fry’s version of the Cézanne self-portrait is roughly thirty percent smaller than the original, and it is painted in oil on cardboard as opposed to canvas. Perhaps as a result of attempting to mix colours to correspond with those used by Cézanne, Fry’s individual brushstrokes have a more continuous tone throughout, while those in the Cézanne seem to contain different tones taken from the palette and remaining separate on the brush. But despite these minor differences, which apparently emanate from the additional layer of mediation of Fry working from a finished painting, as opposed to Cézanne painting from a mirror-image, the two pictures are remarkably alike. Most astonishing in Fry’s painting is his near-precise replication of Cézanne’s brushstrokes, which we can observe most clearly on the forehead. The fact that Fry deemed it appropriate to re-create Cézanne’s highly personal self-portrayal so painstakingly, creating a work that might pass for the ‘original’, seems to challenge our conventional understanding

FURTHER READINGChristopher Green, ed., Art Made Modern: Roger Fry's Vision of Art, 1999

Rosalind Krauss, ‘The Originality of the Avant-Garde’ in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, 1981

Jeremy Wood, Rubens Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and Later Artists, 2010

Fig. 1: Omega Workshops Omega plate with overglaze geometric design enclosing Omega symbol, 1913Glazed earthenware with painted decoration

Fig. 2:Roger Fry Copy of a Self-Portrait by Cézanne, 1925Oil on cardboard

Fig. 3:Peter Paul Rubens Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (after Raphael), 1630Oil on panelall © The Courtauld Gallery, LondonSamuel Courtauld Trust

Fig. 4:Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Breugel the Elder, Madonna on Floral Wreath, c. 1619. Oil on panel© Alte Pinakothek, Munich

of the earlier artist’s work. The term ‘copy’ often has negative connotations when used to refer to paintings. It is associated with the idea of the ‘fake’, with plagiarism and fraudulent behaviour. But this example suggests that the copy could be something much more free, that paid homage to the original work while creating something that also conveyed the identity of the new painter, Rubens. Rubens acted as a collaborator in a different way in a group of works that belong to a vey specific genre. 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. These works, of which Figure 4 is an example, depicted the Madonna and child surrounded by an extremely detailed and elaborate garland of flowers and, often, cherubs. In this example, the Madonna and child was painted by Rubens, while the additional elements were added by Jan Breugel the Elder. This painting avoids the conventional rules of perspective by creating different planes. Within the central section, the two figures ‘make sense’ and are grounded in their space. But by surrounding them in a garland, the figures become an image, a ‘picture-within-a-picture’, like a flat object removed from reality. The flowers are painted in an intricate, highly detailed way, seeming almost real, but recognisable as an illusion that plays with the flatness of the canvas. The flowers were intended to be physical manifestations of the beauty of God’s creation, reminding viewers of material beauty alongside the spiritual meaning of the Madonna and child. The different levels of reality in this painting do not appear in conflict. The particular skills of each artist are evident: Rubens was renowned for his ability to paint flesh, while Breugel was especially well known for his detailed flower paintings. Despite the strangeness of these compositions to our eyes todays, these elements are not at odds with each other; instead, the two artists appear to have collaborated in harmony in order to produce the work.

These examples have drawn attention to some of the complex ways in which artists may become entangled with each other in instances of collaboration, rivalry and artistic dialogue. It can be seen that

Fig. 3. Rubens Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, 1630

of the self-portrait. The work can be seen to reveal a dialogue between Fry and Cézanne, demonstrating the admiration and sense of kinship that Fry felt for the earlier artist.

The Courtauld collection contains another fascinating example of a portrait emerging from a relationship between two distinct artists. This is the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens’ copy of the Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (Fig. 3), originally by the Italian sixteenth-century artist Raphael. Like Fry’s version of Cézanne’s self-portrait, Rubens’ painting bears a striking resemblance to the original. But on closer examination, we notice several key alterations. The brownish tones used by Rubens are much warmer than the greys used by Raphael. Crucially, Rubens has given his subject hands, which are omitted in the earlier version. This bold decision may suggest a sense of rivalry with the earlier artist, Rubens implying that Raphael’s portrait may be improved by opting for a different composition. We might even suggest that Rubens was demonstrating his skill by choosing to paint those notoriously difficult body parts, the hands. One hundred years after the original work was painted, Rubens could not restage his sitter, thus this work is an invention, presenting another subject’s hands as those of Baldassare Castiglione. It is clear that this is not a simple recreation

in these circumstances, notions of the original, or of the singular artist-genius, are called into question. The copying of an earlier work of art by another artist might be seen to challenge that artist’s dominance: it could be seen as a subversive gesture. But it can also reveal a sense of respect or deference towards the earlier artist, as we might recognise in the case of the Fry/Cézanne relationship. Working together, in parallel, or ‘following’ another artist can result in both difference and sameness, in the pursuit of shared or conflicting aims. Within the Omega Workshops, individual designs were left behind in the pursuit of a collective style. The personal signature was abandoned in favour of the communal symbol. However for Mondrian and Nicholson, working alongside each other did not mean taking on each others’ ideas, or even entering into a rivalry. By remaining independent, each artist could pursue his own ends to produce a style of geometric abstraction that was entirely his own. It is by seeing them in parallel that we can recognise their fundamental differences, leading us to question whether it was their proximity that allowed each artist to react against the other in order to follow their own path.

Fig. 4. Rubens and Bruegel Madonna on Floral Wreath, c.1619

DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONSWritten by Lauren Barnes; a recent MA Art History graduate from The Courtauld Institue of Art.

CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+Art and Design, History, Art History, and other Humanities

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

”

”In our contemporary perspective, it is often neglected that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity had an immense impact, similar to that of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis as both doctrines appeared to advocate a new understanding of the world and the self. While Freud advocated the split psyche and the unconscious, Einstein’s theories established that our visual perspective of the world was incorrect; that what we see as three-dimensional Euclidean space is, in fact, four-dimensional, non-Euclidean space-time. More importantly, Einstein’s theories militated against the current anthropocentric vision of the world, suggesting that in our minds the central role of society (that is, church and government) should be displaced by a comprehensive vision of the universe and its cosmic laws.

The artwork of Mondrian coincided with the ground breaking developments of modern science, beginning largely with Einstein’s 1906 Theory of Special Relativity which advocated for a non-Euclidean fourth dimension and later led to Einstein’s 1916 Theory of General Relativity which had immense cosmological implications, such as that the universe was expanding. The consequences of these new theories on modern thought were immense in both the sciences and humanities. According to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, space can take on completely new dimensions; due to the curvature of space, parallel lines no longer need to be parallel, and the three angles of a triangle no longer need to add up to 180 degrees, as well as many other aspects of Euclidean geometry, which can similarly be violated. These conditions became most noticeable in the cosmos, since space takes on a curvature due to the gravitational pull of nearby planetary or stellar masses.

Many varying publications targeted at the public covered these new scientific developments and their applications and impacts on the humanities. In Gavin Parkinson’s book Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology, Parkinson discusses the role of several figures in bridging the gap of knowledge regarding the advancements in modern physics between the sciences and humanities.

Parkinson identified the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, the artist Wolfgang Paalen, the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, and the writer and art critic Carl Einstein, as some of the leaders in this realm for their writing on the new theories of modern physics to a broader audience, one that especially included avant-garde artists and philosophers. A number of avant-garde artists, who created modern art in the early 1900s, sought to incorporate these dramatic scientific developments in some form within the arts. One of the first artistic groups to do this was the De Stijl group that Mondrian was a key part of. De Stijl, a name that translates literally to ‘The Style’, was formed in the summer of 1917 by a group of artists centred about the painters Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, and Vilmos Huszar. They regularly published their own periodical titled De Stijl with the first issue appearing in October 1917. From the inception of their journal, modern science was a key component. For instance, in one of the first issues, the main section was entitled ‘Mesuration de l’espace et la 4e dimension’ (measurement of space and the fourth dimension). This article encouraged lively discussion on the artistic understanding and expression of the fourth dimension in art and due to high interest ran as a continuing article in the following two issues.

In the early 1900s scientific understanding of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and thus what the fourth dimension was, remained muddled. This was even more the case in the realm of the humanities and arts, since most people interested in this field did not have the mathematical background to understand Einstein’s equations on their own. As a result, artistic expression differed according to the individual artist’s understanding or the understanding of the artistic movement or group they belonged to.

Most artists who sought to incorporate the fourth dimension into their artwork at this time period mistakenly understood the fourth dimension to be purely spatial and depicted it as such. However, because Mondrian was Dutch and the Dutch physicists Lorentz had played an

important part in the early days of relativity, therefore Mondrian would have had a more developed understanding of Einsteinian physics than most of his international contemporaries. In other words, instead of incorrectly thinking that the fourth dimension referred to a purely spatial fourth dimension (as so many artists at this time point believed), Mondrian understood that the fourth dimension was irreversibly linked with the space-time continuum. As early as 1917, Mondrian wrote in the first issue of De Stijl, ‘The rhythm of relationship of colour and dimension (in determinate proportion and equilibrium) permits the absolute to appear within the relativity of time and space.’ Thus, an artistic revolution ensued, whereas painting was once confined to the spatial realm and music to the temporal, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity fused time and motion into art for those artists, like Mondrian, who sought to express the fourth dimension.

V: MONDRIAN AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION OF MODERN SCIENCE

Mondrian’s understanding of the fourth dimension of space-time relied heavily on the relationships of mathematics, as is evidenced in the writing of Mondrian’s colleague Van Doesburg in the journal De Stijl.

When the new plastic artists use mathematics, they may be compared

A NUMBER OF AVANT GARDE ARTISTS, WHO CREATED MODERN ART IN THE EARLY 1900S, SOUGHT TO INCORPORATE DRAMATIC SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS IN SOME FORM WITHIN THE ARTS

to a Renaissance artist using anatomy. No more can we make a Renaissance work of art by a great deal of anatomical knowledge, than a modern work with a thorough knowledge of mathematics (including the four-dimensional). By mere mathematics we shall never be able to compose a painting- with (the aid of) mathematics, however, we may do very well.

This interest in mathematics as a means toward deciphering the new fourth dimension was essential since understanding modern physics, especially Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, required an extensive background in mathematics. From an early point, Mondrian’s paintings were conceptually built upon these ideas. Even as his artwork evolved, and in 1919 Mondrian adopted a new two-dimensional neoplastic style of painting, this interest in the fourth dimension persisted, as is evidenced by his 1920 essay ‘Natural and Abstract Reality’ in De Stijl, which strongly reaffirms the importance of the fourth dimension in his artwork:

A projection on a flat surface is far superior to a natural, visual representation; also, it makes us see purer relations. The Cubists understood that perspective representation disturbs and weakens the appearance of things, while two-dimensional representation renders them more purely… It is a heartening fact that modern painting displays an even more conscious tendency towards a purer and many-sided representation of things, for this shows that the spirit of the age is seeking the universal with more consciousness of the fourth dimension; and in fact, the idea of the fourth dimension manifests itself in the new art, through the total or partial destruction of the three-dimensional or natural order, and through the construction of a new plasticism in accordance with a less limited view.

According to Mondrian’s statement, an attempt to paint in flat two-dimensions brings his art closer to the fourth dimension. Mondrian sought this approach to the fourth dimension because he was anxious about not knowing what the fourth-dimension actually looked like and thereby did not have the ability to paint it realistically.

However Mondrian did seek to express the fourth dimension in his paintings. For instance, in looking at Mondrian’s Composition A, with Red and Blue, 1932 the use of parallel and intersecting lines create a block grid-like pattern within the painting. These blocks, which are either coloured with red or blue, or left void, create a tension within the painting. Mondrian referred to the red, blue and yellow as positive colours and grey, white and black as negative. Thus, as the viewer’s eye looks from the figure (positive) to the background (negative), a shifting effect occurs. This shifting effect creates the illusion of a rhythmic movement in space-time, likely referring to the rhythmic movement Mondrian described in his

earlier quotation. For Mondrian and Van Doesburg, the use of these negative colours within their artwork had particular significance. This idea was explained in the December 1917 letter from Mondrian to Van Doesburg, ‘Maybe later you could write on the four-dimension matter better than I do. I have much sympathy for your idea that “the negative” represents the fourth dimension, but I am unable to write about it. I do, however, have this approach in my work.’ Thus, it is within this negative background space that Mondrian ascribes this new fourth dimension in his artwork.

Although Mondrian left De Stijl in 1924, his interest in expressing modern science within his artwork remained, and is evident in his involvement in the group Abstraction-Création. Mondrian’s presence in the group inspired many younger artists to join, including the sculptor Alexander Calder. Calder’s introduction to Mondrian led him to renounce his figurative artwork in favour of abstraction. He later became well known for his ‘Mobiles’ of the mid-1930s, which sought to express the fourth dimension of space-time through their kinetic properties. This interest in modern science began to become quite popular in the arts. For instance, by 1936, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity had already conceptually inspired the artwork of the avant-garde, such as the Rotoreliefs of Marcel Duchamp and the Space-Light Modulator of László Moholy-Nagy. According to Moholy-Nagy, relativity theory was ‘emblematic of a fundamental cultural shift toward a more dynamic worldview to which artists must respond by replacing the static methods of the past with an art of motion and time.’ These artistic developments were reflected in the 1936 Dimensionist Manifesto published in Paris by the Hungarian poet Charles Sirató in Revue N+1 in French, with later international editions appearing in Hungarian and English. This manifesto called for modern art to incorporate the new theories of modern science, specifically Minkowski’s fourth dimension of space-time based upon Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Finding wide support, it bore the signatures of a variety of artists including Calder, Arp, Duchamp, Kandinsk, Miró, László Moholy-Nagy and Ben Nicholson. Sirató, the founder of the manifesto, was a Paris-based Hungarian poet interested in the Dada movement and advancements in the avant-garde. Through his interest in modern science and his observations of the avant-garde art circles in Paris, Sirató deduced that one common law could explain and relate all modern art. This law, which he expressed formulaically as N+1 and explained in the preface to his manifesto, was based on the assumption that all modern art sought to expand itself by an additional dimension. The manifesto explains how the advancements of modern science are the foundation for this common law, as the following quote from the manifesto explains:

It is, on the one hand, the modern spirit's completely new conception of space and time (the development of which, in geometry, mathematics and physics -- from Bólyai through Einstein -- is ongoing in our days), and on the

other, the technical givens of our age, that have called Dimensionism to life.

The significance of this manifesto is threefold. Firstly, the manifesto effectively demonstrates a universal desire to incorporate modern science in the artwork of the avant-garde. This is supported by the wide variety of artists who endorsed the manifesto, reflecting a range of styles and artistic affiliations. Secondly, it demonstrates quire remarkably how ahead of his time Mondrian really was. Although Mondrian did not sign this manifesto, the ideas behind it, and even the writing of it, echo Mondrian’s writing of 1917, almost twenty years before the Dimensionist Manifesto was written. Lastly, it is quite critical that Ben Nicholson did endorse this manifesto. By the time this manifesto was written and published, that is in 1936, Mondrian had a very close working relationship with Nicholson, a central theme to this current exhibition. Thus, Nicholson’s endorsement establishes that he shared Mondrian’s interest in modern science and sought to express the fourth dimension in his artwork as well. This shared belief in incorporating the universal laws of modern science into art, unites the work of Mondrian and Nicholson, providing their artwork with a common goal and placing, once again, Mondrian and Nicholson in parallel.

FURTHER READINGGavin Parkinson, Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology, 2008

Hans Ludwig Jaffe, De Stijl, 1917-1931: The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, 1986

Michel Seuphor, Piet Mondrian: Life and Work, 1956

Linda Henderson, ‘Einstein and 20th Century Art’, in Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art and Modern Culture, 2008

Image:Cover of De Stijl, September 1921.inc. Theo van Doesburg Kompositie 17, 1919De Stijl 1921–1932. Complete Reprint 1968. Amsterdam: Athenaeum, Den Haag

MONDRIAN AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION OF MODERN SCIENCEWritten by Vanja Malloy; a PhD candidate from The Courtauld Institue of Art and gallery educator.

CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+Art and Design, History, Science, Maths, Philosophy, Art History, and other Humanities

A grid is defined as a network of repeated horizontal and vertical lines that cross each other to form a series of squares or rectangles. The drawing exhibition in The Courtauld Gallery, entitled Lines Crossed, interprets this definition while investigating how the grid establishes proportion and balance, and helps create and measure space in drawings and prints from the Courtuald Collection. The display contains seventeen works dating from the 16th to the 21st century and represents both preliminary drawings and fully finished works. The pieces are grouped into five different categories corresponding to the various ways in which the grid has emerged in art production and include: mechanical, perspectival, design, narrative, and mise en page. This essay will explain each of the categories in more detail while elaborating on the works themselves.

Linda Karshan’s Untitled (Fig. 1) serves as an aesthetic and conceptual bridge between the Mondrian || Nicholson: In Parallel exhibition and Lines Crossed. All three artists – Karshan, Mondrian and Nicholson – portray grid forms in their work but to different ends. Mondrian’s compositions display a more apparent grid through the intersection of black lines on the surface of a predominantly white canvas. Nicholson was more involved with rectilinear shapes in space– or the square created by the grid. Karshan’s grid is not an appropriated or intentional form but instead, a manifestation of her internal rhythm; the marks she makes on the page correspond to the reach of her arm. Each artist also placed importance on the connection between rhythmic body movements (dance, sport, and heart beat) and art making and felt that keen natural intuition was key for successfully balancing their grid compositions. Mondrian specifically theorised that in order to produce a successful composition, all of the components of the image – each vertical and horizontal line, colour plane, and negative space - must be equally dominant in order to reach, what he termed, ‘dynamic equilibrium’. The importance of rhythm and movement in Mondrian and Nicholson’s work is further discussed in Christopher Green’s entry in the Mondrian || Nicholson: In Parallel catalogue.

Art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss’s

1979 article ‘Grids’ defines the grid within a modernist, 20th century lens and describes it as an unnatural, non-narrative, stagnant structure. This provides an alternative definition of the grid as being an intentional, solitary form that developed in abstract art as a result of society’s attempts to scientifically organise and classify the natural word. While appropriate to consider in context to Mondrian || Nicholson: In Parallel, the majority of the works within this display do not fall within Krauss’ relatively contemporary scope.

MECHANICAL GRID: SQUARINGSquaring is a transfer method where a measured grid is drawn on top of a preliminary drawing. The grid on a drawing proportionally matches a grid made on the final surface onto which the drawing will be transferred. The grid acts as a guide for where to place elements of the drawn composition on the final surface and is not a direct or exact transfer method. In squaring, the grid truly is a tool, an objective mechanism that guides two-dimensional replication. Mechanical squaring is still used today and the long history of the method can be traced back to the 18th Egyptian Dynasty (1550-1292 BCE), where sketches on papyrus, stone, or wood were transferred to the wall and painted. While squaring drawings presents one method of transfer for painting, squaring compositional drawings are often associated with the process of producing large-scale works such as frescoes, murals, and tapestries.

The 16th century depiction of Jonah and the Whale represents the most traditional and widespread application of the squaring grid in preparatory drawing. It is a completed composition that the artist invented and developed from imagination; it does not represent an actual event. The image derives from a popular biblical narrative and portrays the moment at which the repentant Jonah is ejected from the belly of the whale. In the background, Christ is shown resurrecting from the tomb – a miracle that Jonah’s story is commonly thought to foreshadow. As was common practice in the Renaissance, a carefully composed drawing such as this one would likely be drawn by a master artist while the actual transfer might have been undertaken

VI: LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS ON PAPER

Fig 1. Linda Karshan, Untitled, 1995

by a member of the artist’s workshop.In both Gasper van Wittel’s View of Tivoli, 1700-10, and Frank Auerbach’s Studies for Oxford Street,1957-59, the images represent observed landscape and urban scenes and are associated with finished 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 process.

PERSPECTIVE GRIDIn a perspective drawing, the artist attempts to create the illusion of three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional image. In mathematical perspective systems, known as linear perspective, the grid acts as an exact measure for determining the relative size of objects as they recede into space. In Circle of Canaletto’s Parlatorium in a Venetian Convent, 1700s, for example, the underlying perspective grid is made clearly visible as structures that establish depth and volume, while simultaneously portraying the balance, proportion and accuracy of single vanishing point linear perspective. Although the Greeks and Romans had devised a perspectival system, the development of linear perspective is attributed to the Florentine painter Filippo Brunelleschi and was described in the writings of Leon Battista Alberti in his 1435 treatise, De Pitura.

The basic concept for one-point, or single vanishing point, linear perspective is relatively simple. First the artist must establish a horizontal line that signifies the horizon in the image. The artist picks a vanishing point along the horizon line (typically in the center), and then diagonal lines are drawn from the edges

of the picture to the vanishing point. Perpendicular lines are then drawn across the diagonals to create a structural grid that serves to organise the image and determine the scale objects within the illusionistic space (fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Circle of Canaletto Parlatorium in a Venetian Convent, 18th century. With overlaid grid, vanishing point and horizon.

The measured harmony and balance achieved through accurate perspective is exemplified in three of the four works included in this category. Pier Leone Ghezzi’s Palazzo Sacchetti, 1735, and Hans Bol’s Jerusalem, 1575, can be considered a pairing; both use a birds-eye linear one-point perspective to represent extant and celestial architectural formations on the land below. Bol’s representation of Jerusalem as a symmetrical, balanced grid coincides with the description of the holy city in the Book of Revelation, while Ghezzi’s drawing records an actual villa in the seaside city of Ostia, outside of Rome, built by architect Pietro da Cortona from 1626-9. The symmetry of the villa itself corresponds to ideals of Italian Renaissance and Baroque architecture while also incorporating functional fortification elements necessary to fend off occasional pirate attacks. The grid of the palazzo’s layout is one of aesthetic and functional design.

In opposition to Bol, Ghezzi, and Circle of Canaletto, the etching Gothic Arch (Fig. 3) by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from his series of sixteen etchings titled Invenzeioni Carpricci di Carceri (or Invention of Imaginary Prisons, 1745), presents a 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 CROSSEDWritten 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 Joseph von Prenner’s engraved page from the Prodromus, 1735, which is an early type of presentation catalogue reproducing highlights from the Imperial Habsburg collection installed in the Stallburg Gallery in Vienna. Prodromus means “introduction”, and, as such, this publication offered an introduction to the collection. The Prodromus is directly linked to a tradition established by David Teniers who ‘originated’ the illustrated catalogue through the publication of engraved reproductions from Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s Italian collection in his Theatrum Pictorium, 1660. These same Italian works became part of the extensive and significant Habsburg collection, and were again reproduced in the Prodromus. The orientation of the paintings in the engraving is completely fictive, but the Prodromus still reflects the installation style of the 17th century, which was to blanket the entire wall with as many objects as possible. Rigid symmetry and balance were also ideal when hanging paintings, so much in fact that many were ruthlessly ‘formatised’, meaning they were either cut down or another piece of canvas was stuck onto them, to allow them to fit the trend of symmetrical hanging. Of the Stallburg collection, forty percent of the pieces were apparently ‘formatised’ in this manner. Also, paintings were hung with consideration for how their pictorial space related to neighbouring paintings. For example, two pieces with figures that were scaled in differently, or had conflicting horizon lines would not be hung next to each other.

The Prodromus page reflects the same ideals and considerations of hanging a physical gallery, but only represents the most important objects in the collection. The central image depicting the Expulsion from the Garden is flanked by two reproductions of paintings based on Michelangelo’s famed presentation drawings, The Dream (in The Courtauld Collection) and The Rape of Ganymede, and is topped by Titian’s Rape of Europa, now in the National Gallery. The grid used

Fig. 3. Giovanni Battista Piranesi Gothic Arch

The balance and measurement of linear perspective is ignored and there is no perspectival grid recessing into the distance. Instead, Piranesi created ‘impossible objects’, where the multiple corridors and brick archways produce an irrational, vast space without indication of a vanishing point. The Gothic Arch is summed up well by art historian Malcolm Campbell, who stated that the disharmony of architectural elements, ‘…conspire to underscore Piranesi’s assault on perspectival convention and to mock our ocular - and intellectual - efforts to rationalise this space as ‘real’ architecture.’ The grid within the Gothic Arch is seen in the repetition of architectural forms that are informed by accurate perspective but actively avoid following it.

DESIGN GRIDThe grid, as a network of horizontal and vertical lines, is the underlying structure necessary for coherently organising and drafting preliminary, instructional designs for the production of material objects. In this context, the grid is the objective foundation from which the innovation of design is developed. The grid reflects the physical and structural restrictions necessary to produce a functional object, and it is scaled proportionately to the size and shape of the final product. Of the design drawings in this display, three are plans for ceiling ornaments, and one is a decorative design for a domestic object.

While the origin of architectural design drawings can be found in ancient Greece, it could be argued that technical architectural drawings, specifically those based in geometrically accurate scaling and proportion became common in the Gothic period. Design drawings were then further developed with linear perspective during the Renaissance. Technical drawings of luxury objects run parallel to the history of architectural drawings and there are many examples of extant design proposals for commissioned objects from Renaissance workshops. However, when considering the

grid as a design element it can certainly be found in prehistoric civilisations that incorporated geometric design into their adornment and possessions.

The three ceiling designs on display all have unique characteristics but their common feature, besides the fact that they are all ceilings, is that they elaborate upon the ornamental embellishments of a larger structure. The fourth design, a tray design from the Omega Workshop, is different in that it presents a design for an entire object. However its function, similar to that of the ceiling designs, is to describe a decorative surface design rather than the construction of the object itself.

NARRATIVE GRIDThe narrative grid utilises vertical and horizontal lines to divide a single page into multiple pictorial spaces that can be viewed together, regardless of whether or not the series of scenes are narrative. The grid organises the space and provides an elegant solution to static pictorial imagery by enabling artists to not only portray a sequence of events across a single page, but also use different sized boxes within the grid to create a hierarchy of relative importance. The history of narrative art can be considered the history of art itself and the partition of a single surface in order to create narratives has continued through the centuries. The use of narrative friezes and scenes are found in Ancient Egypt and Greece, a more grid-like formation of space is seen in early Christian frescoes and icons, and continued into illustrations of biblical texts and interior decorative painting in the Renaissance. Today, we can see the narrative grid the most clearly in mediums like comic books, but the grid as a way of organising space is also visible in the typographical design of websites.

Of the two examples of a narrative grid on display neither is an example of a continuous narrative ‘storyboard’, but both function as part of larger narrative publications. The first is a preliminary drawing for an engraving by Johann Jakob von Sandrart, 1680s, and represents half

in the Prodromus is created by the frames around the paintings and allows them to be organised, categorised, and recorded in a systematic and coherent way. The grid is not narrative in the sense that it delineates a series of events, but instead narrates trends in picture collecting and the history of these paintings as significant objects worthy of reproduction and distribution.

MISE EN PAGE: COMPOSITIONAL GRIDMise en page is French for ‘placement on the page’, and describes the way an artist lays out forms across a two dimensional surface. It is applied specifically to drawings that are not worked up into a full composition but are rather an assortment of multiple doodles floating in space. It is argued that mise en page originated in the late 15th century when paper became more widely available and drawing developed into a process of artistic invention and freedom rather than a necessary technical step for the design of paintings (squaring), luxury objects, or architecture (design drawings). By the 18th century mise en page was an aesthetic ideal that was perfected by Late-Baroque French artists. The term mise en page in the context of this display describes works where the placement of forms on the page is not bound by a visible structure and instead appears to be purely intuitive. However, the grid is still intimated, especially in the Stefano Della Bella Studies of Animals, mid-17th century, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi Figure Studies, mid-18th century, in how the forms are composed in an orderly, balanced, equally spaced manner across the page. It is as if a grid frame is invisibly transcribed onto the negative space in the image, creating boundaries between Della Bella’s animals and Piranesi’s figures. The function of both of these sheets is perhaps as a collection of models to be used as minor characters in the engravings by the respective artists.

Studies by the workshop of Charles Le Brun, mid-17th century, (Fig. 4) suggest the grid in a slightly different way than Della Bella and Piranesi. This drawing could either be a page of practice sketches or a result of the artist working out aspects of a composition. The grid in this drawing is

enacted through the rhythm of repeated forms across the page. Within the drawing there seem to be couplets of forms; two outstretched arms grasping a cloth, two female busts with their elbows held high and forefingers grazing their lips, two thumbs clutching fabric. The artist is searching for the perfection proportion and placement in their renderings and rather than erasing or throwing away the paper, they simply repeat the form and draw another line.

The Le Brun Sheet of Studies is very much connected to Linda Karshan’s Untitled, 1995. Karshan’s drawing is also a search for balance and perfection, but instead of searching through figurative renderings, her drawing is an expression of her own body’s rhythm and measurements. The drawing was made by marking the page as she walked around it - turning each corner after counting to eight. This pattern of counting and repetition is said to represent her internal tempo. Each line Karshan draws corresponds to the reach of her arm and the placement of the lines is a reflection of her body’s position in relation to the page. Nothing is measured using a ruler or an external tool. Every line drawn is deliberate and aims at accurately transcribing her body’s balance and proportion onto the surface. The final product of her movements reveals the form of a grid. Karshan, like the Le Brun Sheet of Studies, did not intend to produce this exact image, however, this is the image that came out of her creative movements.

Mise en page seems to reveal a true compositional grid; an innate tendency artists have for placing forms on a sheet that always seem to reflect the nature of the grid as a repetitive, organising, underlying structure that balances and makes sense of the image on the page.

FURTHER READINGKosme de Baranano, Linda Karshan, 2002

Rosalind Krauss, ‘Grids’, October, vol.9, 1979

Fig 4. Charles Le Brun, Sheet of Studies

MEASURE IS THE BASIS OF BEAUTY PLATO

”

Fig 1. Linda KarshanUntitled, 1995.Pencil on Paper

Fig 2. Circle of Canaletto Parlatorium in a Venetian Convent, 18th centuryPen 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. 3Giovanni Battista PiranesiGothic Arch, 1745Etching

Fig 4. Charles Le BrunSheet of Studies, 17th CenturyRed chalk and graphite on paper

all © The Courtauld Gallery, LondonSamuel Courtauld Trust

LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS ON PAPERcurated by Allison Wucher, is on view at The Courtauld Gallery for the duration of MONDRIAN||NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL.

Cette chanson de Josephine Baker des années 1930 illustre la relation de Mondrian à Paris. Mondrian, qui avait vu Josephine Baker se produire dans la Revue Nègre au Théâtre des Champs Elysées, vécut à Paris pendant plus de vingt ans et prit part à l’émulation artistique, urbaine et cosmopolite de la capitale française. Exposant au Salon des Indépendants en 1911, Piet Mondriaan s’installe à Paris l’année suivante et commence à signer ses œuvres ‘Mondrian’, avec un seul ‘a’ plus français, ‘qui donnait un son et un rythme plus agréable [à son nom]’ . Un an plus tard, il abandonne la peinture figurative pour s’adonner à ce que Guillaume Apollinaire avait appelé son ‘Cubisme abstrait’ qui dans les années 1920 évoluera vers son esthétique du Néo-Plasticisme.

Peu de temps après son arrivée à Paris, Mondrian s’établit dans son atelier (où il vit et travaille) au 26 rue du Départ, derrière la Gare Montparnasse, dans les arrondissements sud de Paris. Après la Première Guerre Mondiale, Montparnasse devient un quartier très animé où Mondrian participe à l’atmosphère de renaissance qui domine les années 1920 à Paris. ‘Une des conséquences de cette renaissance était une bonne infrastructure pour les artistes. Il y avait beaucoup d’expositions et de galeries d’art. Les marchands d’art venaient de partout dans le monde. Mondrian exposa régulièrement durant cette période’. A Paris, il rencontre la plupart des artistes importants de l’époque; les fauves et les cubistes dans les années 1910, les peintres plus abstraits des années 1920 et 1930. Il devient aussi proche d’artistes célèbres tels que Le Corbusier, les Delaunay, les Arp, Jean Hélion et plus particulièrement Theo Van Doesburg avec qui il commence à collaborer en 1915. En 1923, Van Doesburg lui –même écrit:

La vie est vraiment agréable ici, on peut travailler tranquillement, sans être dérangé. On vous laisse en paix et en soirée, on se rencontre dans un café d’artistes ou sur la bute de Montmartre, où, en face du Sacré-Cœur, il y a un café avec une vue splendide de Paris. [,,,] Ce qu’il y a de mieux, c’est ‘l’esprit’ que l’on trouve nulle part ailleurs qu’à Paris. L’atmosphère qui prévaut est différente des atmosphères des autres villes. On sent l’histoire, le passé dans les moindres choses.

Mondrian aime sortir le soir et faire l’expérience de Paris, que ce soit dans les cafés et restaurants proches de chez lui comme le Dôme ou la Rotonde ou encore dans les restaurants à la mode, comme le Boeuf sur le Toit.

Durant presque tout son séjour à Paris, Mondrian garde son studio du 26 rue du Départ, où grand nombre de ses amis et d’artistes lui rendent visite. C’était un atelier fantastique, agencé comme l’une de ses propres peintures avec très peu de meubles, souvent minimalistes et des murs blancs et gris. De fines étagères et de petits meubles en bois rappellent ses propres peintures divisées par des lignes noires. Son atelier est une composition de murs verticaux blancs où sont accrochés des rectangles amovibles faits de couleurs primaires, et d’un plancher noir. C’est, en d’autres termes, un ‘Mondrian’ à part entière. Michel Seuphor, artiste et ami du peintre, décrit son atelier comme un ‘studio-sanctuaire’. ‘Quand vous entriez [dans son atelier], c’était sombre mais quand vous passiez la seconde porte, quand l’espace s’ouvrait à vous, vous passiez de l’enfer au paradis. Magnifique ! […] L’atelier était blanc et gris. Mondrian avait pris soin de préciser quelles teintes utiliser: seulement du gris, du gris clair et du blanc. Pour Mondrian, son atelier lui avait toujours été spécial.’ Après la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, avec l’expansion de la Gare et du quartier Montparnasse, l’immeuble du 26 rue du Départ est détruit dans les années 1960. L’espace fait maintenant partie des fondations de la tour Montparnasse, qui jusque dans les années 1990, est le plus grand gratte-ciel de bureaux construit en Europe.

En 1926, Mondrian rédige son manifeste du Neo-Plasticisme: Neo-Plasticism: La Maison – La Rue – La ville. Son amour pour la vie urbaine moderne est le mieux illustré dans ses derniers commentaires:

Le Neo-Plasticisme est le plus chez lui dans le métro qu’à Notre Dame, et préfère la Tour Eiffel au Mont Blanc.

Dans l’une de ses deux ‘esquisses’ urbaines (ou écrits urbains) de 1920, Les Grands Boulevards, il décrit l’atmosphère de la ville active:

Ru-h-ru-h-h-h. Poeoeoe. Tik-tik-tik-tik. Pre. R-r-r-r-r-ruh-u. Huh! Pang. Su-su-su-su-ur. Boe-a-ah. R-r-r-r. Automobiles, bus, trolleys, charrettes, taxis, la foule, les lampadaires, les arbres…tous mêlés: entre les cafés, les magasins, les bureaux, les posters, les vitrines : une multiplicité de choses. Le mouvement et l’immobile: mouvements divers. Multiples images et multiples idées, etc… L’endroit transforme l’homme et l’homme transforme la nature. Sur les boulevards il y a déjà beaucoup ‘d’artifice’ mais il n’y a pas encore ‘d’art.

Frans Postma écrit:

Paris et la ville moderne et animée l’inspiraient. L’environnement de Mondrian jouait un rôle important dans son travail. Son atelier, là où il vivait et l’atmosphère des rues de son quartier étaient des conditions nécessaires à son développement, quelque chose dont il était constamment conscient. Comme la plupart des choses dans sa vie, son travail et sa vie étaient devenus secondaires à son développement artistique.

Ceci est clairement visible dans l’évolution esthétique de Mondrian à Paris. Les dynamiques entre mouvement et immobilité sont de plus en plus significatives quand ses peintures se réduisent aux trois couleurs primaires, au noir, au blanc et sont composées de rectangles ou de carrés divisés en damiers. La profondeur du champ de vision est supprimée. Ses compositions, souvent rectangulaires, deviennent des quadrillages qui ne doivent pas être encadrés. Le blanc est souvent peint, couche après couche avec des coups de pinceau allant dans différentes directions, créant une certaine profondeur. Après 1930, des lignes noires fines et parallèles deviennent plus fréquentes, créant un nouveau dynamisme dans ses toiles.

En 1940, fuyant le régime collaborateur de Vichy, Mondrian déménage à Londres où il continue d’explorer l’abstraction géométrique aux cotés de Ben Nicholson. L’animation des villes, leurs sons et leurs rythmes continueront de l’influencer profondément jusqu’à sa mort à New York en 1944.

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

The title of this song, sung by Josephine Baker in the 1930s illustrates Mondrian’s relationship with Paris. Mondrian, who had seen Josephine Baker perform in La Revue Nègre, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées on a few occasions, lived in Paris for over twenty years and fully engaged with the artistic, urban and cosmopolitan atmosphere of the French capital. Exhibiting in 1911 at the Salon des Indépendants, Piet Mondriaan moved to Paris in 1912 and starts signing his work ‘Mondrian’ with a single, more French sounding ‘a’, ‘since the sound and the rhythm struck him as nicer’. A year later, he abandons figurative painting forever and starts working on his ‘very abstract Cubism’ which will in the 1920s become the backbone to his Neo-Plasticism aesthetics.

Shortly after arriving in Paris, Mondrian establishes himself in his studio (where he both lives and works) at 26 rue du Départ, behind the Gare Montparnasse in the southern parts of the city. After the First World War, the area became very vibrant and Mondrian enjoyed the atmosphere of renewal which dominated 1920s Paris. ‘One of the consequences of this revival, was a good infrastructure for the artists. There were a lot of exhibitions and galleries. Art dealers came from all over the world. Mondrian also regularly exhibited in this period.’ In Paris, he meets most of the influential artists of his time; the fauve and cubist painters in the 1910s, the more abstract artists of the 1920s and 30s. He also becomes closely acquainted with famous artists such as Le Corbusier, the Delaunays, the Arps, Jean Helion and more specifically with Theo Van Doesburg who will work closely with Mondrian from 1915 onwards. In 1923, Van Doesburg writes:

Life is truly pleasant here, since you can work so quietly and undisturbed. They leave you in peace and in the evenings you can meet each other in an artist’s café or up on the hill of Montmartre, where opposite the Sacré-Coeur, there’s a café with a splendid view of Paris. […]. The nicest thing is the ‘spirit’ which you find nowhere else but here in Paris. The prevalent mood here is totally different from the mood of any other city. You feel there’s history, the past in the smallest thing.

Mondrian himself liked to go out in Paris most evenings. Whether it was at his local eating places and cafés such as the Dôme or the Rotonde or at the fashionable Boeuf sur le Toit restaurant, he experienced Paris fully.

Mondrian keeps his studio at 26 rue du Départ for most of his stay in Paris , which many of his friends and artists visit. It was a wonderful space, arranged like one of his own paintings with very little and minimalist furniture and white and grey walls. Thin shelves and wooden structures, provided a visual reminder of the black lines dividing his paintings. Mondrian's atelier was a composition of vertical white walls and a horizontal black floor, its walls hung with rectangles of primary colours that could be moved about. It was, in other words, a ‘Mondrian’. Michel Seuphor, a fellow artist and friend, called the room a ‘studio-sanctuary’:

When you entered [his studio], it was

still dark, but when you went through that second door, when that opened, you went from hell to heaven. Beautiful! […] The studio was white and grey. Mondrian indicated which tints to be used: only grey, light grey and white. To Mondrian, his studio was always special.

Unfortunately, as the Gare Montparnasse and its surrounding area expanded after the Second World War, the building at 26 rue du Départ was destroyed in the 1960s. This was to provide foundations for the Tour Montparnasse, one of the highest office sky scrapers to be built in Europe until the 1990s.

In 1926, Mondrian writes his Neo-Plasticism Manifesto, Neo-Plasticism: The Home – The Street – The City. His love for modern city life is made clear in one of his final remarks: ‘Neo-Plasticism is more at home in the Metro than in Notre Dame, prefers the Eiffel Tower to Mont Blanc’. In one of his two urban ‘sketches’ (or writings) from 1920, Les Grands Boulevards, he describes the atmosphere of the busy city:

Ru-h-ru-h-h-h. Poeoeoe. Tik-tik-tik-tik. Pre. R-r-r-r-r-ruh-u. Huh! Pang. Su-su-su-su-ur. Boe-a-ah. R-r-r-r. Automobiles, buses, carts, cabs, people, lampposts, trees…all mixed : against cafes, shops, offices, posters, display windows : a multiplicity of things. Movement and standstill: diverse motions. Manifold images and manifold thoughts, etc… Place transforms man and man transforms nature. On the boulevard there is already much ‘artifice’, but it is not yet ‘art’.

As Frans Postma writes:

Paris and the busy modern city inspired him. Mondrian’s surroundings played an important role in his work. His workplace, the situation of his home and the atmosphere of the streets in his neighbourhood were necessary conditions for his development, something which he was thoroughly aware of. Like almost everything else in his life, he had made every change in his working and living place subordinate to his artistic development.

These accounts are visible in Mondrian’s aesthetic evolution during his time in Paris. The dynamics between movement and standstill take on a new meaning when his paintings become increasingly reduced to the three primary colours, black and white, and composed of rectangles and squares in simple asymmetrical grids. Depth is completely eliminated. His compositions, often rectangular, become grids which are meant to be left unframed. The white is often painted in layer after layer with brush strokes going in different directions, creating a sense of depth. After 1930, thinner and double lines become more frequent, offering new dynamisms to the canvases.

In 1940, fearing the Nazi collaborative regime of the Vichy government, Mondrian moves to London, where he continues to explore geometric abstraction alongside Ben Nicholson. Busy city atmospheres, sounds and rhythms will continue to influence him until his death in New York in 1944.

FURTHER READINGFrans Postma, 26 rue du Départ, 1989

Image:Piet MondrianPhotograph from De Stijl, vol. 5, Dec 1922Photographer anonymous

REGARDE! MONDRIAN A PARISWritten by Alice Odin; The Oak Foundation Young People’s Programme Coordinator, The Courtauld Institute of Art

CURRICULUM LINKS: KS4+MFL French, Art, Art History and other humanities.

”‘J’AI DEUX AMOURS, MON PAYS ET PARIS?’Josephine Baker

VIII: GLOSSARY OF TERMS

ABSTRACTION: The style of simplifying recognisable objects into geometric shapes, colours, or other non-representational forms.

BAUHAUS: An art school in Germany that operated from 1919 to 1933. It specialised in bringing together arts, architecture and crafts in creating a complete modernism in design.

THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP: A group of artists and writers who worked around Bloomsbury in London during the 1910s. Included Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant and Virginia Woolf. Committed to bring modern French art to Britain and developing styles of abstract painting.

CLASSICISM: A style of painting that took the culture of classical antiquity and its sculptures, architecture and art as its inspiration.

CONSTRUCTIVISM: An artistic and architectural philosophy that aimed to use abstraction for social purposes. It originated in Soviet Russia in 1919 with artists such as Naum Gabo, and greatly inspired abstraction in Britain.

DADAISM: A movement of art, literature, and performance that aimed to create anti-art. It rebelled against previous artistic conventions and is famous for the use of ‘found objects’ pioneered by the artist Marcel Duchamp.

EUCLIDEAN SPACE: A mathematical term describing the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry. It is named after the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria.

FASCISM: A radical nationalist politics where people of one nation are tied together through ancestry, culture and blood. The most notable example of a fascist regime is Adolf Hilter and the Nazi party and their crimes to people of Jewish heritage.

FORMALISM: A way to judge artwork purely on its visual attributes. It emphasises elements such as composition, colour, line, shape, texture and tone.

GENIUS LOCI: Translates as ‘the spirit of the place’. Used by modernist British artists to explain the inherent feeling or history in specific landscapes such as standing stones or sites of ancient history.

MARXISM: A critique of capitalism pioneered in the 19th century by two German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The theory investigated the system of dependence of the majority of classes on the economic base controlled by the upper classes, resulting in a class struggle.

NATURALISM: A style of painting where the artist represents realistic objects, or figures, in a natural setting.

NEO-PLASTICISM: A word used to describe the style of the Dutch group of artists De Stijl, or ‘The Style’. Founded in 1917 the group sought to express a utopian ideal of spiritual and artistic harmony through abstraction.

NEO-ROMANTICISM: A style of art and literature that originated in the 1930s and remained popular until the 1950s. It looked to romantic artists, such as Samuel Palmer, and their place in Britain’s national heritage. Mainly revolving around the integration of modernism and Britain’s visionary landscapes and history.

ROMANTICISM: An artistic, literary and intellectual movement in reaction to the industrialisation of the 18th century. It looked to visualise emotions using strong colours and expressive brushstrokes.

SOCIALISM: An economic and political system based on social ownership of the economy. Often described as a working class movement, it was often manifested in art through anti-fascist politics.

SOCIALIST REALISM: The dominant art form used by the Soviet Union and other communist countries. It took form in ‘realistic’ and often figurative art such as the figure of the working class ‘hero’. It was adopted by British socialists as a form to create art for all classes and was often politically charged.

SURREALISM: A literary, artistic and cultural movement, which began in 1920s France. It took Freud’s psychoanalytical theories as its core and was a highly international movement, with artists in Britain and abroad creating dream-like paintings, sculptures and performances.

THEORY OF RELATIVITY: A name given to Albert Einstein’s two theories Special Relativity and The Theory of General Relativity. Special Relativity states that it is impossible to determine whether or not you are moving unless you can look at another object. General relativity is a geometrical theory that suggests the presence of mass and energy ‘curves’ space, which we interpret as a gravitational force. This changed the way people thought about space and time, and about the forces of gravity and acceleration.

TRUTH TO MATERIALS: A phrase that originates with the Arts and Crafts Movement at the turn of the 20th century. It explains artists who attempted to create work that ‘listened’ to the material they were using. For example, if carving a piece of wood an artist like Ben Nicholson would follow the curves of the natural structure of the piece of wood.

VORTICISM: A group of radical artists led by the writer and artist Percy Wyndham Lewis. They aimed to create art that was anti-humanist, mechanical, abstract and at times pro-war. They are renowned for the creation of the journal Blast in 1914 and 1915. It was a short-lived group, which began in 1913 and dissolved within the first few years of the First World War (1914-1918).

WITH THANKS

TEACHERS’ RESOURCE MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLELWeb Edition

Teachers resources are free to full time teachers, lecturers and other education and learning professionals. To be used strictly for education purposes.

All materials herein are covered by a strict licence.

Joff WhittenGallery Education ProgrammerCourtauld Institute of ArtSomerset House, StrandLONDON, WC2R 0RN

0207 848 2705joff.whitten@courtauld.ac.uk

I: MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLELEd. Meghan Goodeve

II: GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISHSam Rose

III: 1937Meghan Goodeve

IV: DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONS: BEYOND THE SINGULAR ARTISTLauren Barnes

V: MONDRIAN AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION OF MODERN SCIENCEVanja Malloy

VI: LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS ON PAPERAllison Wucher

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

VIII: GLOSSARY OF TERMSMeghan Goodeve