Imitate the work of a master photographer

Maybe you don't know mondriaan, but you must know Dior, Chanel and YSL.

In 20 13, Chanel launched a spring and summer fashion collection, which looks like this:

In 20 14, Dior introduced a spring dress with similar lines and colors:

But they are not as fast as YSL. As early as 1965, YSL introduced a set of skirts of the same style:

If you look closely, you will find that they have the same elements: lattice and three primary colors.

All these luxuries are inspired by the following person:

Mondriaan.

He is a representative figure of de stijl in the first half of the 20th century, and is famous for drawing various grids:

So, what are the benefits of these seemingly simple grids? So that the big cows in the design and fashion circles have paid tribute to it?

The reason is that mondriaan's plaid practices the principle of "less is more", which looks simple on the surface, but actually has a lot to do.

In these grids, he tried to express the universal laws of the universe in an abstract form.

How simple are mondriaan's works?

Lines only use straight lines.

Basically, the colors are red, yellow and blue.

Why? Why did mondriaan choose this seemingly simple form?

This is related to mondriaan's artistic ideas.

Let's think about it. What is the essence of painting?

Is it very realistic to imitate the object?

No, the invention of the camera allows ordinary people to take a photo at will, which is more realistic than any old master's paintings.

Is it to create the depth of space on the two-dimensional plane canvas?

No, sculpture is far superior to painting in creating a three-dimensional sense, because sculpture is three-dimensional and touchable.

In mondriaan's view, painting, to put it bluntly, is the relationship between modeling-that is, composition and color.

Michelangelo once thought that sculpture was superior to painting for the simple reason that sculpture is a real space art.

For example, look at leonardo da vinci's Madonna in the Rock:

The reason why his paintings are so harmonious and stable, with clear priorities, is actually because he used pyramids to compose the composition. The top of the pyramid gathers on the head of the Virgin Mary, so she is the protagonist of the whole picture.

Look at Van Gogh's Starry Night again;

Large-scale use of cool colors can make people feel the deep and cold at night, but at the same time, supplemented by warm and warm starlight, people feel that warmth is infiltrating into their hearts.

To put it bluntly, painting actually has two cores: composition and color.

In mondriaan's view, those so-called images blurred the core of painting, so he kept doing subtraction to simplify painting to the most basic elements: lines and colors.

Don't want any identifiable concrete image, don't want any colorful pigment colors, and finally even the lines and colors are simplified to the point where they can't be simplified: the lines are only straight lines, and the colors are mainly three primary colors; The colors are only squares and rectangles. The stereoscopic impression and image are completely eliminated.

In order to reveal the universal law, it is very important to remove all identifiable topics.

Let's take a look at one of mondriaan's most classic works: the composition of red, yellow and blue.

At first glance, the audience will think that this painting is simple: just straight lines and color blocks. Give me a ruler and I can draw it!

But in fact, if you look at this painting carefully, you will feel that although it is simple, it is very harmonious and orderly, which makes people feel that this painting is really designed by the artist, not graffiti on the whim of the artist.

How is this sense of fit achieved?

First of all, we noticed that his black line was different in thickness.

This is mondriaan's intention. In his view, the speed of visual movement is related to the thickness of lines. If the lines are thick, the line of sight will move slowly; Paintings with thin lines will move faster if they are realized.

The sense of movement is thus formed. In addition, the dynamic balance of this painting also comes from asymmetric composition.

In the upper left corner of the picture, there is a huge red square, so at the other end of the diagonal, it is balanced by a blue square.

On the right side of the other diagonal, a slender yellow rectangle is arranged to offset the weight of the other two color blocks.

White is lighter than other colors, but takes up more space, thus reaching a balanced position with other colors.

None of these colors can be dominant, they are all in fair competition.

Through this arrangement and structure, mondriaan successfully realized the balance and harmony of the picture.

Even he himself said, "the new sculpture represents equality, because although there are differences between different parts, it can make each part have the same value as other parts."

I once showed this painting to a friend and asked her what she saw.

She replied that she saw rectangles and squares of various colors.

Is that so?

If you look closely, you will find that there are no real squares and rectangles made of lines in this painting.

The so-called squares and rectangles are just an illusion constructed by mondriaan skillfully using black lines and canvas borders.

So if we look closely again, we will feel that this canvas seems to be cut from a larger and more complete work, and the intercepted edges extend infinitely outside the picture.

This painting doesn't show any vivid and concrete image, but it can still fill your brain infinitely. This is the charm of this work.

Let's review the subtlety of this painting again:

Some people think that you don't need too high painting skills to create such works.

Is that really the case?

James Elgin, an art critic who teaches in art institute of chicago, once led students to do an experiment.

He took the students to the Taskmaster Works Museum. A student told him that he wanted to copy mondriaan's works, but James didn't agree-it was a bit too simple.

But in the end it hit him in the face. Facts have proved that mondriaan's paintings are not as easy to imitate as imagined.

If you start painting from the right, you will find that mondriaan has changed his mind here. The lines stop abruptly at the edge of the canvas, but they don't reach the edge.

If you bend down and look up at this painting under the backlight, we can see from the texture of the canvas that the pigment used in the black rectangle in mondriaan's painting is thin, so it seems that the black line around the black rectangle is higher than the rectangle.

If you look at the yellow area again, you will find that this part of the pigment is very thick, so those yellow color blocks seem to float on the surface of the line.

The surface texture of this painting is rich and dense, and it looks even and harmonious, such as blue areas. You can almost imagine how mondriaan brushed the painted surface back and forth with a hard brush.

One of James's students tried to draw this thick and thin texture, but the result was this:

So mondriaan's works are flat at first glance, but above this plane, there are subtle shades and fine brushstrokes. In other words, he almost regarded painting as sculpture.

From the above analysis, we can see that mondriaan's seemingly unremarkable paintings not only reflect his superb painting skills, but also his profound philosophical thinking.

This embodies the principle that less is more: a work makes you feel simple, but it contains the artist's infinite ingenuity.

At the same time, it also tells us that if we do a simple thing to the extreme, we can reap unexpected fruits.

This truth is just suitable for us to deal with the complicated modern life with a simple and pure heart.

It is precisely because of this that designs from all walks of life pay tribute to mondriaan.

For example, the city hall in The Hague (mondriaan's hometown) in the Netherlands:

From 65438 to 0999, American artist Emily Duffy drew the whole car according to mondriaan's works, and designed the corresponding clothes and objects. This car became the focus of attention at the art auto show at that time.

Parisian creative team PA Design created a colorful post-it note from mondriaan. Red, yellow, white and blue sticky notes are combined together, leaving a moderate gap to form an abstract painting.

Even the common plaid shirts and window logos around us are more or less influenced by mondriaan.

This is what the master means: you may not know him, but your life is influenced by him everywhere.

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