Mondrian''s striving for spiritual clarification in his work led him to a grammar of shape based strictly on horizontals and verticals. By this means, he achieved a remarkable degree of energy and vibrancy in his art. Mondrian was not threatened by the advent of the machine or the modern city. The machine had not completely dehumanized man as other artists had prophesied so emphatically. Furthermore, the cities created by industrialization, especially Mondrian''s beloved New York, were not dysfunctional to him but dynamic and liberating.
Mondrian was part of an idealistic group of artists in the Netherlands known as De Stijl or "the style." De Stijl''s creed was a combination of total abstraction, a minimum of creative terms, and restriction to the primary colors of red, yellow and blue and the non-colors of black, gray and white. Mondrian''s missionary zeal for a higher level of harmony in art had taken him beyond the bounds of Cubism.
One of Mondrian''s last paintings, "Broadway Boogie Woogie" (1942-3), a large oil on canvas, exemplifies many aspects of his masterful technique. Only the title reveals the reference to the external reality of the cityscape. Mondrian''s interpretation of the New York street grid is joyful and colorful. In Mondrian''s work, the loose spontaneity of other modern artists has been rarefied and ordered.
Man has achieved balance and creativity on a higher level. He is not dependent on either the natural world or the manufactured one. Mondrian''s vision is one of abstraction resulting in the revelation of a type of universal electricity which supersedes both organic and mechanical energy.
Mondrian''s grid fills the canvas, but also contains large amounts of space and air. Perhaps the disciplined rhythm of the machine, modern life and the cityscape holds within itself an even greater freedom than the prior vicissitudinous cycles of agrarian living. The rhythm of Mondrian''s image is accelerated and syncopated Man has adapted to the technological environment and is alive and thriving after all.
Mondrian''s composition is balanced with almost mathematical precision. The space has now been completely flattened. Yet somehow Mondrian''s rectangles and squares flash continuously with a voltage born of almost gymnastic geometry.
Are the squares in Broadway Boogie Woogie intended as symbols of cars or buildings or sidewalks or traffic lights or flashing neon signs? Man has mastered all of these various aspects of his new, technological life. Like a child confidant in a now familiar env ironment and his own well-developed skills, man can build the future he envisions with the colorful building blocks of his mind and imagination.
Mondrian has reduced life and art to the bare essentials. Variations on a single shape are combined with only three colors and white. He has omitted even the black and gray of other De Stijl artists. Mondrian''s ability to triumph artistically in spite of these restrictions sends a clear and reassuring message of hope.
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