Mondrian’s blunt black lines on a canvas completely jarred my humble/ ignorant understanding of modern art. I was particularly confused by Mondrian’s reverence to flatness. When looking at the Demoiselle d’Avignon, I understood that Picasso had used slight depth to accentuate the flatness of his work. Mondrian’s work, however, was devoid of any depth. After looking at cubist artwork I had been thrown off my rocker, but Mondrian really pushed to the ground. It was one thing to try and see the significance of cubism and its efforts to deconstruct everything I thought I knew, but it was challenging to reorient myself to simple lines on a canvas. The problem in my approach to art is I always want to know what the significance of the piece is and what it means. Modern art does not always provide this. In Clement Greenberg’s essay on modernist painting he states about Mondrian’s work, “the configuration of a Mondrian still suggests a kind of illusion of a kind of third dimension,” (107). The third-dimension is created by the illusion that his lines extend beyond the canvas. In this way, he plays with flatness and depth. Although we cannot see the depth, we are led to believe that it is there. I did not find this aspect of his work significant. The play of dimensions did not really interest me. It was only when I took a close look at the brush strokes of the painting that I felt connected to this work of art. Mondrian’s lines and colored rectangles were perfectly straight. His brush strokes were smooth and not splotchy. The paint almost seemed to be part of the canvas and not something added to the canvas. In this way, his work created an idealistic sense of perfection. When I spoke to Professor Bergman about this perfection she commented that the works were utopian. Although this wasn’t a direct meaning, I found something that I could understand about the work.