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Mondrian

The Art of Destruction

This book on Mondrian, one of the great pioneers of abstract art, analyzes the interrelation between his paintings and his theories on art and life as expressed in public writings and (largely unpublished) letters. Mondrian’s art was not based on reasoning or calculation – on the contrary, intuition was central to his concept of the artistic process – but he always felt a strong urge to position his art in a wider cultural and philosophical context. Crucial to Mondrian’s thought was the Theosophical notion of evolution, which required the destruction of the old to make room for the new, in life, in society and in art.

Mondrian: The Art of Destruction concentrates on the paintings, the artist’s major achievement, examining the influences that shaped his art: Fauvism and Cubism c.1910, the work of Bart van der Leck, De Stijl and the Parisian art world during the 1920s. Mondrian appears not as an isolated figure, but as an artist who took a keen interest in the world around him, a veritable avant-garde painter who saw his role as a creator of a new, modern culture.

Distribution by the University of Chicago Press only to customers in the USA and Canada. Customers elsewhere should visit the UK website of Reaktion Books.


264 pages | 8.25 x 11

Art: Art--Biography, Art--General Studies

Culture Studies


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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Path of Ascension, away from Matter: The Years to 1914
2. Natural Reality and Abstract Reality: 1914-19
3. The Content of all Art is One: Neo-Plasticist Painting and the Other Arts
4. Centres of Magnetism - Paris, London, New York: 1919-44
References
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

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