Once upon a time, I reacted with perplexity and amusement to the abstract paintings of the twentieth century.
My attitude wasn’t inappropriate.
Much abstract art is whimsical and humorous!
For example, the whimsical strangeness of Kandinsky . . .
Or the even more whimsical worlds of Joan Miró . . .
Or Willem de Kooning’s darkly satirical caricatures . . .
I never saw any of the humor in these paintings until a girlfriend at Carnegie Mellon University explained how I should look at Mondrian.
At the time, it seemed to me that Mondrian was only drawing rectangles!
And then I learned the secret: Mondrian achieves visual balance without using symmetry.
Balance without symmetry is a goal derived from the Dutch tradition.
Mondrian is abstracting the harmonious balance in the paintings of Vermeer.
Mondrian is Vermeer without the people and setting.
Unsymmetrical balance can be found in the paintings of numerous artists. Indeed, unsymmetrical balance is an artistic value not only in paintings, but in literature, including, for example, the wonderfully balanced but often unsymmetrical sentences of Jane Austen.
Balance without symmetry is mesmerizing because it’s not obvious how the balance is achieved. It’s like a contortionist balancing on tiptoe.
Here are more visual examples:
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical and surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, available at Amazon. He is currently writing two new novels.
