Donderdag 15 december 2022

Architectuur, Beeldende kunst & Cultuur

Marek Wieczorek

Mondrian's Moment: Nature's Architecture, Jazz, and Neo-Plastic Space

In 2022 it will be 150 years since one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century was born: Piet Mondriaan (1872-1944). Our Club will not let this pass unnoticed and celebrates this anniversary with internationally renowned art historian Marek Wiesczore.

Although Piet Mondriaan's pioneering abstraction is usually approached in terms of modernist 'flatness,' Mondriaan himself explained his 'Neo-Plasticism' as a new form of pictorial space.

Building on theories of Hegel, Goethe, and Dutch utopian theosophists, Mondriaan sought to render nature's creative force abstractly through dynamic, spatial relations among primary colors and perpendicular lines, a rhythmic ensemble also inspired by American Jazz: already when living in Paris, Mondriaan visited jazz venues to listen to the likes of Louis Armstrong, whose improvisation techniques he compared to his own striving to 'destroy' illusion like Armstrong destroyed melody. This lecture will re-examine the arc of Mondriaan's evolving approach to pictorial space, from the explosion of primary colors in his early Mill in Sunlight of 1908 through his final masterpiece Victory Boogie Woogie of 1942-44.

Marek Wieczorek, professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Washington, Seattle, is a Dutch art historian and scholar of Piet Mondriaan. He has published widely on Mondriaan, De Stijl, modern and contemporary art, has curated exhibitions in Europe and the US, and organized the first international symposium on De Stijl at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 2004-05 and the NIAS in 2020.

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