Victor Rerick
Professor Graff
In 1940 Piet In Mondrian not only moved to a new continent in 1940, he also transitioned from a traditional style of landscape painting to an increasingly abstract approach. Fleeing the Netherlands just before Europe was consumed by the darkness of World War II, Mondrian was eager to shift the focus of his artistic material. He was fascinated by New York, the city in which he settled. The fast pace of life, the commotion and confusion of a simple walk down the street, and diversity of the city all captivated Mondrian. He also happened to take a liking to a new form of jazz known as Boogie Woogie. He combined his new interests in the title, and style of his penultimate painting Broadway Boogie Woogie.
The painting is minimalistic in nature, and is what Mondrian described as his “neoplastic” style. The painting is mostly white space, covered in a pattern of grid-lick structures. The intersecting, multi-colored lines reflect the overlapping streets that criss-cross Manhattan. Anyone who has ever visited the city will be familiar with the sight of a long straight Avenue, stretching miles in either direction. A blurred mixture of lights, both bright and dull, overwhelm the viewer. So it is with Broadway Boogie Woogie. On first glance, the painting seems to consist of countless colors, all interwoven in an overwhelming pattern. Yet there is only a mixture of subtle tones. Yellow, light blue, and red are the only colors present in the painting. There are also several gray blocks, used to break up the longer yellow streaks. The gray and yellow blocks have the same luminance. This means that if the color was drained of color, and only seen in black and white, the gray dots would become indistinguishable from the yellow lines. By contrast the Red and blue dots would still be of a noticeably different shade. I believe this was a commentary on how the smallest aspects of the city (its people) begin to blend with the larger more noticeable aspects of the city (its architecture, streets, infrastructure etc.). The city than begins to function in a way similar to that of the human body. The living parts, which are the minority in both cities and bodies, come to define the larger parts, in this case either organs or buildings. Most of a city is made of lifeless objects as most of the city is made of lifeless buildings. But the multitude of bright little squares the would seem insignificant alone, come to dominant the viewer’s understanding of the painting. The rhythmic “stop and go” aspect of the small square’s placement also reflect the tempo of boogie woogie jazz that Mondrian came to admire.
Salvador Dali’s The Persistance of Memory, is one of the strangest paintings I have ever seen, on par with most of Picasso’s more interpretative pieces. But unlike the work of both Picasso and Mondrian, Dali’s work is less minimalistic. The canvas is almost completely covered in color. Very little white space is visible. There is only roughly four distinguishable figures in the whole painting, and the rest is covered in a drab brown hue. Melting pocket watches dominant the foreground, one noticeably covered in tiny ants. Another flops on a dead tree branch. In the center of the painting a large indistinguishable oozing figure seems to be sleeping. In the distance a scenic landscape is bordered by a large, possibly metal reflecting object. Fortunately, like Mandrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie , the title provides some insight into the paintings meaning.
The painting is meant to evoke the world of dreams that takes over the mental process of each human as we drift to sleep each night. As it is in our dreams, the painting makes it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is pure fantasy. Dali placed the objects at distances from eachother that are hard to measure. The ocean, mountains and sky are impossibly placid and empty. A tree grows (or perhaps dies) on a perfectly shaped and seemingly man made brown rectangle. The ghost-like, pillow shaped being in the middle of the paintings calls to mind the antagonists that haunt or nightmares. They are large adversaries, yet they are difficult to measure. The fear of the unknown nature of the bring increases our discomfort. The watches show a meaningless passing of time. Dreams, which often only last a matter of seconds, or minutes at longest, feel to a waking human as if they were day long events. Each watch shows a different, but equally meaningless time. The colors are hazy, brighter in the distance than in the immediate vicinity of the viewer. The curious dreamer walks forward toward the sunrise, unsure of what lays ahead.
