Mondrian's Boogie Woogie Beat

Abstract

Most art historians attribute Mondrian's stylistic changes in New York to New York: skyscrapers, people, lights, advertisements, and jazz. They also compartmentalize Mondrian's New York work from the rest of his career, labeling Broadway Boogie Woogie the masterpiece of Mondrian's New York period. I argue not only for a jazz interpretation of Mondrian's final paintings, but their significance as the most important paintings in Mondrian's abstract oeuvre, a continuum of subtle adjustments over nearly 30 years. Using formalism and style, biographical study, light psychoanalysis, and scientific analysis, I connect Mondrian's paintings in New York to musical elements that he valued and a deeper philosophical interpretation of his theories and goals. In my first chapter, "De Stijl: Mondrian's foundation," I lay out Mondrian's fundamental principles about art and his involvement in De Stijl and Neo-Plasticism. In the second chapter I discuss New York in the 1930s, when Mondrian arrived. I also analyze some of the transatlantic paintings and refer to the scientific analysis of Cooper and Spronk for confirmation of Mondrian's alterations to the paintings in New York. In the third chapter, I present Mondrian's affinity for music and particularly jazz and its parallels to Neo-Plastic art. I also analyze selected New York paintings and connect them to the jazz Mondrian experienced in New York. Finally, in the fourth chapter, I assert the importance of Mondrian's final paintings to his career and original artistic intents going back to De Stijl. [From Introduction]