De Stijl 1917-1931

The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art

[p. 255]

piet mondriaan
the true value of the oppositions

Everybody is acquainted with the two principal oppositions of life: the good and the evil. Everybody suffers from the one or is happy because of the other. But, by no means does everybody account for the true value of these oppositions, and, generally speaking, not even the striking necessity of it is perceived by everyone: the good is claimed, whereas the evil is evaded as much as possible.

By intuition man is longing for the good. He pines for unity, for equilibrium - in the first place for himself. That is why he falls back upon the pursuing of a status of mock welfare and of a mere static balance, which, forcibly, opposes the equilibrium of life. Man, therefore, pleases himself with a false unity, and, whilst groping for this, he, evidently, rejects all dualism of the oppositions, which is but apparent in fact, though of a rather palpable reality to us.

It is obvious that man in general, though being aware of the profound unity of life, but living in this disequilibrated universe has not simultaneously accepted the dualism of the oppositions till now: that he, thus, has not lived a complete life, in which this dualism would be dissolved. In order to realize this life we

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are in need of a more perfect reality, and equally of a more advanced development: of a longer period of culture. This is the reason why man contents himself with an apparent unity, why he is continuously limiting himself within all sorts of particular forms. Living within non-equivalent oppositions and being he himself a complex of those oppositions, man does not posses the certitude of the possibility of a true equilibrium in life. It is quite natural that he is only hunting for ‘the best’ of the oppositions life tenders him, meanwhile considering the opposition he gropes for as the unity he is aware of. Yet, life demonstrates to us that its beauty is in the fact that precisely the inevitable disequilibrated oppositions push us towards the searching after equivalent oppositions, which simply and solely bring forth the true unity. So far this true unity has only been realized - in all relativity - in art and in thinking. That is how matters stand in the real existence. But also in the domain of morality the oppositions of the ideas and conceptions make us draw nearer to truth: to the unification, the annihilation of the oppositions.

By his creating of apparent unities man wants to rush things. But because of his dwelling upon them, they arrest him, and, consequently, he is advancing too slowly. Thus, the purification and the mutual separation of the seeming unities - the particular forms - are urgently and primarily required. It is by this way that the oppositions appear for what they really are: pure relations, that is. When once the equivalence of these oppositions will have been found, the rhythm will disengage, the way will be free and open to life.

If we should imagine that we could already live in a true unity at present and fail to see the disequilibrium existing, we shall be disillusioned. Life teaches us that we have to ‘create’ this unity and that this cannot be done, but by separating, dislocating and reconstructing the apparent unities, which exist or easily crop up everywhere. As we are within the reality, we must reckon with it, but in order to be able to do so, it is necessary for us to perceive it in the right way and to recognize that it is not a complete and closed form, but a perpetual movement of ever changing oppositions.

Life, history, science and art teach us that only by discerning and experiencing the oppositions we gradually come to attain the unity, the complete life. They prove us that life is nothing but a continuously acquiring of more profundity as to one and the same thing.

It is worth our fullest approving that man of our days does not longer believe, but prefers to observe. In the midst of the chaos and the overflow of life it is, therefore, of the utmost importance that we find indicated - in the free domain of art - the right way to arrive at an equivalence of the oppositions, which creates - in all relativity - complete life, equilibrium, happiness. Art justifies plastically that which is difficult to express in words.

In a degree, though, the oppositions have been perceived in life so far as they are particular forms, but it has been neglected to conceive them as being ‘relations’. Yet, exactly the proper and mutual relations of the elements do determine the whole.

Art never has neglected to make researches into these relations nor omitted

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either to break the statical aspect, which reality forces upon us. In plastic art the artist has distinguished and attentively studied the oppositions of reality. He has aimed at the composing of lines, planes and colours in their just and equivalent relations in order to create a dynamical equilbrium annhilating the statical balance of things. Through this it is that the work of art touches and moves us by its ‘harmony’ (the unification of the good and the evil); that we recognize suffering and joy in it - that the work of art is complete.

Whether established or not - in plastic art the principal oppositions are expressed by means of the rectangular relation, which is absolute. But this relation acquires a relative and vivid expression by the secondary relations: other relations of position, of dimension and of values, all of them ever varying. The work never does convey anything so much as a repetition of the plastic means, but it always bears testimony of their constant opposition.

Although these relations have always been established intuitively, the artist - who by his nature is only aspiring at expressing the beauty of the particular forms-has become more and more conscious of that which he had been doing. So it is that in the course of centuries a culture of the relations has been brougbt forth, which has not but fully been unfolding in our epoch. In the past this culture opposed the culture of the particular form, and it has been exactly by the reciprocal action of these two cultures that nowadays we have been enabled to consider the latter as drawing near an end; the research into the relations having annihilated the particular form, after its having been more and more separated and dislocated. After this the neutral form, the pure line and the pure colour have become the sole means to express the relations. The culture of the ‘pure’ relations has begun.

Thus, it is by the ‘culture’ of the particular form and not by the neglecting of it that art has progressed towards the culture of the pure relations - in New Art. For centuries on end the form did not lose its natural aspect, till modern times (since impressionism) have first modified, then annihilated it.

Let us rejoice at our living in the epoch of art's obtaining freedom from the domination of the particular forms. These forms, indeed, impede our full enjoying the complete unity, which cannot be established in a clear way but by the neutral form, the pure line and the pure colour, premising these means to be entirely absorbed in the composition.

The study of the culture of art gives us full security about our nearing a life that is no longer dominated by any particular forms or disequilibrated relations (oppositions) whatever: we are approaching a life of pure forms and pure relations - a ‘human’ life.

If anyone should advance that art has always given proof of ‘harmony’, we may perceive in New Art that it was not but by virtue of the genius (the intuition) that the art of the past expressed a veiled harmony in spite of all. Though the work of the past bore a balanced expression, yet always there was something dominating in the range of the forms and in that of the relations. Suffice it to mention the predominance of the figures or things as to paintings, or the predominant expression of the height in Gothic art, etc., etc.

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From antiquity onward up to our days art has shown us that we march towards, an ‘open’ life, a clear, free life, even whilst we are still living in a life of the past, in which everything is confused, in which one part dominates the other, in which all things intermingle: the good and the evil, kindness and malice, love and hatred - in which all is an apparent unity.

Nevertheless, the point could be raised that the artist creates the work of art, but that life composes life and that we ourselves are only ‘thrown’ into the world. But, first of all, let us not forget that the artist himself is also ‘pushed’ by life in his work, and, secondly, that all of us are part of life, of this very life, which does not count with time and space and which is - exactly as in art - ever the same at the core. It only needs developing within ourselves. Even in spite of us, we participate in the grand and perfect composition of life, which - if only we are keen in observing it - establishes itself according to the development of art. Yet, let us always be aware of the fact that the present is the unification both of the past and the future!

December, 1934