Piet Mondrian – Broadway Boogie Woogie. 1942-43. Photograph taken by author. Museum of Modern Art 2023.
Each artist has their ‘absolute’. For Mondrian, the ‘absolute’ was defined by universal harmony. His Neoplasticism that is characteristic of Broadway Boogie Woogie concerned the harmony of relations in nature. This paradigm was his logical progression from Cubism’s fragmentation – where multiple perspectives collapsed into a unified, singular perspective.
Set in New York City – a place of differences, opposites, constant motion. This piece is an abstraction of the city’s traffic system. What is expressed through this uniform and organised structure is the equilibrium that takes root despite the inherent diversity concentrated in urban life. The traffic grid system is Mondrian’s testing ground to prove this equilibrium – to prove the ‘absolute’ can be achieved in a place defined by diversity.
Right angles, pulses of primary colour – red, yellow, blue – work their way through the picture plane. But there is a technical progression in his New York series. The technical innovation moves away from the definitive black lines that once enforced the separation between the white panels and coloured panels. The effect is to produce some of his most joyful and rhythmic works.
The removal of black lines from this work puts greater emphasis both on the right-angles and on colour. Definition and gradation are now achieved by juxtaposing colours against one another. Line is formed by contrast. Emphasising each colour’s place against one another, this contrast ties them together. The differing colour now becomes structural rather than complementary to the work.
The ‘absolute’ Mondrian sought was becoming closer. The transcendence from black lines and into pure colour denotes a progression in his oeuvre. Considering the artist’s occupation with Theosophy and Hindu philosophy; The right-angled grids symbolised differentiation, where multiplicity emerges from unity. The colour fields represent pure energies – the vibrational play of the absolute. Their balance within this canvas symbolises the reconciliation, the harmonising, of the many with the one, the absolute. Thus, revealing the unity of Brahman through calculated geometry of line and colour.
Brahman is said to be the undivided, infinite consciousness that underlies all phenomena in our existence. A unifying metaphysical reality. Brahman is not about unity in sameness but unity in differences. Light and dark, motion and stillness, matter and spirit. These are not contradictions, but manifestations of the same realities. This is the metaphysical principle that underlies Mondrian’s Neoplasticism. In Broadway Boogie Woogie each element is dependent on each other.
The differences in colour create the effect of separation. Separation that is dependent on each colour against one another in order to emphasise, or prove, their importance. Their oppositional forces prove to be a unifying force that joins them as well as separates them. Separation itself becomes unity. And that unity from opposites achieves the universal harmony that Mondrian sought to establish.
Disclaimer
Everything written here is my own reflection — imperfect, interpretive, and open to disagreement. Nothing is meant to offend or exclude anyone. Art invites feeling and thought in equal measure; what’s offered here is simply one person’s encounter with it.