The modern project - Piet Mondrian

A new society

The modern project has manifested itself not only in the two-dimensional space of Piet Mondrian’s Neoplasticism but also in the great efforts of architects to rethink the cities. The ideas of Gropius and Le Corbusier presuppose a new society. In speaking of phenomena as complex as cities, it is necessary to take variety as a common factor, to translate individual imagination, freedom of enterprise, and plurality of intent in terms of architecture and urban planning without losing sight of the overall context.

The question of the relationship between change and constancy, multiplicity and unity, which I have highlighted while examining Broadway and Victory Boogie Woogie, then becomes an economic, political, and social issue, and everything thus becomes much more complicated.

“Post-mortem” architecture

The continuum evoked by Mondrian, in which each thing loses its particular nature to become part of a context of relations, presupposes a more highly evolved social and economic system than we have at present.

So-called postmodern architecture has instead clumsily reintroduced symmetry, restoring the central role of the object and thereby preventing a dynamic vision of greater breadth. What a friend in Berlin used to call “post-mortem” architecture has in fact proved to be the plastic expression of a conception that was only apparently innovative but actually conservative all the way through, developed by potentates intent on maintaining their positions and largely unconcerned with the quality of people’s lives in the future.

Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building on Madison Avenue in Manhattan is a clear example of this. It may not be long before others discover new pathways of greater present-day relevance in line with the true ideals of socialism, a term largely misused in the course of the 20th century.

The search for new values

I believe that the search for values, about which there is so much talk nowadays, is also a question of plastic space capable of generating a new mental space. We shall only find more certain and lasting values by adopting a dynamic vision capable of harmonizing with a reality that changes.

A constant relationship cannot in fact be established between subject and object, that is between inner and outer realities if they are not traveling at much the same speed. The choice is ours: whether to adopt a dynamic vision or opt for a return to the slower rhythms of life of the agricultural society and the more certain, tried and tested values associated with that type of social organization such as, for instance, figurative painting.

“Strong thought”

So-called realistic or figurative painting would regain its veracity if we again perceived our surrounding reality at the speed of the human being on foot or horseback. Everything changed much more slowly in social life back when the world appeared to be almost immobile, when people thought that it was the sun that revolved around the earth and that reality was something permanently given on which they could in any case exert no influence.

Realistic or figurative painting can no longer be “true” today because it is we ourselves with our ideas and actions that alter its underlying assumptions every day. Here lies what I regard as one of the fundamental contradictions of our time, namely the fact that we live in accordance with dynamic rhythms that our common sense still represents through a static and hence obsolete space.

This is also one of the factors leading to the general crisis of values and in particular of “strong thought”, not to mention the whole of the recent parade of Neo, Trans, and Post trends in the visual arts, all of which basically mean an incapacity to formulate an effective vision of present-day reality.

The complexities of social life

From a political standpoint, the management of present-day complexities requires the capacity to address the variety of interests animating a modern democracy and at the same time an effort to direct the resources and actions of the social body toward objectives of common interest, to mediate between the various parties and interests so as to attain syntheses effectively representing the complexity of social life. This should be the task of politics, which has instead come to lose its ideal impetus after the so-called collapse of ideologies.

In social life too, greater importance now attaches than ever before to the ability to handle the relationship between the one and the many, moving constantly back and forth between the parts and the whole so as to avoid the predominance of either the multitude of particular interests or the will of the few.

Particular interests bring chaos and makes it impossible to work for the common interest; the will of the few brings the paralysis of democracy if not indeed oligarchy and dictatorship. In a world that is being brought together through the process of globalization, it is essential to devise flexible systems where the general (the tendency toward synthesis) is in close contact with the particular (multiplicity) and the two terms are wholly interdependent.

This is precisely what Mondrian endeavored to express with the constant dialectic between unity and multiplicity right up to his two last works (Broadway Boogie Woogie and Victory Boogie Woogie), where unity coincides with multiplicity. Would the fusion of unity and multiplicity at the social level perhaps mean achieving more effective political representation, manage the life of the polis in real time? This point would merit consideration in greater depth.

A utopian proposal

Mondrian put forward a utopian proposal to abolish art and achieve beauty in real life. Art would no longer be necessary once it had proved possible to attain the harmonies evoked by painting concretely among human beings. While a look around shows that this will take a long time yet, there are some positive signs.

The Dutch artist was in no hurry and did not expect to see the world he had in mind established any time soon. He was well aware that it is not only creativity and technical expertise that count in life but also and above all economic, political, ethical and religious factors. He thus understood that real progress would necessarily be slow and gradual. Others instead believe that certain changes can take place quickly and have no hesitation in proclaiming the failure of a project, whose significance they have barely grasped, if it is not fully achieved overnight.

The modern project foreshadowed by some masters of abstract-concrete art was something more than a fashion, which is what most of our contemporary visual “culture” unfortunately boils down to. In the case of Piet Mondrian, the issue was not only aesthetic but also ethical, social and especially spiritual at the same time. To tell the truth, a look around leads us to suspect not only that modernism has not been superseded but also that it has not even begun in its deeper sense.

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