“New York City I”, oil on canvas by Piet Mondrian, 1941
The curators of a museum in Düsseldorf were mistaken. Now that they’ve discovered it, they’re not even sure if they should turn the board to the “correct” position. And apparently, that’s not even possible.
At the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, the curators they were mistaken in an unusual way.
The German museum has had on display, since 1980, the painting New York City Ia fundamental 1941 work by the great name of Dutch abstraction Piet Mondrian. Millions of people passed by it and even art historians gave classes on the painting.
But all this time, the painting was hanging upside downsays .
Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan He was a pure modernist and famously proclaimed in 1914 that “art has no direct relationship with reality”.
The Mondrians, art was abstract and above reality. It was a search for universal values and a universal aesthetic.
Mondrian is known for being one of the pioneers of abstract art, famous for his iconic minimalist paintings neoplasticismo.
I was looking for a harmonia universal
Even experts sometimes feel the same.
Mondrian criou New York City I shortly after fleeing Europe to the United States. He was enchanted by the boogie-woogie rhythm of Manhattan. I wanted to capture that kinetic energy. Instead of paint, he chose colored strips of paper. with sticker back.
And it was precisely this choice of material that ended up revealing everything.
Em 2022, Susanne Meyer-Büsercurator of the museum, was preparing a new exhibition about the artist. He observed the work carefully, in particular the thickening of the lines at the bottom of the frame. It looked like a horizon line. Mas Mondrian não pintava horizontes urbanos. Pintava a sensação de uma cidade.
. It’s a question of ergonomics. Do not place fragile strips of tape from the base of a vertical screen; suspend themselves from the top, letting gravity help to find the vertical.
Meyer-Büser noticed that many of the yellow lines ended just millimeters before the current “lower” margin. If the frame is turnedthese interrupts pass upward, which is coherent with an artist starting a line without completely reaching the edge of the screen.
So, Meyer-Büser consulted the museum’s archives and found a photograph from June 1944, taken in Mondrian’s studio shortly after his death. In the image, perched on the easel was New York City I. The dense array of yellow, black, red and blue lines appeared at the top.
The supposed “horizon line” it was, after all, a kind of cover dark and heavy. “Was it a mistake when someone removed the work from the box? Was there carelessness during transportation?”, asked the curator. “It’s impossible to say”.
Therefore, the painting was upside down. The solution seems simple: take it off the wall, rotate it 180 degrees and hang it up again. But that’s not possible.
Because Mondrian used sticky strips instead of paint, this work became a conservation nightmare. Duct tape is not a material made to last for decades. Rubber-based adhesives used in the 1940s oxidize, dry and end up falling apart.
delicate state of balance. The strips are literally hanging on by a thread. They spent decades giving way in a specific direction. Gravity pulled down the molecular structure of the adhesive. Turning the work now would reverse this gravitational force.
If the museum rotated the painting at this time, the material, already brittle, could fragmented. Assim, os curadores ficaram perante uma escolha: expor a obra corretamente e arriscar destruí-la, ou keep it incorrectly exposed to preserve it. They opted for the second hypothesis.
Some argue that this “wrong” assembly proves the success of abstract art. The image works both ways; truly transcends realityas Mondrian intended.
Critics might say that This shows precisely the opposite: that abstract art there is little that is essential, if you cannot even understand where is the up and down. After all, It’s exactly this kind of conversation that art should provoke.
