Internationally recognized as a pioneer of abstract art, the founder of Neo-Plasticism, and the ideological father of the De Stijl movement, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) created both paintings and writings that embodied the spirit of modernism. Mondrian saw himself as an arch-Modernist with uncompromisingly strong ideas about what art was to be about in the next century. He viewed abstraction as the ideal artistic and spiritual direction, and argued this cause in his most important text, "Natural Reality and Abstract Reality." Written in Holland at the outset of 1919 and completed in Paris in July of that year, Mondrian's Trialogue carefully presents the artist's ideas through the voices of A Layman, A Naturalist Painter, and An Abstract-Real Painter. Abstraction contains, Mondrian proposes, the essence of what art of all the ages sought to express - relationship, harmony, repose, life force, the universal. In the Trialogue, Mondrian demonstrates the basis of his new art form in visible reality. This volume also contains Mondrian's "two urban sketches" entitled "Les Grands Boulevards" and "Little Restaurant - Palm Sunday, " which form ideal literary complements to the Trialogue.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
By wiredweird
Format:Paperback
- or tries to. This brief book is a socratic conversation between three speakers: Mondrian's representative of the new, an agent of the old, and the naif in need of explanations.
The translator's notes quote Mondrian, in some other context, as saying that "writers are the worst criminals." Mondrian goes on to prove that in the example his own writing. The tone is strident and authorative. The line of development, however, has no apparent basis in logical reasoning. To my eye, it is barely comprehensible. (The two brief 'stream of consciousness' pieces at the end border on gibberish.)
As near as I can tell, Mondrian uses this book to predict some Edenic future where the arts have mostly passed away as separate activities. Instead, artistic expression would be fully integrated into the acts and artifacts of daily life. (OK, I'll go along with that.) He further insists that individual personality would be excised from art, replaced by self-working laws of esthetics and balance, somehow defined by the 'spirit of the times'. This writing dates from the era (1919-1920) when Bauhaus thinking was being developed and deployed, so I'm not surprised to hear Mondrian echo what was being said elsewhere.
What left me baffled, however, was a pair of assertions. First was that the new kind of vision was developing in the world, with historical inevitability, the vision that Mondrian attempted to explain. Second was that only a new kind of man (women were not named) would be able to share in this sensibility. It seemed that an esthetic that did not yet exist would be expressed only by a species that did not yet exist. Huh?
I did not pick this book up to be swayed by its logic or commentary. If I had, I would have been disappointed. Instead, I wanted to see the words actually set down by one of the twentieth century's influential thinkers, and I succeeded in that.
'Natural Reality' is fascinating as a historical document and as an exercise in rhetoric. Just don't expect to learn much about art from it.
By Lane Banks
Format:Paperback
Subtitled "While Strolling from the Country to the City," this trialogue presents Mondrian's idealistic theories regarding art and life as a narrative occurring in real time rather than as a manifesto. The participants are identified only as "Y," a layman; "X", a naturalistic painter, and "Z," an abstract-real painter, obviously Mondrian himself. Taking place at six sites in the countryside at night while observing various natural and manmade phenomena, the trio discuss the relationship between art and life, and naturalistic vs. abstract art, finally ending in the studio of Z. The discussion is a re-working of Mondrian's ideas already presented in the previous essays "The New Plastic in Painting" (1917) and "Dialogue on the New Plastic" (1919).
Mondrian's clever use of the conversational format serves a dual purpose - it is his attempt to convince the world at large, represented by the layman and the naturalistic painter, of the necessity for the new in art (specifically Mondrian's own); and presents in written form the contrast of opposites so necessary in Mondrian's painting, the pairing of the naturalistic art (the "tragic") with abstraction (the "universal").
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Trialogue review
Jun 15 2000
By Lane Banks
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Subtitled "While Strolling from the Country to the City," this trialogue presents Mondrian's idealistic theories regarding art and life as a narrative occurring in real time rather than as a manifesto. The participants are identified only as "Y," a layman; "X", a naturalistic painter, and "Z," an abstract-real painter, obviously Mondrian himself. Taking place at six sites in the countryside at night while observing various natural and manmade phenomena, the trio discuss the relationship between art and life, and naturalistic vs. abstract art, finally ending in the studio of Z. The discussion is a re-working of Mondrian's ideas already presented in the previous essays "The New Plastic in Painting" (1917) and "Dialogue on the New Plastic" (1919).
Mondrian's clever use of the conversational format serves a dual purpose - it is his attempt to convince the world at large, represented by the layman and the naturalistic painter, of the necessity for the new in art (specifically Mondrian's own); and presents in written form the contrast of opposites so necessary in Mondrian's painting, the pairing of the naturalistic art (the "tragic") with abstraction (the "universal").
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mondrian explains his esthetic
May 23 2004
By wiredweird
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
- or tries to. This brief book is a socratic conversation between three speakers: Mondrian's representative of the new, an agent of the old, and the naif in need of explanations.
The translator's notes quote Mondrian, in some other context, as saying that "writers are the worst criminals." Mondrian goes on to prove that in the example his own writing. The tone is strident and authorative. The line of development, however, has no apparent basis in logical reasoning. To my eye, it is barely comprehensible. (The two brief 'stream of consciousness' pieces at the end border on gibberish.)
As near as I can tell, Mondrian uses this book to predict some Edenic future where the arts have mostly passed away as separate activities. Instead, artistic expression would be fully integrated into the acts and artifacts of daily life. (OK, I'll go along with that.) He further insists that individual personality would be excised from art, replaced by self-working laws of esthetics and balance, somehow defined by the 'spirit of the times'. This writing dates from the era (1919-1920) when Bauhaus thinking was being developed and deployed, so I'm not surprised to hear Mondrian echo what was being said elsewhere.
What left me baffled, however, was a pair of assertions. First was that the new kind of vision was developing in the world, with historical inevitability, the vision that Mondrian attempted to explain. Second was that only a new kind of man (women were not named) would be able to share in this sensibility. It seemed that an esthetic that did not yet exist would be expressed only by a species that did not yet exist. Huh?
I did not pick this book up to be swayed by its logic or commentary. If I had, I would have been disappointed. Instead, I wanted to see the words actually set down by one of the twentieth century's influential thinkers, and I succeeded in that.
'Natural Reality' is fascinating as a historical document and as an exercise in rhetoric. Just don't expect to learn much about art from it.
›
Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews
4.5 out of 5 stars
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
