Composition in White, Black, and Red

Piet Mondrian, 1936 · Gallery 512 · Floor 5

So we got one red bar. That's all the color he gives you. Along the bottom edge. Thin. Stubborn. Just above it, small, in red: P M 36. Even his signature stays within the budget. Everything else is white and black. More than three feet of canvas. Not much on it. But look at what that little red bar has to balance. All that white. He's not making the two sides match. He's trying to make things that don't match hold together. This is Mondrian's Composition in White, Black, and Red. Paris, 1936. And he thought paintings like this were temporary. Art gave you the harmony life couldn't. Yet, once that harmony got into the way people actually lived, art would have done its job. You wouldn't need a painting of it. You'd be living in it. In 1936, George Morris buys this directly from Mondrian for the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA is seven years old. Still deciding what modern art is. A year later, Nazi Germany gives its answer. They called it Degenerate. That summer, in Munich, the Nazis put confiscated art on display. Crowded rooms. Insults on the walls. The whole thing is designed so you point and laugh. Mondrians are seized from a museum in Hanover. But getting rid of them doesn't always mean destroying them. Some are worth money abroad. Apparently, Degenerates travel well. One of those paintings is called Painting No. 2. Not the one in front of you. An earlier Mondrian. The Nazis hand it to a dealer to sell for foreign currency. A June 1939 letter says the New York dealer sent it back. Said it was "Damaged in transit." After that, nothing. So, Mondrian imagined a world so harmonious that paintings could disappear. But turns out the paintings started disappearing first.

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