You know who I'm talking about: the artist who turned blocks of royal blue, scarlet, and buttercup set in a black grid against a white field into high modern art.
It's the straightforward geometry, the primary colors and their surprising vividness. The simplicity belies complexity - like looking at a city from far above. Noise, traffic, smells - they're all left far below. Mondrian came decades before, but his aesthetic embodies that cool 1960s Mad Men / New York / Seagram Building / Alexander Calder futurism / Pool Room of the Four Seasons vibe that is only a cigarette and a vodka rocks away from perfection.
To me, it's as if someone took the native exuberance of Marc Chagall; the riotous, anarchic energy of Jackson Pollock; and the brash abstraction of Mark Rothko (all of whom I love) and - like a wet paper towel to a whiteboard - erased the excess, leaving only the basics: a grid of lines with occasional blocks of color on a field of stark emptiness. Without Mondrian, I wager there would be no Rothko, no Pollock. Without a form to break free of, what need is there for the violent slashes of paint, the blurred edges of color blocks?
Every time I see someone in the outside world taking inspiration from Mondrian, it brings me some little bit of joy.
Take designer Yves Saint Laurent. In 1965, he created a series of dresses that replaced stretched canvas with jersey dress fabric. Look at this for a moment... The cut of the dress is by no means revealing - even for 1965. A tight crew neck. Sleeveless. Cocktail length. Not tightly fitted. The entire piece works. It's structured without looking too formal. To me, it says day into night. Big round sunglasses. A black patent clutch. Simple black kitten heels. Like the little black dress with less black, it feels classic.
I'm truly jealous.
It's so 60s, but if you walked into Bloomingdales today it would still be immediately wearable - sure, identifiable as a vintage look, but since when have they been problematic?
However, the creativity doesn't end only in couture.
This slice of cake comes from a blog that I happened upon once. It's just simple loaves of cake that are trimmed to size, attached with chocolate ganache, and then glazed into a thick rectangle of tasty and pretty.
I've wanted to make this ever since I found it. Imagine a basic butter cake for the white areas. The yellow block redolent of lemon. Red with its slight hint of cherry extract. Blue, perhaps, tasting of peppermint extract. A riot of flavors, sure, but it would be a new surprise with every bite.
I missed the Swatch craze of the mid-1980s by virtue of having been born in 1982. That doesn't stop me from utterly coveting one of these guys. Sure, it's cheap plastic, but it would immediately pop off the outfit you accessorized to the hilt with this watch. Granted, you might have to do some slouchy cardigan in that pre-Seattle grunge kinda way with Doc Marten combat boots (which I happen to own already) and slightly too-bleached jeans to make it work. This while playing Madonna's "Crazy For You" a little too loud through your chic Walkman cassette player that you found at Goodwill for a dollar. That ought to do it pretty well.
It's hard work to be Mondrian cool. After all, the two drink lunch doesn't fly anymore. It's hard to put cigarettes anywhere into this politically correct age. You'll just need basic black to play off and play up the primary colors, the right amount of moxie, the liberated self-assurance of a hipster without any of the "over-it" irony, and the knowledge that your man Mondrian makes you cooler than all the other kids on the block.
And if all that fails, just add the shoes - by Nike, inspired by Mondrian, circa 2008. Timeless.
Art: All the cool kids are doing it.
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