The art historian Susanne Meyer-Büser, curator of the current exhibition “Mondrian. Evolution” at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, has discovered that the work “New York City 1” by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) has been “upside down” for decades ” is issued.
SZ: Ms. Meyer-Büser, how did you discover that Mondrian is hanging the wrong way round?
Meyer-Büser: In a photo from 1944, I saw that the picture, which was exhibited a year later in New York’s MoMa, is standing the other way around on an easel. That made me suspicious.
Yes, but there’s usually a catch on the back of the frame, isn’t there? So you know where such a picture belongs.
The hooks don’t diversify that.
Please?
The hooks themselves are not an indication. They could also have been added later.
Good. What remains is the artist’s signature.
That’s the crux. This picture has no signature. Otherwise you would know how to hang it. For decades, the only clue was the direction in which the artist’s name was written on the back of the frame by the executor.
Ms. Meyer-Büser, doesn’t this story also tell us that it doesn’t really matter how abstract art is hung?
Abstract art sometimes looks like it’s random. But she is not.
Do you think …? Find?
Yes, take Mondrian. He worked intensively on harmony and composition.
dr Susanne Meyer-Büser was born in Gütersloh in 1963. From 2006 to 2009 she was curator for painting and sculpture at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. She did her doctorate on portrait painting of the 1920s.
(Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa)
Baselitz always hangs his pictures upside down.
This was a fundamental artistic decision by Baselitz. Mondrian, on the other hand, experimented frequently with his works. It’s nice when you, as an art historian, see that there is still something to be discovered in classical modernism.
OK. And what is the picture supposed to tell you?
After the outbreak of the Second World War, the Dutch artist Mondrian fled to New York via London, where he once again fundamentally changed his previously neoplastic work. His image is an artistic reaction to New York’s speed, spontaneity and openness. Think of the Manhattan map. The lines. The road layout.
A city map?
Mondrian was very enthusiastic about Boogie-Woogie. The picture is like a plan of his new life. He comes from theosophy and was looking for what holds the world together as a whole. He was looking for the absolute truth. I find his image to be very subtle and intuitively explored.
Are you flipping it now?
no The work came in this direction from the estate to the museum. Today’s hanging reflects its history.
Ms. Meyer-Büser, is the modern art that is sold for a great deal of money at Art Basel today, for example, still as subtle and intuitive as that of Mondrian?
That’s a whole different topic.
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