Mondrian's Philosophy of Visual Rhythm: Phenomenology, Wittgenstein, and Eastern thought

279 Pages·2017·3.751 MB·English

by  Eiichi Tosaki (auth.)

Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 23
Eiichi Tosaki
Mondrian’s
Philosophy of
Visual Rhythm
Phenomenology, Wittgenstein, and
Eastern thought
Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures
Volume 23
Series Editors
Editor-in-Chief
Purushottama Bilimoria, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia
University of California, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, USA
Co-Editor
Andrew B. Irvine, Maryville College, Maryville, TN, USA
Associate Editors
Jay Garfield, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Smith College, Northampton, Mass, USA
Editorial Assistants
Sherah Bloor, Amy Rayner, Peter Yih Jing Wong
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Editorial Board
Balbinder Bhogal, Hofstra University, Hempstead, USA
Christopher Chapple, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, USA
Vrinda Dalmiya, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, USA
Gavin Flood, NUS-Yale, Singapore
Jessica Frazier, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
Kathleen Higgins, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA
Patrick Hutchings, Deakin University, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Morny Joy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
Carool Kersten, King’s College, London, UK
Richard King, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
Arvind-Pal Mandair, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Rekha Nath, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, USA
Parimal Patil, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Laurie Patton, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, USA
Stephen Phillips, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA
Joseph Prabhu, California State University, Los Angeles, USA
Anupama Rao, Columbia University, Barnard College, New York, USA
Anand J. Vaidya, San Jose State University, CA, USA
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Eiichi Tosaki
Mondrian’s Philosophy of
Visual Rhythm
Phenomenology, Wittgenstein, and Eastern
thought
Eiichi Tosaki
Coburg, Victoria, Australia
ISSN 2211-1107 ISSN 2211-1115 (electronic)
Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures
ISBN 978-94-024-1196-6 ISBN 978-94-024-1198-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-024-1198-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950070
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For Rose.
Foreword
The contemporary art world more or less demands that visual artists are able to wax
eloquent on their work. Museums not uncommonly preface exhibitions with ver-
biage describing artists’ accounts of what they were up to. Our current expectation
is that artists have the best insight into what their artwork means, and the slogans
they use to describe their work will give us the key to interpret it. As viewers we
don’t mind the occasional opacity in artists’ self-interpretations, so long as we con-
sider it hype.
We are far from this situation when we confront the theory of Piet Mondrian. His
simultaneous emphasis on the static and the rhythmic is hardly fodder for a publicist.
It doesn’t have the ring of self-promotion or deference to popular taste. Mondrian
presents serious theorizing, aimed at dispelling misunderstandings of his work. But
how do his ideas, particularly his theme of static, non-repetitive rhythm, help us?
What does rhythm even mean when applied to what is static? We notice rhythm in
connection with sound, and we recognize it also in pulsating movement accessed
through our sense of touch and our kinesthetic sense. But how can a painting be even
metaphorically rhythmic? Rhythm seems to require temporal passage, while a paint-
ing’s presentation is all at once. True, our eyes take in a painting only gradually, and
painters often direct the eye to notice first this and then that. But Mondrian eschews
such strategies to the extent that he aims at the static. Worse yet, he wrote forty
essays on rhythm over many years, and his ideas on the subject kept changing.
Eiichi Tosaki has taken on the challenge of elucidating Mondrian’s theories of
rhythm, and particularly his conception of “static” rhythm. Drawing on its Greek
origins, Tosaki points out that the term “rhythm,” primarily used in connection with
poetry and music, meant both schema and kinesis. He finds both of these meanings in
Mondrian’s application of the term to painting, but he emphasizes the importance of
the schema notion for making sense of Mondrian’s enterprise. Tosaki notes that new
approaches to musical composition in the twentieth century had brought the “schema”
notion of rhythm to the fore, a development that had a widespread impact on under-
standing of the arts more broadly. In emphasizing schema, Mondrian was not oppos-
ing his “static” conception of rhythm to a musical understanding, as might be thought,
but instead was embracing a view of musical rhythm that had intellectual currency.
vii
viii Foreword
Tosaki uses the duality of schema and kinesis to indicate a basic distinction
between Mondrian’s earlier and later neo-plastic works. The early works involve
“covert,” static rhythm, while the later works involve more overt, dynamic rhythm.
Tosaki sees the earlier work as having more depth than the later work, taking issue
with the common judgment that Mondrian’s late neoplastic paintings present the
artistic climax of neoplasticism. Tosaki sees the restrained rhythm evident in the
early work, not the more obvious “kinetic” rhythm of the later works, as Mondrian’s
great achievement.
The idea of rhythm as schema sounds purely conceptual, but Mondrian was not
seeking merely to illustrate theoretical possibilities. He intended his paintings to
engender the experience of rhythm, Tosaki tells us, but they require the viewer’s
participation. Although the painting itself provides static, non-repetitive rhythm “in
repose,” it is not experiential, or “activated,” until the viewer gets involved. The
viewer does this by inwardly generating a pulse, or meter. The rhythm of the paint-
ing is felt only in relation to the regularity of this meter, from which it subtly devi-
ates. Once we have a firm, background pattern that we “trust” (one that we have
voluntarily produced internally), the non-rigid and thus more life-like rhythm
embedded in Mondrian’s painted surfaces becomes accessible to us.
According to Tosaki, the non-representational character of Mondrian’s neoplas-
tic works is important in enabling the activation of rhythm. By avoiding, imagistic
subject-matter, Mondrian seeks to impede subjective interpretations of what is
depicted, the viewer’s imposition of “meanings,” in order to free our attention for
perceptive consciousness of the rhythmic life of the painting’s surface. This is not to
say, however, that Mondrian resists the subjective, for the activation of rhythm that
he seeks is dependent upon subjective engagement with the painting. The subject
willingly provides a result meter, and in the interaction between the meter and the
rhythm of the painting, a spontaneous unfolding of rhythmic aspects occurs.
Mondrian’s notion of static rhythm is ultimately a matter of vision and spiritual
experience. Rhythm keeps opening up as the viewer’s meter interacts with the
rhythmic aspects of the painting. The task of explaining Mondrian’s idea requires
someone who has grasped the vision and discovered how to activate the paintings’
covert rhythms. Fortunately, Tosaki’s understanding is grounded in the requisite
experiential knowledge and reflects his combined philosophical and artistic sensi-
tivity. He takes pains to lead the reader to recognitions of the sort that Mondrian
aims to provoke with his work. Tosaki’s book itself induces a series of experientially
grounded recognitions, providing cases in point for the type of impact Mondrian
sought. Tosaki’s subtlety as an author is equal to his subject matter. The result is a
tour de force that will forever alter the reader’s encounter with the works of
Mondrian.
The University of Texas at Austin Kathleen M. Higgins
Austin, TX, USA
Genesis and Acknowledgements
My scholarly investigation of Piet Mondrian and De Stijl started during a period of
graduate research at Osaka University. Toward that end, in 1990, I travelled to the
Netherlands, Paris (France) and the United States of America. My aim was to trace
first-hand the artistic activities of Mondrian, van Doesburg and other members of
the De Stijl movement. The highlight of the trip was photographing the interior of
van Doesburg’s house in Meudon, France, and the renovation of the Café Aubette in
Strasbourg. Here, I wish to thank the residents of the Moudon house at that time,
and the chief renovator of the Café Aubette. My thanks also to Marijke Küper, for-
mer curator of the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, who gave me important suggestions
regarding De Stijl and Gerrit Rietveld.
Then in 1998 I travelled to continue the research in the United States and, again,
the Netherlands, thanks to the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts Travel
Grant, and to a Getty Institute Research Support Grant. There, I met several eminent
Mondrian scholars, including Professors Carel Blotkamp, Joop Joosten, Nancy J
Troy, and Dr. Harry Cooper – I thank them all for the spirited conversations we
enjoyed. I also recollect an intensive two-day exchange of ideas on rhythm and,
especially, Mondrian’s theory of rhythm with Dr. Victor Grauer in Pittsburgh (USA).
His knowledge of musicology and his observations about Mondrian’s painting stim-
ulated me to pursue my interest further. Professor Jonathan Kramer gave me the
confidence to use his ideas about musical time and rhythm when I met him at his
Colombia University office in New York. I also thank Professor Paul Op de Coul, a
musicologist of Dutch music at Utrecht University, for sharing his knowledge of
Jacob van Domselaer and Nelly van Doesburg during our conversation in his office.
Thanks also to the many others at museums and archival institutions who assisted
me in my research, especially at the Tate gallery, London, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library at Yale University, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie, Stedelijk Museum at Amsterdam, Haags Gemeentemuseum, MoMA,
New York, and the Getty Institute, Los Angeles.
In the process of completing and writing up my research, I have been much
obliged to many persons. Professor Chris McAuliffe, Director of Ian Potter Gallery,
the University of Melbourne, who served as principal advisor during the initial
ix
x Genesis and Acknowledgements
period of my doctoral candidature. Professor McAuliffe’s enthusiasm for my larger
project, and practical advice as an astute theorist of modern and contemporary art,
was of great benefit to my research. Professor Roger Benjamin (affiliated with the
University of Melbourne), presently at the University of Sydney, supported me
greatly with his conscientious reading of the early stages of the manuscript. My
heartfelt gratitude goes to (alas, since late) Associate Professor Graeme Marshall,
the Philosophy Department, University of Melbourne, who advised my research
during the last two years of the project. Graeme supported me greatly, and I have
benefited enormously from his sharp philosophical mind, his commitment to debat-
ing issues, and his readiness to share with me his remarkable knowledge of earlier
and later Wittgenstein. I am also deeply obliged to the late Dr. Naomi Cumming,
whose premature passing has been a great loss. A talented theorist in music and
philosophy, Dr. Cumming provided much support to me in the early stage of my
project: her musicological advice has proved to be invaluable. Emeritus Professor
Masabumi Tsuji, of Osaka University, has taken an active interest for a long time in
my project on Mondrian, and encouraged me to pursue my research to the end. I am
much obliged to Mr. Glenn Taylor, who translated the Dutch texts for me. My thanks
also to Peter Beijersbergen van Henegouwen, who willingly agreed to my using his
recording of Jakob van Domselaer’s composition as an important reference, and to
Matt Holden, who took up his own valuable time to check the early phase of the
manuscript. Thanks also to Keren T. Rubinstein for her careful editing toward the
end of the project. Thanks also to Thoa and Mark Kusec in San Francisco, California,
who shared their knowledge of Theosophy and Art with me.
I also wish to express my gratitude to Professor Purushottama Bilimoria and Dr.
Peter Wong, of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, the University of
Melbourne, and Sophia Journal book series Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of
Traditions and Cultures (Springer). Both Purushottama and Peter urged me to pub-
lish this material, and without their encouragement, this publication would not have
been possible. Very special thanks to Dr. Patrick Hutchings, who supported my
project and dedicated his time to the final edit. Professor Kathleen Higgins of the
Department of Philosophy, University of Austin, Texas, lent me invaluable support
through the stages of revision of the manuscript, and she has kindly written the
touching Foreword to this book. I am also obliged to Associate Professor Robert
Nelson (who has served as advisor to my second PhD studies at Monash University
in Victoria, Australia).
Enormous thanks to editors Anita van der Linden-Rachmat and Cristina Alves
dos Santos of Springer publications, who kindly solicited anonymous reviewers of
the manuscript, which greatly improved the final book.
I want also to express deep gratitude to all those who have inspired and supported
me in various ways, both practically and intellectually, over the long process of
completing this book. I extend my deepest thanks especially to my dearest friend
Mr. Garret Sokoloff, in New York, whose friendship has been a spiritual force for
me that has garnered my enthusiasm for this project over a long period of time.
Deep gratitude is due also to my parents, Yasuyo and Ryukichi Tosaki, who have
supported me and my immediate family at some distance from Japan. A special