Piet Mondrian: Artist of Huge Modern Ideas

I love modern art that is bold and blazing contemporary. One of my favorite painters is Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). His art is so mind-blowing...indeed he took artistic traditionalism and turned it upside down. An interesting fact is that the artist was intensely fascinated with the spiritual aspect of life. Perhaps, this passion propelled him more so into the picaresque modernism that transpired in his work in his later years. In 1912, he moved to Paris and got himself heavily influenced by the aesthetes, i.e. the art of Braque and Picasso. Soon, he broke away from painting that was representational. After a while, Mondrian began a periodical called 'De Stijl.' In this periodical he wrote his essays that described his theory of art, and in a quite unique provocative essence of innovativeness, he came up with the term "neoplasticism." His unique word use was not too much verbosity, but instead amazing, intense feeling. I have always been fascinated with Piet Mondian's unusually bright colors though admittedly in his later years he seems to have progressed thoughtfully into a quite clever use of more and more white and of course black lines. There is a strong sense of higher math about his work and his artistic creations seem often to encapsulate a profound sense of higher science and art fused into a blend that had much intricate enjoyment for the viewer. His design concepts like those of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque have an engaging and remarkable strength and in a sense so much marvelous spiritual intensity that the person seeing Mondrian art can indeed achieve a wonderful sense of joy for herself or himself. Composition N0. 10. 1939-42 (An oil on Canvas) is one of my particular Mondrian favorites. Since I am more and more interested in a spiritual great sense of definitive meaning like the beautiful words of Proverbs 3:5 ("Trust in the Lord.") I find the dynamic powerful qualities of the art of Piet Mondrian with all his neoplasticism and modernism especially thrilling.

Pablo Picasso, an artist of fervent passion

An event in New York last Friday afternoon triggered again my long, intense fascination with the incredible, magical artistic genius of Pablo Picasso. The Friday event was when a woman attending an art class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art lost her balance and fell into a huge Picasso painting called, 'The Actor.' The extremely large canvas got a tear of about six inches in the lower right-hand corner. The museum people said the painting should be repaired soon and made ready for a grand Picasso event that is to open on April 27. 'The Actor' is a painting of an acrobat posing against an unusual backdrop. This circumstance reawakens in me many grand Picasso memories. When I was a student and living in an apartment in Athens, Ga. I had a fine Picasso print in the front room and it got many good comments from my friends. Pablo Picasso came from Spain but lived most of his life in France. His work is terrific because of its explosive varied nature. Indeed when he came to Paris his creativity soared tremendously. His "Blue" period with its mysterious colors so bright...Lord, the raw emotional majesty of these significant art experiences just totally overcome all of us. And of course his Cubism (a genre that he formed along with the magnificent Georges Braque) was so full of unique colors and such passion that it engulfs one's brain when a person takes it in. I know that Georges Braque has always a favorite of mine, also. Cubism is full of a clever dexterity that tends to mystify and yet sensually take us art enthusiasts in and make us feel we are enjoying a dance of Salome or something. Another grand time for me was when I saw the haunting Pablo Picasso work, a large painting called, 'Guernica.' It was wild for it showed the ideas that Picasso had about the visceral ravages of modern war. Indeed when a man sees 'Guernica' it overwhelms. It brings back many memories for me like when I heard the stories from my great friends, the C-130 pilots who had experienced the harsh combat missions in Vietnam in the late '60s. Pablo Picasso did a fantastic job depicting the war experience in his incredibly creative painting, 'Guernica.' It is tremendously memorable.