Piet Mondrian Meets Andy Warhol

Piet Mondrian's Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue (1921) is possibly the tightest, most rigidly structured work by an artist known for his almost mathematically composed work (in fact, several small programs can be found on the Web that attempt to draw derivatives based on formulae). Its lines lend a form evocative of the architect Renzo Piano's and Richard Rogers's scandalous masterpiece, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, while being more formal and buttoned up than the later Composition No. 10, which superficially appears to be related yet is a more disjointed work which lacks the sharp focus of the present work under consideration.

The minimalist approach of Mondrian also lends itself to a treatment in the intellectually-minimal style of Andy Warhol because of its simple lines and sharply defined contrast. The lack of the vivid, almost psychedelic colors of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe series actually underscores the transformation present in each of the frames. Though only one characteristic of the original is changed at a time, the painting is radically transformed, shattering the old Weltanschauung and replacing it with a diametrical opposite which is at the same time intimately and inextricably related to the Urtext.

This piece is as interesting psychologically as it is artistically. Although each frame is a revolution unto itself, we can, nevertheless, behold in each of the frames a particularly august optical illusion. Willem de Kooning spoke of it admiringly when he admitted he was

crazy about Mondrian... something happens in his painting that I can not take my eyes off... it has terrific tension. It's hermetic. The optical illusion [of] Mondrian is that where lines cross they make a little light. Mondrian didn't like that but he couldn't prevent it. The eye couldn't take it, and when the black lines cross they flicker. What I'm trying to bring out is that form is [natural in the] point of view of eyes, it's not an optical illusion. That's the way you see it.

For an obnoxious version of this illusion, see the stand-alone picture below.

Today's technology allows even someone such as Larry Coleman, whose distinct lack of artistic talent rivals that of the great Warhol himself, to transform the Dutch master's opus in several shocking ways in less than ten minutes. Clockwise from upper left these are: original, negative, edge detection, and negative edge detection.

*For the humor impaired: this is a parody of self-important art critics who, in an effort to conceal the fact that they don't understand their subject, write in a manner that intentionally leaves the reader with no understanding of their lack of understanding and does not contribute to the reader's understanding of anything worth understanding. It is also a jab at artists who are so singularly untalented that their title should be prefaced with the prefix "con", yet are proclaimed as geniuses by individuals too shallow to see to the bottom of themselves. In short: Andy Warhol is an idiot.