My Coincidence Goes Like This: Inspired by Abstract Art and Piet Mondrian
Acrylic on paper
Abstract art sits through the ages, connecting and supporting our malleability.
Abstract art sits through the ages, connecting and supporting our malleability.
Today’s piece was inspired not just by the perceptive power of abstract art but by a stroke of coincidence. If, like me, you research enough different resources, and luck is on your side, you may experience a moment of coincidence that makes the world seem inextricably interconnected.
My coincidence goes like this: back in September, I’d been particularly inspired by a headline in the Nature journal, which hinted that the earliest known art was abstract. But I let my inspiration take me away from this article before I could know more. I come from a household that gives space for the scientific, just as it does the creative. This amalgamation leaves us with so much inspiration that we are prone to leave unfinished art projects and partially read copies of the Nature journal lying around.
A couple of months later, my interest in abstract art returned when I came across Piet Mondrian’s quote,
“The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore, the object must be eliminated from the picture.”
My mind began to roil at this quote’s artistic and philosophical implications. A feverish feeling crept up inside me and begged to be let out, so I decided to study Mondrian for a day of CognEYEzant:365.
Again, I came across the Nature article as I dove into the piles and piles of books, articles, and ideas, trying to sort them or save them for a later, gloomy day. And again, the prehistoric, abstract ocher crayon creation caught my inspiration.
Today found me reading this long-awaited article. And at the bottom of this article, an article that had been sitting beside me for months, perhaps even while I was learning about Mondrian, was a reference to the artist himself.
This coincidence correlates to abstract art directly: abstract art sits through the ages, connecting and supporting our malleability.
Whether it was the ancient person on the southern shore of South Africa who used a red ocher crayon to express something previously unknown or Mondrian, who used the simple lines and minimal colors of De Stijl style to embrace another unknown, abstract art has the power to touch our lives, to nod to our abstract selves visibly.
It makes me wonder: how might we begin to understand each other if we approached each other as a work of abstract art, full of many contexts and unknowns?
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Want to explore more abstract art? Check out PBS Digital Studio’s The Art Assignment episode “The Case for Abstraction”.
154 days done, 211 to go.
NadiaCDM 