Piet Mondrian:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/mondrian/



Open the Mondrian Randomizer!


"...the real artist of geometry was the Dutchman Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). He seems to be the absolute abstract artist, yet his early landscapes and still lifes were relatively realist.

The Grey Tree (1912; 79 x 108 cm (31 x 42 1/2 in)) adumbrates the abstractions that were a half-way house to his geometrical work, yet it also has a foothold in the real world of life and death. The Grey Tree is realist art on the point of taking off into abstraction: take away the title and we have an abstraction; add the title and we have a grey tree. He claimed to have painted these pictures from the need to make a living, yet they have a fragile delicacy that is precious and rare. Mondrian sought an art of the utmost probity: his greatest desire was to attain personal purity, to disregard all that pleases the narrow self and enter into divine simplicities. That may sound dull, but he composed with a lyrical sureness of balance that makes his art as pure and purifying as he hoped.

Mondrian imposed rigorous constraints on himself, using only primary colors, black and white, and straight-sided forms. His theories and his art are a triumphant vindication of austerity. Diamond Painting in Red, Yellow, and Blue (c. 1921-25; 143 x 142 cm (56 1/4 x 56 in)) appears to be devoid of three-dimensional space, but it is in fact an immensely dynamic picture. The great shapes are dense with their chromatic tension. The varying thicknesses of the black borders contain them in perfect balance. They integrate themselves continually as we watch, keeping us constantly interested. We sense that this is a vision of the way things are intended to be, but never are. "

Quoted from WebMuseum, http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/tl/20th/pure-abs.html



Disclaimer:

The Mondrian Randomizer isn't intended to discredit Piet Mondrian's work. The intent isn't to say "look, this stuff can be done by a 5k flash file." There was obvious work that went into creating the randomizer, constraints written into the program to control what the output looks like as well as the obvious contraints on what the program itself can not do that Mondrian could. The point of the Randomizer is to further the compositional ideas that Mondrian explored while adding in one component that he could not have-- randomness. Each iteration of the Randomizer creates it's own unique compostion. Some of them are good, some of them are not. What was important to me in creating this is not how truly "Mondrian" they are, but the fact that, good or bad, each composition is its own entity that has never and will never again exist.

"Hey Jason;
Interesting idea, although my gut feeling is that Mondrian was attempting
to convey something profound through the subtleties of his work. In a sense,
I think that the artistry was not so much in the geometric shapes or the
entire composition, but rather the textures, imperfections, and
inconsistencies that jumped out of such a geometric framework."

--Ryan Cooper

I agree with the idea that Mondrian was making a point through the humanness of his work though the inexactness that is inherent in human work. BUT, i guess what i've always seen more than that in his work is the fact that, considering that abstract [art] was still fairly new, his work was a rejection of classical compositional constraints. His work illustrates that, even stripped down to bare essentials, you can still create a strong and engaging composition. You don't need religious figures, plump nude french women, or your favorite valley landscape. The randomizer is just an extension of that idea-- simple components coming together to create a strong composition. But in this case each one is unique and you are the only audience it will ever have."