Like a Kid in a Candy Store

Again, too tired to blog properly... but have time enough before the Sandman visits to detail the highlight of today: Piet Mondrian at the Museum of Modern Art. A whole room of Mondrian.



I remember many years ago Mr Dolan, the CBC Junior School Art Teacher, holding up what was then a bewildering array of red, blue, gray and yellow squares. We had to emulate the works of that artist in our own composition: and I thought it was bullshit. "Why copy art that any child could reproduce?" I insisted - after all it appeared that the black lines that divide the squares were arbitrarily placed on the canvas, and then filled in with the primary colours in an even more arbitrary manner.

But for some reason, those images stuck in my head and, over time I came to (partially) understand and appreciate his work: the way he plays alternately with lines and colour to invoke feelings of eternity or feelings of finality. How the white patches demonstrate depth, while the black lines - initially the most striking aspects of the painting - can be so flat, and immovable.





The room culminates in the Broadway Boogie Woogie which evokes Times Square's frantic traffic and bright neon lights in such a bright, clever manner.



(Incidentally, this was my least favourtie until I actually saw Broadway!)

I was like a kid in a candy store. The only problem: I wanted more - and I know MoMA has them. An excuse for another visit in a couple of years, I think.