Is the Mondrian Upside Down, or Is It an Abstract Enigma? - The New York Times

About a twelvemonth ago, an Italian creator wrote to a depository successful Düsseldorf, Germany, to stock a nagging feeling helium had astir an abstract enactment that had been astatine the instauration for decades.

The artist, Francesco Visalli, had been researching the enactment of Piet Mondrian, the Dutch creator known for gridlike works with geometric pops of superior colors. The artwork successful question was an unfinished portion called “New York City I”: a canvas layered with crisscrossing red, blue, yellowish and achromatic lines of tape.

“Whenever I look astatine this work, I ever person the chiseled feeling that it needs to beryllium rotated 180 degrees,” Visalli wrote to a depository leader. “I recognize that for decades it has been observed and published with the aforesaid orientation, yet this feeling remains pressing.”

Visalli besides presented grounds to enactment his hunch: a photograph, from a 1944 contented of the American mag Town & Country, that showed the enactment resting connected an easel successful Mondrian’s workplace soon aft his death. Compared to however it hung successful the German museum, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, the artwork was flipped.

The email persuaded the depository unit to instrumentality a person look. Was it imaginable that “New York City I” had been displayed upside down for much than 75 years?

“I americium 100 percent definite the representation is the incorrect mode around,” a curator, Susanne Meyer-Büser, said, according to The Guardian, arsenic the depository prepared to unfastened an accumulation marking the 150th day of Mondrian’s birth.

The declaration prompted an improbable deluge of headlines astir 20th-century abstract art. But immoderate Mondrian experts are skeptical that the grounds is definitive, particularly considering that the portion was unfinished and without a signature. Mondrian was adjacent known to flip his pieces portion moving connected them, said Caro Verbeek, an creation historiographer astatine a Dutch assemblage who contributed to the exhibition’s catalog.

“It’s inactive successful process,” said Harry Cooper, a elder curator astatine the National Gallery of Art successful Washington who has helped signifier 2 Mondrian exhibitions. “Even though it mightiness person been enactment connected an easel astatine immoderate point, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t person been worked connected further. A antithetic determination astir its predisposition could person been made.”

Susanne Gaensheimer, the manager of the German museum, which acquired the Mondrian successful 1980, said connected Monday that its predisposition had been a tangential portion of accusation successful a quality league astir the accumulation — earlier exploding into an planetary curiosity.

Meyer-Büser did not respond to requests for comment. And Gaensheimer clarified that the depository was not saying that the enactment was definitively hanging upside down, but alternatively that its probe had determined that Mondrian had created the enactment from the other perspective.

“We cannot cognize what is close oregon incorrect,” Gaensheimer said.

On Page 198 of the catalog accompanying the exhibition, Meyer-Büser cited different work, “New York City,” which is the lone 1 successful a bid of akin works to person been painted alternatively than created with adhesive tape. (After relocating to New York from war-torn Europe, Mondrian began experimenting with colored tape, which allowed him to rapidly rearrange his designs arsenic helium plotted retired works.)

The painting, on show astatine the Centre Pompidou successful Paris, is hung with a adjacent grouping of respective lines astatine the apical — the aforesaid mode arsenic depicted successful the 1944 photograph — alternatively than astatine the bottom.

Another portion of grounds described by Meyer-Büser is the absorption successful which the portion appears to person been rolled out. As the enactment is presently hung, determination are gaps betwixt immoderate of the ends of the portion and the apical of the canvas, suggesting that Mondrian started astatine the other end.

“Assuming that Mondrian began by attaching the strips astatine the top,” she wrote, “and, pursuing the rule of gravity, unrolled them downward to connect them astatine the bottommost of the canvas, past the coating has so been hanging upside down ever since it was archetypal exhibited successful 1945.”

Other experts pointed retired that Mondrian had tended to enactment with his canvases laid flat, walking astir them and approaching them from antithetic angles, which Meyer-Büser acknowledges successful her essay. If helium did enactment from antithetic perspectives, she said, “there would beryllium nary close oregon incorrect orientation.”

In her essay, Meyer-Büser besides cited the photograph sent by Visalli, which was taken soon aft Mondrian’s decease successful 1944, erstwhile the artist’s person and heir, Harry Holtzman, opened up the workplace for a manner shoot. In the photo, a exemplary poses with her elbow connected a mantel, portion of the canvas successful question disposable disconnected her near shoulder.

Cooper, from the National Gallery of Art, noted that a antithetic photograph of Mondrian’s workplace from astir the aforesaid clip shows different Mondrian enactment — “Victory Boogie Woogie” — successful what appears to beryllium the aforesaid presumption connected the aforesaid easel. The photograph suggests that idiosyncratic different than Mondrian could person positioned “New York City I” aft his death, Cooper said.

Despite its curator’s convictions, the German depository has nary plans to flip the work, due to the fact that it has grown progressively fragile.

Visalli said successful an email that helium agreed with the decision, penning that without a signature oregon inscription from Mondrian, determination was nary mode to cognize for sure.

“Above all,” helium wrote, “who tin accidental what Mondrian truly wanted?”