Standing there in the galleries of MoMA, I saw a lot of classic, seen-it-a-thousand-times-before art that no longer held any magic or surprises for me. Then suddenly, something jumped out at me, startling me with strange feelings of intimate familiarity… it was my old friend, Piet Mondrian…

Ah, that crazy cat Piet Mondrian… he was the dominant and most strident voice of the De Stijl artistic movement of the early 20th century… the guy who wrote letters and manifestos declaring the “end of painting” with a brand of pure geometric abstraction that he and his Dutch buddies called neoplasticism.

I was transfixed by sheer physicality of Mondrian’s paintings… seeing not a work of art mechanically reproduced onto a flat screen or page of a book…. but feeling the full aura of a nearby object in the room.

In particular, I was moved by Mondrian’s penultimate piece, Broadway Boogie Woogie (“BBW”) that he painted in 1942-1943:

(click the video link below, to roll the music…)

Piet Mondrian was intense. At the height of De Stijl in the 1920′s, he insisted that you (if you were in his group) could paint anything you wanted to…

..anything, that is, as long as it only contained straight vertical and horizontal lines…

…and a had a few squares or rectangles…

..and those were colored white, black, grey or a primary color.

Meanwhile, the actual founder and leader of the De Stijl group,Theo van Doesburg, prefered to explore matters slightly more freely than our friend Piet.

In fact, at one point Theo had the temerity to start working with (gasp!) straight diagonal lines and (double gasp!) blends of primary colors.

Theo van Doesburg, Counter Composition XVI, 1925

Mondrian was incensed to the point of near-violence… after all, he already had simple solution to the “problem” of diagonals… just tilt the frame, to straighten-out reality:

Piet Mondrian,Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red and Grey, 1921

Theo van Doesburg did not relent as he and Mondrian’s diagonal-orthogonal debate raged on.

Ever the playful artist, van Doesburg continued to fool around with the De Stijl “rules,” even using Piet’s most hated color (green) and mixing – yes, mixing! – diagonal and non-diagonal lines.

Well, this relationship was over.

As the years went on, Mondrian dug his heels in deeper and deeper into his orthodoxy, creating ever more “pure” compositions.

It wasn’t until the 1940′s that his heels would be grooving on the streets of New York City, after Mondrian fled the burning landscape of WWII Europe.

Living in (and loving) Manhattan, Mondrian discovered a kind of piano dance music derived from the blues, called boogie woogie.

He’d paint in his tightly controlled, exacting way during the day; then let loose, partying and rocking all night…

Which brings us back to BBW:

Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie,1942-1943

This artwork, his last completed painting, was the start of a new chapter of Mondrian’s career that ended too soon. Mondrian died of pneumonia on February 1, 1944.

Those who study Mondrian’s art in detail can trace out the evolution of BBW starting with a “revolutionary” diamond piece where he introduced (gasp!) lines that were not black…

..and moving through pieces such as these…

Piet Mondrian, New York, 1941

..before finally arriving at station-stop BBW :

Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie,1942-1943

We have some hints where the process was headed, thanks to Mondrian’s final (but incomplete) artwork that has been dubbed Victory Boogie Woogie:

Yet for all the evolutionary process, BBW stands apart as a radical departure and stand-alone artwork, especially compared to the cool, visual austerity of earlier works.

It seems closer to representational art than his De Stijl would pretend to allow… where something else is being captured and abstracted, beyond formal visual composition.

BBW is an explosion of suppressed feelings modulated through what is almost a (gasp!) picture of the blinking Manhattan grid.

There is irony here, especially given the title… the lights of New York City shine brightest wherever its grid is interrupted by the diagonal line of Broadway, which creates the places where people congregate.  This painting, then, represents the moment the grid has been broken by a diagonal line — the moment of “boogie woogie.” 

Of course, Mondrian would not dare (yet) introduce a diagonal in 1943… but hey, let’s cut this guy some slack. For Mondrian, the BBW done as it is, is a big deal… he has crossed a threshold.

If Mondrian had continued living and painting, BBW would most likely have been followed by dozen of similar compositions, so some of the excitement of BBW comes from the fact that it didn’t get integrated within a plodding sequence of methodical studies.

Instead, this painting stands nearly alone, just barely connected to previous pieces and not yet “systematized” into a series.

Broadway Boogie Woogie is the moment where the accidents of an artist’s life – war in Europe, love of dancing, death from pneumonia – turn a supposed abstract work of geometry into a testimony to the unleashing and expression of emotion that had previously been restricted.

Slip into Mondrian’s leather shoes for a moment… inhale scent of his paint brushes… and imagine that for about two decades you’ve tied yourself into knots with rules and strictures… straight lines only, with no diagonals…. austere squares and rectangles… primary colors bounded by quiet black or white.

One day you find yourself in a new place and realize that your old life is gone. The place and people that supported you can’t be counted on… but you aren’t willing to throw all your rules and principles away… you’re still operating in primary colors and straight lines…

..but within that you’re willing to let go of pride  and prejudice  and give up control in a safe place. You can party rock in the house tonight… Everybody just have a good time.. It’s getting louder now as the pianist plays faster and faster… the rhythm is throbbing and pulsing in yellow and red lights as your sense of hearing and seeing become merged You let the music take over and carry you… And when the song is over… you can go back home… and bottle up those feelings within a set of lines and shapes that pulsate with the passion you felt… So you can open up the bottle the next time you feel like having a night in the city…

Yes, you have found your inner boogie woogie.

Some of these works — the ones we sold thousands of — are still in that faraway place of retail burnout. However, it was interesting to feel The Starry Night‘s presence before seeing it as I came around a corner to face a crowd of onlookers that resembled a press conference.

Instead of looking at the art, I found myself reverting to my default “safe mode” of Meta-Ironic Man, looking at the people looking at the art… taking pictures with my little cameraphone of them taking pictures with their cameraphones and so on.  Long-forgotten thoughts of Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction were once again bobbing up below the surface of my consciousness.

In some of MoMAs spaces, it seems as though that is the purpose of the artworks:  to frame the characters who come through the gallery, an endless procession of people and performances.

Overall it was an enjoyable visit with no small amount of sensory overload. Leaving aside those works that no longer (or never did) speak to me, I did get to develop some new relationships – as well as rekindle some very old friendships – on the walls, floors and ceilings of the galleries.

Now, on the subject of rekindling old friendships, stay tuned for Part Two….

 Bonus track of Tali Mali… combine him with Dalton Sherman and you have weapons-grade motivation:

What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence.

The only consequence is what we do.

- John Ruskin

All the really good ideas I ever had

came to me while I was milking a cow.                        

- Grant Wood

(There’s something about those two guys that make them a good pairing)

((Segue from last week’s post))

Whistlers…  or as D.E.S. would call them, Screaming-Slytherin-Quiddich-Players-From-Hello-Without-the-O

Scrambling Comets…  cf. Whistlers

Salute… used for those grande finales, blinding-Titanium-white explosions of earth-shaking, ear-splitting, bowel-moving power

The World’s Biggest Firework Shell… 48 inches of incinerating love… haven’t seen this one personally, but apparently the explosion’s diameter covered half-a-mile… the fact that it was blown up over a city in Japan makes it all the more disturbing

 (tip of the hat to Anne S).

WIRED contributing editor Daniel Pink points to this short film as an illustration of “Emotionally Intelligent Signage,”  which he explains in this not-quite-perfectly-executed-pecha-kucha presentation:

Pecha-kutcha and other X-TREME POWERPOINTING is a topic I’ll save for a separate post.  As for “Emotionally Intelligent Signage,” while that term may sound cool in a  WIRED-techno-chic sort of way, a more accurate term for what Pink is describing would be “Empathetic Signage.” Of course, that sounds… emm… pathetic… so we’ll keep the meme as Pink has rendered it for marketing purposes, and quietly remind ourselves that Emotional Intelligence is a vast, evolving topic, of which this idea of “empathy” is just a part. (All pseudo-science rants are hereby directed to the StrengthsFinder comments thread.) 

Got some time to watch more Internet-borne viral videos?  If this stuff makes you feel all warm and cuddly, get yourself validated with this other popular film festival winner that’s been circulating:

“Validate” is sort of like the opposite of “Regulate,” if ya know what I’m sayin…

( roll the track… )

Synonym: Syn”o*nym\ (s[i^]n”[-o]*n[i^]m), n.; pl. Synonyms (-n[i^]mz). [F. synonyme, L. synonyma, pl. of synonymum, Gr. synw`nymon. See Synonymous.] One of two or more words (commonly words of the same language) which are equivalents of each other; one of two or more words which have very nearly the same signification, and therefore may often be used interchangeably. See under Synonymous. [Written also synonyme.]

The succinct definition of “synonym” is “equivalent word,” and most dictionaries qualify that definition as signifying a word with nearly  the same meaning as another word.  According to the thesaurus, there is no synonym for synonym, and its antonym is… antonym.

Any serious writer or professional translator will tell you that there is no such thing as a true “synonym.”

Gustave Flaubert famously devoted himself to finding le seul mot juste – the unique right word – in order to convey his thoughts to his readers, avec précision. How very French indeed. Flaubert’s sentiment is enviable, though not necessarily practical. The rate of discourse — even serious discourse — usually exceeds the rate of poetic contemplation. When a person is using les mots justes in fluid conversation, it is said that they are speaking eloquently or articulately (though those are two different things, remember, no such thing as synonyms). However, it seems to me that there is something NICE in the ambiguity of words too… the slightly misplaced word with potential alternate meaning, a subconscious slip of the tongue, whether cunningly done or not, may please even the most ornery of linguists.

Yes, words can be used synonymously, but the words themselves usually have shades of meaning or semantic distribution where they are more appropriate to use, eg. house vs home, rock vs stone, bright vs brilliant. Even in seemingly synonymous slang terms there are subtle differences. Observe bloke vs chap (socioeconomic level of either speaker or subject), or even, shmuck vs putz (degrees of jerkiness and haplessness).

A salesperson that I once managed liked to point out that the difference between a vase (“vayse”) and a vase (“vahz”) is about fifty dollars.

Because language is fluid (because apparently we can now start sentences with because), over time, some words converge in their usage as other meanings are dropped. What feels like a violation however is when a word is introduced for no good reason: completionist, or out of pretension: the word “architect” used as a verb which is, of course (in my heavily biased opinion) a complete abomination.

Because language is fluid, over time, words flip their meanings (auto-antonymy) This can be a process of slow evolution, or it can be a rapid and deliberate hijacking of language.

Just as with other forms of evolution, the rate of change in language is a function of usage and exchange between individuals. With the rapid communication cycles of contemporary society, we can expect that 1) meaning shifts will happen faster, and also that 2) the “flattening” of terms, where they lose their distinctions, will also increase.

So, returning to where we left on our Siddhartha post comment thread, let’s wrap this up with a poem: “Thesaurus” by contemporary American poet, Billy Collins. Someone pointed out to me that the uniqueness of a word is like the uniqueness of person (and I suppose people can also change their meanings too). Although comparing words to people is perhaps too bold a metaphor, it does give the last stanza of this poem a powerful punch:  

I’ve always had a thing for “The Fighting Temeraire,” and according to one article, so have a lot of British people: In a 2005 BBC radio poll, they voted it the greatest British painting of all time (hear hear). One part painterly delight, one part heavy-handed metaphor and one part je-ne-sais-pas-quoi subtlety, this painting just hits the spot. For me, not only does this landscape painting / historical narrative painting beautifully sum up the end of an era in British history, but it’s also relevant in our current age of rapid technological change.

Also, given that Turner was a transitional figure between the elite establishment Beaux Arts schools and the emerging Impressionist movement, I think there’s some self-reference (and even self-mockery) going on in this painting. In terms of style and content, the Fighting Temeraire painting is both OF the subject of transition and ON the subject of transition. In the New Yorker article, Schama neatly sums up this painting as being “… not about the embalming of the British past but about its unsentimental coupling with the future.” 

Schama pulls a Schama and totally nails it in his last paragraph, where he points out a very interesting aspect of the Fighting Temeraire: If you analyze the landscape features carefully enough (assuming you have a working knowledge of Britain’s geography, naval history and river flows, natch) one could conclude that the painting in fact depicts a sunrise, not a sunset. Schama admittedly isn’t the first to point this out, but he seems to embrace the notion that, whether or not it was a deliberate gesture on the part of Turner, in any case the implications are wonderful.

(full New Yorker article here.)

Привычка свыше нам дана,
замена счастию она.

Heaven sends us habit
to take the place of happiness.

from Eugene Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin, Book 2, Stanza 31 

Taking that quote out of its narrative context (preserved for obsessive-compulsive posterity, below) and giving it a generalized interpretation:   We start out young and foolish, ambitious with pie-in-the-sky dreams. Then, over the course of, say, 15 to 25 years, many of us get grinded down by reality and its attendant demands. Our mental and spiritual survival mechanism is to find comfort and contentment in the routines that make up our daily lives. 

Routines lead to habits and vice versa. In the working world, the analog of  “Routine/Habit” is called “Process.”  Process is neccessary for survival, but it is often hated by people with strong Expressive/Visionary  tendencies – the Romantic poets of business. In Eugene Onegin, Pushkin was clever enough to recognize and parody himself in the hopeful/hopeless character of the poet Lensky, even while acknowledging the tragedy of a mediocre, stifled life.

Unfulfilled dreams and missed opportunities don’t have to be a sad thing, and we don’t have to resign ourselves to mediocrity just because we’re not going to acheive all those dreams exactly the way we had hoped. As Randy Pausch said today in his Last Lecture, quoting a popular maxim of a former employer, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” 

c.f.
Рвалась и плакала сначала,
С супругом чуть не развелась;
Потом хозяйством занялась,
Привыкла и довольна стала.
Привычка свыше нам дана:
Замена счастию она .

She pined and wept at first, of course,
Nearly insisted on divorce,
Then took up household management,
Grew habituated and became content.
Habit is given us by heaven’s bequest:
It is almost as good as happiness.
(Chapter 2, Stanza 31)
(http://www.pushkins-poems.com/Yev211.htm)

Always contented with his life,
and with his dinner, and his wife.
(Chapter 1, Stanza 12)

Habit is Heaven’s own redress:
it takes the place of happiness.
(Chapter 2, Stanza 31)
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin)

from Eugene Onegin, Scene 1, by Pyotr Tchaikovsky:

LARINA
I busied myself with the household,
became resigned and settled down.

FILIPYEVNA
And God be thanked!

LARINA, FILIPYEVNA
Habit is sent us from above
in place of happiness.
Yes, that is how it is:
Habit is sent us from above,
in place of happiness.

ЛАРИНА И ФИЛИППЬЕВНА
Привычка свыше нам дана,
замена счастию она.

(http://www.opera-guide.ch/libretto.php?id=373&uilang=en&lang=en)

 (buy the poster here)

What an allegory! This makes you realize how far removed we are from those early days of this country’s history.

I think it’s kind of like an early American history equivalent to the giant murals of dictators you see in some parts of the world.