During the 1920s-30s, the boundaries that were once placed on art began to diminish. Two artists, Joan Miró and Piet Mondrian, who were both creating during the same time period, have vast differences when it comes to expression through abstractions. Miró’s fluidity, automatism, and ‘child-like’ work is immensely different from Mondrian’s rigid, flat, and spiritual paintings. This is meant to show what is happening within the world of art at this time; specifically abstraction. It is not one path, but various directions an artist can take due to their background knowledge and influences which impacted them.
Joan Miró’s The Ear of Grain, 1922
Joan Miró’s The Farmer’s Wife, 1922
During the Summer of 1922, Miró painted his last realistic works, The Farmer’s Wife, The Ear of Grain, Flowers and Butterfly and The Acetylene Lamp. Rather than reproduce reality, Miró decided to be engulfed in the current emotion of what was presented to him, and what he saw from it. Miró expressed that he did not seek a vision outside of reality, but instead, an escape in nature.
André Masson’s Automatic Drawing, 1924. Photo by MoMA
Miró was strongly influenced by poetry, which was introduced to him by André Masson, a French artist who bridged the gap between Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism. Before then, Miró practiced realism, and did not frolic with abstractions and surrealism until 1925, after the readings of poetry.
In 1925, Miró began creating paintings that was to be the expression of the movements of the live being, of its capture at the source. The overall atmosphere of his paintings make one think of the painting as dreams. His forms derived more from fantasy and childhood memory, than from visible nature. He drew almost entirely from his own hallucinations and imagination. Miró often sought inspiration by concentrating on the mundane details; forms produced by the cracks in a wall, damp stains, and the movements of the clouds.
Joan Miró’s The Garden, 1925
Miró combined the avant-garde movements, Surrealism and Cubism, in order to create his own artistic language. Unlike Surrealists, Miró did not paint dreams. Through his work, he placed within the viewer’s reach certain elements of the painting that would make the viewer feel as if they were the one who dreamt it. Surrealists often used hypnosis, drugs, or alcohol to induce these deep thoughts hidden within the subconscious to the light; bringing these fantasies that have no possibilities in becoming reality, into reality.
Joan Miro’s The Summer, 1938
Artists who participated in surrealism praised Miró for his ‘automatism,’ but also criticized him for creating work purely from his imagination. Miró believed ideas and poetry were embodied rather than illustrated, and they communicated directly through pictorial images.
Joan Miró’s Nocturne, 1935
Piet Mondrian’s compositions were evolved from Cubism and the Cubist grid; more specifically, mainly from his dissatisfaction with the Cubist retreat from the enviable nonobjective form. Due to being a member of the De Stijl (also known as Neoplasticism, a Dutch art movement that consisted of artists and architects who advocated for pure abstraction) Mondrian had a strong background in Symbolism and Theosophy. He quickly realized that the fear of abstraction and flatness in Analytical Cubism is exactly what he was searching for.
Piet Mondrian’s The Flowering Apple Tree, 1912
Piet Mondrian’s Composition No. 10 in Black and White (Pier and Ocean), 1914
Piet Mondrian’s Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935
Mondrian’s abstract style first made its appearance in 1914, with one of his first “plus-minus” compositional paintings being Composition No. 10 in Black and White (Pier and Ocean). Mondrian believed everything can be reduced to a common denominator; every figure can be scaled down into a pattern of horizontal and vertical lines. Achieving this will abolish all forms of hierarchy in a composition.
His paintings defied interpretation and he sought to express the general, not the specific, thus revealing the underlying difference between the two.
Piet Mondrian’s New York City I, 1942
It wasn’t until 1920, just 2 years before Miro’s abstractions that Mondrian adopted the use of pure primaries, along with black, grey, and white. Mondrian soon came to understand in order to achieve pure abstraction, the opposition between figure and ground in a composition had to be abolished.
Now, Mondrian’s main goal was to create compositions that all represent and achieve a common ground. No hierarchy, or figure and ground.
There are 2 artists here at Studio Gallery who’s artwork and background reminded me of both Miró and Mondrian. Elizabeth Beach and her influential use of music and sound to create abstract expressional paintings radiates the same energy as Miró. Miró created paintings strictly off of his imagination and mundane details he found throughout his life. His work along with Beach gives the viewer a chance to process the work they are seeing, and create their own inferences of its meaning.
Elizabeth Beach’s Hey Ya, 2017
Eleanor Kotlarik Wang, another brilliant artist at Studio Gallery, creates spiritual paintings by using gestural lines that are interwoven within the ground and paint surface. Mondrian had great knowledge of philosophical ideas, and the belief that the universe is one entity that connects all energy. Before becoming entirely enveloped on creating pieces that demolish a sense of figure and ground, Mondrian often created spiritual works as well.
Eleanor Kotlarik Wang’s Meanderings I, 2017
Piet Mondrian’s Evolution, 1911
The use of abstraction is still one of the most common forms of art making. There is no “set in stone” definition of art like there was back in the 1920s, which, if you ask me, is a good thing. One artist’s way of expression is always going to be different than the other, and that’s okay. Without it, the world would continue to see the same kind of art, not like the work that is being presented in Studio Gallery now!
From staff contributor Kara Harley