Mondrian: On the Humanity of Abstract PaintingIn "On the Humanity of Abstract Painting," Schapiro systematically dismantles the criticism of abstraction as cold, detached, and inartistic. Instead, he proves that this art form is capable of great expressive and intellectual power, endowed with lyricism and grace. He proposes new ways of viewing and thinking about abstraction, in the end establishes it as "an obvious and necessary enrichment of our lives." With "Mondrian: Order and Randomness in Abstract Painting," Schapiro analyses many of the painter's most important works, from The Red Mill to Broadway Boogie-Woogie. He articulates the subtleties of Mondrian's formal strategies and his innate lyricism. He proceeds to map Mondrian's relation to his predecessors, and shows that this archetypal abstractionist was in fact indebted to the formal compositional strategies of such leading late nineteenth century artists as Degas, Monet, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec. |
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abstract art ABSTRACT PAINTING aesthetic appearance architectural Art Selected Papers artists asymmetry and openness balanced black lines Broadway Boogie-Woogie brushstroke canvas Centennial central Cézanne Cézanne's circle Claude Monet clusters color plate complex Composition with Lines construction contrast cropped Cubist Degas's diagonal diamond field Domburg edge elements Escher Foundation façade Fauvist figurative art forms frame geometric units grid Guggenheim Museum Haags Gemeentemuseum Hague horizontal bars HUMANITY OF ABSTRACT Impressionist intercepted irregular Jantzen later look lyrical Metropolitan Museum Meyer Schapiro Michael Noll Modern Art Mondrian's abstract Monet Museum of Modern Neo-Impressionist objects Otterlo painter painterly parallel perspective Picasso and Braque picture Pier and Ocean Piet Mondrian pillars plane pure relations qualities Red Mill regular representation reproduced by Seuphor Rijksmuseum Saenredam scene segment Seurat shapes sides sighting single sketchy small units space straight surface touch triangles upper vertical and horizontal vertical bars viewer vision white ground whole York