Composition No. II, with Red and Blue

Piet Mondrian, 1929 · Gallery 512 · Floor 5

Okay, so for a lot of people, Mondrian is a dress. You know the one. Yves Saint Laurent takes the black lines, the red, the blue, the white, and puts armholes in it. Huge hit. Copied everywhere. Years later, once he's collecting Mondrians himself, Saint Laurent says: "Mondrian is purity, and you can't go any further in painting." Which sounds like fashion talk until you get to Mondrian. Take this one. Composition No. II, with Red and Blue. Not quite sixteen inches tall. The thing is, is that Mondrian belonged to the Dutch Theosophical Society. Part religion. Part philosophy. Part attempt to explain the invisible order underneath everything. And he didn't just dabble. He joined in Holland. Decades later, when he moved to London, he had his membership transferred. Ok so we got New country. New studio. War closing in. And somewhere in the paperwork: Transfer the Theosophy membership. Check. By New York, he's no longer active in the Society. Never quits. He dies a member. In a letter, he puts it pretty plainly. "I got everything from The Secret Doctrine." Everything. That's a funny word from a man who puts almost nothing on a canvas. Four black lines. Red at the top left. Blue on the right. Mostly white. That's the whole cast. But look at where the lines stop. The one along the bottom runs into the upright and quits. So the white at the bottom right has nothing under it. It just walks off the edge. It looks inevitable now. It wasn't. Somebody had to decide exactly where every line stopped. Now get close to the bottom left. Inside the black bar, in red: P M. Then 25. Except he painted this in 1929. Part of the original date had disappeared. Mondrian restored it himself. Except, wrong year. Space, he had under control. Time was another matter.

▶ Listen on Listen to Frank

Also in Gallery 512