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Rohit Singh
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[Mon, 07 Jun 2004]
Broadway Boogie-Woogie
My sis-in-law, a really good painter, painted this really funky-looking
painting. The painting is mostly white canvas crisscrossed by thick black
lines (vertical and horizontal only, please) and some squares filled with
either blue, red, or yellow. Not only is the painting pretty cool but, for some reason, I also find it very cheerful, for lack of a better word!
It also reminds me of a bedsheet that mom gave me
during IITK days. The bedsheet was white with thick black lines and a
regularish pattern of blue, red, and yellow filled squares. Must've been
from handicraft store. I liked the bedsheet too. I wonder if the villager
who designed it knew about Neoplasticism. More on Neoplasticism soon.
Anyways, all visitors to her (my sis-in-law's) home speculate on the motivation behind that painting. One theory that my brother likes to offer, tongue firmly in cheek, is that its much harder to paint exactly straight lines than to paint landscapes and hence the painting offered more of a challenge than the landscapes that my sis-in-law usually paints.
Now I've figured out the origins of that painting. The origins of that *style* of painting, that is. So it turns out there was this Dutch guy, Piet Mondrian, whose theory about painting went something like this: all of painting is basically about drawing and coloring. As per his style/philosophy ("Neoplasticism"), the basic drawing element is the straight line and the basic "primordial" colors are red, yellow and blue. Combine the two. Of course, if you make pretty pictures and people like them enough to ask you why you made them, you have all the leeway in the world to propound on the "philosophy" behind Neoplasticism. See this page for a voluminous discussion and some links. There is a lot of bullshit about mysticism and spirituality and the infinite nature of vertical/horizontal line. Also, Harvard's Art Museum is having a retrospective of some sort and they too have some pretty pictures.
Mondrian went further actually. His weirdest stuff, IMHO, was a painting made by crisscrossed colored adhesive tape. Line + Color = Colored Lines = Essence of Painting. One such painting is titled the Broadway Boogie Woogie.
This is "normal" Neoplasticism:
This is "experimental" Neoplasticism:
This is Synthesis aka adhesive tape selling for a BIG money:
This is the tangent I shot off from
Who said you can't get your education from comics!