Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Mondrian started out painting realistic landscapes of the orderly fields in his native
homeland of Holland. Increasingly, he simplified his style into horizontal and vertical pat-
terns. For Mondrian, who was heavily into Eastern mysticism, “up versus down” and “left
versus right” were the perfect metaphors for life's dualities: good versus evil, body versus
spirit, fascism versus communism, man versus woman. The canvas is a bird's-eye view of
Mondrian's personal landscape.
World War II was a global war (involving Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa, and
Asia) and a total war (saturation bombing of civilians and ethnic cleansing). It left Europe
in ruins.
Alberto Giacometti's skinny statues have the emaciated, haunted, and faceless look of
concentration-camp survivors. In the sweep of world war and overpowering technology,
man is frail and fragile. All he can do is stand at attention and take it like a man.
Meanwhile, Francis Bacon's caged creatures speak for all of war-torn Europe when
As converted war factories turned swords into kitchen appliances, America helped rebuild
Europe while pumping out consumer goods for its own booming population. Prosperity, a
stable government, national television broadcasts, and a common fear of Soviet commun-
ism threatened to turn America into a completely homogeneous society.
Some artists, centered in New York, rebelled against conformity and superficial con-
sumerism. (They'd served under Eisenhower in war and now had to in peace, as well.)
They created art that was the very opposite of the functional, mass-produced goods of the
American marketplace.
Art was a way of asserting your individuality by creating a completely original
and personal vision. The trend was toward bigger canvases, abstract designs, and ex-
perimentation with new materials and techniques. It was called “Abstract Expression-
ism”—expressing emotions and ideas using color and form alone.
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)
“Jack the Dripper” attacks convention with a can of paint, dripping and splashing a dense
web onto the canvas. Picture Pollock in his studio, jiving to the hi-fi, bouncing off the
walls, throwing paint in a moment of enlightenment. Of course, the artist loses some con-
