4 character and development of de Stijl

The artistic aims and the aesthetic principles

The preceding chapter has shown, that the work of ‘De Stijl’ was based, from its very beginning in 1917, on the acceptance and elaboration of a way of artistic expression which had hitherto been unprecedented. As Mr. Alfred Barr terms it: ‘Two elements formed the fundamental basis of the work of “De Stijl”, whether in painting, architecture or sculpture, furniture or typography; in form the rectangle; in colour the “primary” hues red, blue and yellow.’176 The creation of the first paintings in this new way which excluded subject matter to the last degree, was immediately accompanied by the writings of their artists. It was their principal object to show that their new way of painting was indeed ‘a new way’, but that it was, on the other hand, a logical fulfilment of the demands which had been drawn from the very essence of painting and from its entire history. They considered the expounding of their theories as a task, as they wanted to help the public to attain a deeper comprehension of their work and of

all its implications. Therefore, the theoretical essays of ‘De Stijl’ painters and architects are introduced in the first number of De Stijl as follows: ‘As the public has not yet come so far as to experience the new plastic beauty, it becomes the task of the specialist to awaken the layman's sense of beauty. The really modern, i.e. conscious artist, has a two-fold vocation. In the first place to create the purely visual work of art; in the second place to make the public susceptible to the beauty of pure visual art’.177 This task was carried out by the reviews of De Stijl during the entire period of its existence: it accompanied the creation of all of the new works of ‘De Stijl’ with the specialist's commentary, explaining his aims and his views. But on the other hand, ‘De Stijl's’ editor, Van Doesburg, was aware from the very beginning of the dangers that an over-emphasis of the theoretical side of the work might bring about. We find, therefore, in the same introduction, a pointed warning against any possible precedence of the theoretical essays with regard to the artistic work of ‘De Stijl’: ‘By giving the modern artist the opportunity to speak about his own work, the general prejudice, that the modern artist creates according to preconceived theories, will disappear. On the contrary: it will become evident that modern art does not emanate from previously determined theories, but - vice versa - that the principles are the result of the plastic work’.178

When speaking of ‘the result of the plastic work’, the artists of ‘De Stijl’ do not only refer to their own work, to their own development from a realistic beginning towards an abstract result. They mean, when speaking thus, a - teleological - evolution of painting towards the aim of abstract art. It was not only that their work had developed in this direction, they merely happened to be the vanguard: the entire history of painting was, logically and forcibly, leading towards this end. In order to put forward a similar argumentation, one has to submit the idea of an independent, an autonomous evolution of painting, of art in general. ‘De Stijl’ does indeed consider the autonomy of artistic development as an important basis for the growth of abstract art and more specially of ‘De Stijl's’. Van Doesburg puts it quite clearly when writing: ‘The art of painting can only be explained by the art of painting’179 and Van der Leck formulates a parallel opinion, when contradicting an allegation, that the origin of ‘De Stijl’ was derived from architectural principles: ‘Modern plastic painting has not proceded from architectural principles, or as a consequence of building and construction, but on the contrary: - it comes as a simplified manifestation of space from free painting after nature; it has developed from the art of painting, from painting that depicts life in all its variegations.’180 And Van Doesburg's introduction to the second annual of De Stijl brings this problem into a somewhat wider context: ‘What comes to definitely established expression in neo-plasticism: the equilibrated relationship of the particular to the general manifests itself as well, more or less, in the life of modern mankind, and it constitutes the basic cause of the social reconstruction of which we are the witnesses. As man has matured to oppose the domination by the individual and its caprice, the artist has ripened to oppose the individual in artistic expression: natural form and colour, emotion etc. This resistance,

which is based on matured internal values of the whole human being, on life in the strictest sense, on reasonable consciousness, is reflected in the whole evolution of art and more specially in the development of the last 50 years.’181 Or, as he terms it in his ‘Three lectures’: ‘Not a single artistic expression arises all of a sudden: one art springs from the other and all together they form a chain that embraces all centuries and all people. (...) This happens - and art shows us - as life is a constantly changing image. The art of painting is the constantly changing result of this image.’182 When Van Doesburg considers the logicaiiy changing aspect of painting, Van der Leck on the other hand, stresses the unity in evolution: ‘In the course of time, painting has developed apart from architecture, independently and, by experiment and destruction of the natural and the old, it has found its own essence, spiritually as well as formally’.183

This independent chain of development, this evolution towards a teleological aim can only be accepted by another abstraction: the abstraction of painting and its development from all other influences, the supposition of an autonomy of painting. Mondriaan formulates this thesis quite clearly in the first number of De Stijl when writing: ‘The art of painting - the one and unalterable’184 and Vantongerloo illustrates the axioms, on which his book is founded, in his l'Art et son avenir: ‘The artist intuitively possesses the certainty of the existence of unity, but he is distracted by the period he lives in and this fact renders evolution slow and difficult.’185 Whole paragraphs of his book have to furnish proof, that art, throughout the centuries, has always been based on the same esthetic principles; to this end, he analyses the composition of ancient paintings, f.i. Rogier van der Weyden's ‘Deposition from the Cross’ and, drawing the attention to the composition in opposition to subject matter, he writes: ‘It is not the Holy Virgin, nor Christ, nor the box of balm, that render the work so beautiful, but it is the positions they hold’.186 Composition, the aesthetic element in art, must therefore be considered essential and it is by force of this aesthetic principle, that all painting throughout the centuries form one chain of evolution. It is the abstraction of the temporal element in art, that dominates here and that becomes clear once more when Kok writes on the modern work of art: ‘For the modern work of art denominations such as new, old-fashioned etc. do not exist in the usual and modish sense, because a work of art of purely aesthetic expression is timeless’. 187

Having accepted this axiom, an evolution that leads towards a realization of the evolutionary end becomes indeed clear. Van Doesburg expresses this view in his pamphlet Classical, baroque, modern as follows: ‘This artistic development has had an aim throughout the centuries: the realization of the notion of art, which consists of the following - to express exclusively and entirely in the way of art, the relationship between the inward and the outward, between spirit and nature’188. And as Van Doesburg thus formulates the aim of all art, Mondriaan in ‘De Stijl’ points in a parallel direction by defining the origin of all art: ‘As different as these artistic expressions may be in appearance, there is no difference in essence. Let us go back to the origin of the work of art: the emotion of beauty.’189

Art thus - according to ‘De Stijl's’ conception - springs from the emotion caused by beauty and aims at the exclusive realization of its aesthetic ambitions. The evolution of the arts has therefore to be consistent, uninterrupted and - the term may be permitted here - rectilinear. Van Doesburg gives his view on the consistency of this evolution: ‘The reason was, that the aesthetic had not yet achieved an independent existence. The liberation of art from the ties of morality, of religion, of nature, in order to become a free expression of the human spirit, is therefore an important part of the knowledge of artistic evolution.’190

All artistic development should therefore be considered from this point of view. The artists of ‘De Stijl’ did indeed look upon the development of the arts as on a consistent continuing chain, the end of which was modern abstract art. It is chiefly Van Doesburg who - with his astounding knowledge and his brilliant feeling for mutual relationships - developed surprisingly bold conclusions: ‘Means of expression: as means of expression have to be distinguished 1. extremely differentiated forms (man, flower, tree etc); 2. elements of form (sphere, cylinder, cone etc); 3. plastic elements (plane, line, colour). With these three categories, three categories of construction correspond, i.e. to the first natural (organic) construction, to the second: utility (anorganic, artificial) construction, to the third: plastic (artistic) construction. Historical development of art shows most clearly the succession of natural form, element of form, and plastic element.’191 All the aspects of art history are therefore determined by this sequence.

‘De Stijl's’ interest, however, is especially concentrated on the last 50 years preceding its foundation. The recent developments in painting supplied the opportunity to link it up directly with ‘De Stijl's’ ambitions. It is obvious, that Cézanne meant a great deal to them; he is considered one of the important links in the chain of development. But, as we have seen in Mondriaan's personal reflections - the cubists are an even greater source of inspiration for Van Doesburg as well. ‘Where Cézanne had stopped, at the primary mathematical forms. From these he(Picasso) had to compose a new plastic language’.192 But this direct evolution to abstract art shows itself even earlier: ‘All modern art is distinguished by a relatively greater freedom from the oppression of the subject. Impressionism emphasized the impression of reality more than its representation. After the impressionists, all art shows a relative negation of nature's aspects; the cubists delivered a further blow; the surrealists transformed it; the abstract artists excluded it.’193 When writing about space-determination as an essential factor of his art and of neo-plasticism, Mondriaan writes: ‘In the course of culture space-determination is not only established by structure and form, but even by the mechanics of painting (brushwork, colour-squares or points - impressionism, divisionism, pointillism). It has to be emphasized that these techniques deal with space-determination and not with texture.’194

But cubism is the most essential phase in the general development, more than in the individual evolution of ‘De Stijl’ artists. Van Doesburg terms it as ‘the critical point in evolution. This, exactly, is the great importance of cubism: to have raised to the first rank these elements which, in illusionistic painting,

had held a secondary plane (such as plane, colour, proportion). This “Umwertung” of plastic qualities from secondary into primary factors is, indeed, the only essential feature in the evolution of painting towards an independent expression of relations. The fact that the cubist problem is set forth, is the revolutionary stage, the critical moment in painting more than any other. It is the stage at which all formal, tangible qualities (secondary) are transposed into essential qualities of relation (primary). It is obvious, that painting, after having conquered its primary plastic qualities of expression, needs but continue its further development. There is no other way, no other possible direction of evolution and only where it manifests the plastic urge by painting's essential and primary means of expression, it is indeed elementary and new plastic creation’195 Mondriaan considers the fact of cubism from a slightly different angle, yet arrives at the same conclusions: ‘Cubism brings form to a more definite, to a proper expression: it is already creating composition and relation, much more directly than ancient art. Thus cubism causes a work of art to be a phenomenon that has grown from human spirit and is therefore one with man.’196

So the entire evolution of art appears to the artists of ‘De Stijl’ as a constant development from natural forms to plastic elements. Van Doesburg summarizes this evolution when writing: ‘By plastic expression the values of nature are transposed entirely or partly into symbolical values.’197 At the end of this evolution and as its unavoidable consequence, ‘De Stijl’ came into existence. Mondriaan, when looking back on the evolution of neo-plasticism in one of his last essays, sees this evolution as an essential fact: ‘If we follow the development of plastic art from the past to the present, we see a gradual detachment from the natural vision and a progressive determination of the real expressive means. We see no sharp division between the art of the past and modern art. The two expressions dissolve into each other, until in modern times a real difference of expressive means - forms, colours and spacial relationship - is created.’198 Or, as he expresses the same thought much earlier in De Stijl: ‘When painting had once freed itself from the natural representation of things, it arrived, of a necessity, at a further liberation. It had liberated itself to some extent from natural colour, even to some degree from natural form and now breaking with natural colour and natural form was to follow. This was achieved by expressionism (cubism,orphism etc.). And finally dissolution of all form into straight lines and of natural colour into flat, pure colour was to follow (abstract-real painting)’199

Starting from this conception of artistic evolution as an axiom, ‘De Stijl’ is indeed obliged to aim at the utmost purity and rigidity of plastic expression. When considering their plastic activity as the conclusion of all preceding artistic results, ‘De Stijl’ artists could indeed not admit of any compromise with previous artistic realizations, though admitting their quality. They had to be in strict opposition to the entire past. Van Doesburg makes a point of this fact, when he writes: ‘Neo-plasticism indeed lacks every nuance. This is properly of an era, when painting still set to work with vague means, it is the principal characteristic of feigned plasticism. The luminists have already put

something else in its place: a striving for clarity, for distinctness of form and line and finally clearness and distinctness of composition. What in ancient painting was done by nuance, shades of tone from light to dark, from yellow to brown, all this has been deepened in neo-plasticism to a decisive establishment of relations - already prepared by the luminists - by the opposing of complementary colours.’200

In an essay, published in 1937, Mondriaan draws the conclusion of this theory of artistic evolution: ‘Non-figurative art is created by establishing a dynamic rhythm of determinate mutual relations which excludes the setting up of any particular form. We note thus, that to destroy particular form is only to do more consistently what all art has done. The dynamic rhythm which is essential in all art is also the essential element in non-figurative work. In figurative art this rhythm is veiled. Yet we all pay homage to clarity.’201 And in the same essay: ‘We only need to continue and to develop what already exists. The essential thing is, that the fixed laws of the plastic arts must be realized. These have shown themselves clearly in non-figurative art.’202 And finally this conclusive and coercive passage: ‘...if all art has purified and transformed and is still purifying and transforming these forms of reality and their mutual relations; if all art therefore is a continually deepening process: why then stop halfway? If all art aims at expressing universal beauty, why establish an individualist expression? Why not continue the sublime work of the cubists? That would not be a continuation of the same tendency, but on the contrary, a complete break-away from it and all that existed before it.’203

Indeed, this conception of the history of painting leads to unexpected and fascinating conclusions and perspectives. A history of painting could well be written from this point of view: the devaluation of the motive through history. It would indeed show, that in an earlier stage of painting the motive existed in the proper sense of the word: as the object, that set the artist in motion, as the given fact that caused an artist's specific conception and on which the artistic result largely depended. In the course of evolution, the motive became indeed more and more an occasion, by which an artist manifested his particular approach to nature, so that, at the present stage of development, if at all discernible, it is not much more than a faint memory of a quite casual fact, from which the process of abstraction had started. This would then be the history of the declining importance of the outer appearance to painting, at first for the benefit of individual expression, ultimately for the realization of generally existing laws of plastic composition. Up to a certain point it tallies well with the facts, as it accounts for the historical development from the sum of single works towards the more uniform aeuvre of an artist.

But this conception of art history finds - at least partly - its origin in the fact of art history itself. The conception of an autonomous history of art, developing in the direction away from the motive, is only possible by the abstraction of all the manifold aspects in a work of art, that are not directly related to its aesthetic properties. Van Doesburg is well aware of this fact - but as ‘De Stijl’ only draws the conclusions from its own version of the history of painting, he

also emphasizes the importance of these facts to neo-plasticism: ‘When we experience the joy of beauty in seeing an Egyptian (......) work of art, this is due to the fact, that we open ourselves to it without an ulterior motive (such as national, practical, religious etc.). We experience it as a product, for its own sake. In the course of time it has lost most of its practical elements and now stands before us as a timeless aesthetical product. As such, it is beautiful in all time, because the aesthetic or general is beyond time. For its contemporary beholder, such a product could not be enjoyed from the aesthetical point of view alone, as the plastic enjoyment, the joy of interior beauty, was lost in the religious atmosphere, which almost stifled the aesthetic atmosphere.’204 Indeed, this quotation, more than any other, makes it obvious, in how far the contemporary approach to art history, 19th and early 20th century appreciation of works of art, are at the base of the aesthetic theories and ambitions of ‘De Stijl’. The theory of a teleological development of the arts, of an evolution towards abstraction, is indeed - like the whole idea of ‘l'art pour l'art’ - born in, or rather from, a museum. It is the consequence of a consistent grouping of works of art according to schools and chronology, it is the conclusion drawn from a complete abstraction in these works of art. All these temporal factors, are characterized as secondary motives, though, to a contemporary, and often to the artist, they were of major, of dominating importance. These theories are a consequence of the statement which by no means originated from Van Doesburg, but is the accepted truth of a period, i.e. that ‘beauty is for all time because the aesthetic of the general is beyond time.’

By the acceptance of this statement, ‘De Stijl's’ theories are ranged in the large current of ‘l'art pour l'art’. Van Doesburg's articles and publications emphasize this fact over and over again: ‘Art is an aim in itself. First, the impressionists discovered this fact about 1880, and therefore their device was “l'art pour l'art”. The place that art should take in our society is: to supply aesthetic needs. Man evinces a need for the aesthetic besides his material needs and art is the obvious medium to supply this need. Aesthetic requirements are of a spiritual nature, that is to say they rise from our spirit. Where art supplies these needs, it is spiritually effective, that is to say, it satisfies our spirit. But when a work of art is in contradiction to itself, by having an other significance than an aesthetic one, it is either imperfect or no work of art at all. Such work masquerades as a work of art without being one.’205 And a bit further in the same pamphlet: ‘You will now ask me, what is the aim of the artist and my answer is: none at all. The artist produces a work of art through his nature, as his nature is aesthetical. There is not even room for an aim. What the artist desires is, that what he makes should be according to his nature, that is to say, that his product expresses his aesthetical experience of reality. For supposing that his nature is aesthetical, his experience will be similar and therefore aesthetical.’206

Starting from this principle, it is indeed possible to claim the ‘independence’ of art, as ‘De Stijl’ had done in its work and its artists, chiefly Van Doesburg, in various articles in their review: ‘What only matters in art, is to use everything,

nature as well as science, as a means and not as an aim. Art is an aim in itself. It is for this reason that is has abandoned, in the course of time, all secondary intentions such as the awakening of religious feeling, the stimulating of humanitarian sentiments, etc. Plastic art has to express its aesthetical content by its proper, pure means of colour and form.’207 Stating the fact of a development in the past, comes down to formulating a programme for his own period: ‘Painting sought its aim in many a direction (......). That is why it continued to live as a parasite. Painting in modern time however, depends on itself, it has to ensure its proper existence, not through literature, nature or allegory, but by its own plastic means. For as long as an art does not possess the faculty to transform by its means of expression an inner reality - f.i. an emotion - into an externally perceivable reality, it is not independent and, because art is independent, not art, either. Music, considered as the highest expression of feeling, has reached far ahead of painting in its way of expression.’208 This liberation of painting from all outside influences and tendencies was considered, by ‘De Stijl’, as the most important task of its period: ‘Therefore every artist who indulges his plastic conscience, in spite of subject-matter, has to fight current opinion. And as long as we fancy that a painting should have another content except an emotion, another form than a plastic form, as long as we cling to the notion that painting is limited to the more or less emotional representation of certain natural objects, this struggle will continue.’209. An independent art of painting, that was ‘De Stijl's’ claim, advocated by Van Doesburg in various articles and practically realized, as early as in 1917, by the paintings of the three ‘Stijl’ painters. We shall see, that their liberation of painting went even further than the other contemporary trends, for they were well aware of their task. ‘To make painting independent, means: to ensure for it an existence as an expression in its own right, which may be admired for its own sake.’210 Van Doesburg thus formulated the task. In the same pamphlet elsewhere he writes: ‘The suggestive effect, which colour and form have on our souls contains the possibility of enjoying an art of painting for no other secondary feeling than the purely aesthetic one, that is to say for its own sake.’211 This general statement is only a claim; but Van Doesburg and the other artists of ‘De Stijl’ are much concerned with its realization: ‘The uncovering of the aesthetical essence is the most important principle of New Painting. Hence the expression “abstract” is derived; by this is principally intended, stripped of the naturalistic, the practical, the national and, generally speaking: the particular. As contrasted with traditional painting, where particularization was of primary importance, painting in our time considers generalization, that is to say the uncovering of the purely aesthetic in plastic features, as its principal value. This fact has brought painting to a higher level, it has made its aesthetical way of expression independent and has opened a number of possibilities.’212

Painting has thus become, since the first realizations of ‘De Stijl’ in 1917, an independent art, an art that manifests only itself. We shall have to examine later in how far ‘De Stijl’ went further in this direction than other, somewhat earlier or contemporary trends. But the fact ‘De Stijl’ had aimed at and which it had

succeeded in realizing as early as in 1917, was the liberation of painting, that is to say the creation of an art that was entirely free from associations. All standards, which do not pertain to painting are therefore excluded from the appreciation of a work of painting; every thought, trying to link up a work of art with any phenomenon of the outer world, is therefore out of place. Van-tongerloo summarizes this exclusive attitude towards painting, when writing in De Stijl: ‘What do you say when you are in front of a painting with a general idea or without any idea? “It is well done, it is well rendered”. The painter, therefore, rendered what he wanted to make. You have understood well enough.’213 What a work of art demands, is not the spectator's activity, that starts from the painting and then tries, by way of associations and remembrances to find the links between the work of art and a series of phenomena; the work of art demands the spectator's exclusive concentration on its composition, on its structure and its development on the canvas. All other intentions should be excluded.

Van Doesburg formulates this claim: ‘With regard to the contemplation of a work of art, we would like to speak about the aesthetic attention as the first and principal claim. This aesthetic attention means the opening up of one's receptivity.’214 Thus, the new trend in painting did not only concern the artist, but the spectator as well. The latter was to be made familiar with a new manner of looking at works of art. And the artists were willing and ready to help. It is one of the reasons for the publication of the review De Stijl, as we have seen from the introduction: ‘If the new ideas on modern plastic beauty have not yet penetrated to the general public, it becomes the task of the specialist to awaken the layman's sense of beauty (......). For this reason a magazine of an intimate character has become necessary.’215 And Van Doesburg has, once and again, emphasized this point of view, most clearly in a speech on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition in the Amsterdam Municipal Museum in 1929: ‘The ancient painters, realists, naturalists, impressionists, have taught man to see nature; the painters have seen it first (......). But the new painters, the painters of relationship, will teach people to see art, the art of painting. These painters, discovered it for the first time. There is a difference between “seeing” works of art and looking at paintings. The first suggests a plastic vision, the latter only an optical one.’216

Having cut all the ties which had linked art and the outer world, and having concentrated exclusively on the proper laws of art, it is not surprising that the artists of ‘De Stijl’ emphasize another aspect of their art: the element of play. Mondriaan writes in De Stijl: ‘Art is a game and games have their rules.’217 And there is a passage in Dr. Schoenmaekers' book The new image of the world, which enables us to get an approximate notion of Mondriaan's intentions: ‘Life and repose, united and one, are nothing but life without an exterior aim, i.e. life for its own sake, life lived for and by itself. Life for life's sake, that is, in other words: playing. The one and continuous deed of creation is a game (......). We human beings play as well.’218 It is the disinterested and detached character of ‘De Stijl's’ art that makes Mondriaan speak of a game, that is only dependent on its own rules. And it is the same feature in the art of ‘De Stijl’ which shows it to

us as a culmination of ‘l'art pour l'art’, as the extreme consequence of this axiom.

The consistent pursuit of this idea has led to the liberation, to the independence of painting. It has led, as well, as we shall have to realize later, to the establishment of its proper means of expression. But it brought up, nonetheless, a limitation of painting, at least in regard to its public: it has limited the appreciation of painting to the aesthetically susceptible. Van Doesburg states this fact, in the 1929 speech quoted above: ‘Plastic vision means seeing relations. For him, who does not hear musically, Bach and Stravinsky are quite the same: a sequence of sounds. “Hearing” or “seeing” of context is already a beginning of understanding. All those, who see the new art as only “ornament” must have seen ancient art exclusively as “subject-matter”. They lack the organ, which is absolutely essential for the spiritual enjoyment of art; they had better abstain from judgment.’219 This limitation of the appreciation of art to the aesthetically susceptible - in the case of painting the visually ‘musical’ - is an essential consequence of the liberation of art; it has caused a deepening of the gap between the artist and the public, it has prejudiced the position of the arts in regard to society. Yet, everyone is disposed to assign similar privileges to music. For modern society had accepted the notion that enjoyment was the only aim and the exclusive function of music, whereas it expected from painting an explanation of nature's appearance. We shall have to see later, in how far the artists of ‘De Stijl’ were prepared to answer this desire. But this readiness could, however, not change ‘De Stijl's’ determination to consider the work of art as an independent entity, or to deviate from the course which, in their opinion, history had stipulated for a further development of the arts, already from the start of impressionism: ‘Painting became an art as painting, and the entire nature became a problem of relations, of tonal values to the impressionists. It was their aim to identify painting with this task. “How” became everything, “what” became a secondary matter. Or rather “how”, became “what”.’220

In this progressive striving for the liberation of painting, for the independence of art, ‘De Stijl’ has indeed gone further than its contemporaries and than the other trends of abstract art. For the other currents of abstract art the exclusion of subject-matter was a further step towards complete self-expression of the artist. The realization of his individual emotions had still been hampered by subject-matter, even by its remnants in cubism, as even geometric forms were an objective limitation of the artist's subjective approach. But ‘De Stijl’ considered the problem from a different angle: not the artist was ‘De Stijl's’ aim, but art. Mondriaan had well realized the possibility of abstraction in the direction of subjective expression, as he writes: ‘A work of art depends exclusively on the will of its creator,’221 but he refuses to exploit this fact in order to realize a subjective expression by abstract means. On the contrary, ‘De Stijl’ has always considered the desire for subjective expression as the most harmful and serious limitation of art. In its striving for purity in art, individualism and the desire for self-expression had to be considered as the worst enemy. Mondriaan, in all his writings, is the resolute opponent of every manifestation of individualism. Already in his first article in De Stijl where he gives a definition of style and of the

means to realize it, he attacks individualism: ‘The artistic temperament, the aesthetical vision, recognize style. Everyday's vision, on the other hand, does not see style, neither in art nor in nature. Everyday's vision is the vision of the individual, which cannot rise above the individual sphere. As long as matter is perceived individually, style cannot be seen. Thus everyday's vision stands in the way of all art. It does not want style in art, it desires detailed representation. The artist, on the other hand, wants style and searches for it; this is his struggle.’222

We shall have to see later that Mondriaan does not only oppose individualism in art, but in life as well. A passage from one of his articles in De Stijl does already point in this direction. ‘As we become freer from our attachment to the individual values, our idea of beauty will be gradually liberated from it as well, and vice versa. The liberation of our idea of beauty manifests and at the same time contains the evolution of our life.’223 In another article, of some years later, he squarely opposes individualism to pure beauty: ‘If our material environment is to be of pure beauty, if it is to be healthy and directly sufficient for use, then it is necessary that it no more reflects the egoistic sentiments of our petty personality; that it does even no more reflect any lyrical expression, but that it be purely plastic.’224 For Mondriaan, lyricism is the direct manifestation of individualism: ‘Lyricism is a remnant from humanity's childhood. From a time, when the lyre was known, but not electricity.’224a Painting will indeed never be fully independent, as long as individualism is still an active force, and neo-plasticism has therefore quite definitely to exclude individualism. Formulating his views about neo-plasticism, Mondriaan writes in 1942: ‘Actually it is an expression of our modern age. Modern industry and technics show parallel if not equal developments. Neo-plasticism should not be considered a personal conception. It is the logical development of all art, ancient and modern, its way lies open to everyone as a principle to be applied.’225 But it is not only Mondriaan, who opposes individualism; several passages from the first manifesto of ‘De Stijl’ should be quoted here, in order to show that the struggle against individualism is part of ‘DeStijl's’ principles, and an important feature in its striving for the liberation of art: ‘There is an old and a new consciousness of time. The old is connected with the individual. The new is connected with the universal. The struggle of the individual against the universal is revealing itself in the world war as well as in the art of the present day. The war is destroying the old world with its contents: individual domination in every state. The new art has brought forward what the new consciousness of time contains: a balance between the universal and the individual. The new consciousness is prepared to realize the internal life as well as the external life. Traditions, dogma's and the domination of the individual are opposed to this realization. The founders of the new plastic art therefore call upon all who believe in the reformation of art and culture to annihilate these obstacles of development, as they have annihilated in the new plastic art (by abolishing natural form) that which prevents the clear expression of art, the utmost consequence of all art notion. The artists of today have been driven the whole world over by the same con-

sciousness, and therefore have taken part from an intellectual point of view in this war against the domination of individual despotism (......).’226

In this opposition of individualism and subjectivism, which is clearly expressed in ‘De Stijl's’ manifesto, an essential mark of difference with all other currents of abstract art can be discerned. Kandinsky, for instance, writes about his Improvisation of 1913 - and this sentence could as well be applied to his entire work: ‘The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood, and not as a representation of objects.’227 And Malevitch, the founder of Suprematism in Russia, wrote about his first suprematist painting, also dating from 1913, as follows: ‘I mean the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts.’228 and elsewhere: ‘I have invented nothing. I have only felt the night and myself, and in it I have discovered the new thing which I have called suprematism. It expressed itself in a blank surface, that represented a square.’229 In his ‘Bauhausbuch’, the Russian text of which has already been written in 1915, similar definitions can be found, for instance the following: ‘An artist who does not imitate, but who creates, expresses himself - his works do not mirror nature; they are new facts, no less important than the fact of nature itself.’230

 

In opposition to these tendencies, ‘De Stijl’ clings to strict refutation of individualism. The liberation of art from all accidental features, the reduction to its pure elements, can indeed only be completed if a work is free of the most accidental of all its origins; the casual moods and the incidentals of its creator. Therefore one of the primary ambitions of ‘De Stijl’ has been to promote a means of expression, which excluded all casual moods and arbitrary expressions of the artist. The striving for a generally valid mode of expression is one of the reasons for the creation of neo-plasticism; it is also an expression of the fact that ‘De Stijl's’ ambition had always been directed not only towards the creation of works of art, but towards the creation of a style.

The ultimate ambition of ‘De Stijl’ is therefore not only abstract art and not only an artistic manifestation, that is no longer dependent on nature. If this would have been the case, the artists of ‘De Stijl’ might as well have contented themselves with a development of their art of before 1917. Their ultimate aim is to realize harmony and equilibrium objectively, with a similar objectivity as science had reached in establishing the laws of nature. Everything that could hamper this objectivity had therefore to be excluded from their work. And the only means of expression by which it would be possible to manifest this harmony objectively were the elementary plastic means of ‘De Stijl’: straight lines in rectangular opposition, and the primary colours.

‘Unconsciously, every true artist has always been moved by the beauty of line, colour and relationship for their own sake and not by what they may represent.’231 The beauty of these plastic elements is therefore the only possibility of expressing beauty objectively, without interference from nature or from any other incidental. ‘Finally as a consequence, in abstract-real painting composition itself is rendered visible. For the composition only becomes positive in ancient

art, when subject matter has been subtracted; on the other hand it appears directly in abstract-real painting, because there is an abstract means of expression.’232 And it would not be sufficient either, to have an abstract means of expression, but the means of expression in its turn, has to be objective, exact: ‘Abstract-real painting is capable of mathematically aesthetic expression, because it possesses an exact, mathematical means of expression. This means of expression is definitely established colour. The definite establishment of colour implies: 1, the reduction of natural colour to primary colour, 2. the reduction of colour to flatness, 3. the inclosure of colour, so that it appears as a unity of rectangular planes.’233

So by a progressive purification of its means, ‘De Stijl’ arrived at the manifestation of its ambition: the creation of an autonomous beauty in painting. ‘Artistic culture, tending towards the purest and most real manifestation of the essential in art, had to lead, of a necessity, towards an “art without subject-matter”. The forms, used by this art, we can call “neutral”, as they do not have a limiting character. Geometrical forms can be counted among these, by their universal expression. Straight lines, in rectangular intersections, may be considered the utmost consequence of the abolition of individual form, as it is the intersection of the lines which necessarily forms the rectangles.’234 The use of this elementary means of expression bestowed the independence as well as the objectivity on painting: ‘With the exception of non-figurative art, there seems to have been a lack of realization of the fact that it is possible to express oneself profoundly and humanely by plastics alone, that is, by employing a neutral plastic means, without the risk of falling into decoration or ornament. Yet all the world knows that even a single line can arouse emotion (......). In general, people have not realized that one can express our very essence through neutral constructive elements; that is to say we can express the essence of art. (......) But everybody agrees that art is only a problem of plastics. What good then is subject-matter?’235

Van Doesburg, who had already advocated abstract art for some time, but, who could not be satisfied with Kandinsky's results, which he had closely followed, states the perfection of the new artistic manifestation: in this way, the aim of the plastic artist has indeed been realized most exactly; the aim which is to ‘create plastic harmony and to give truth in the way of the arts’ - illustrating once more by these words ‘De Stijl's’ eagerness for objectivity, which could not have been realized by the preceding schools of painting, which followed nature. ‘The organic unity is based on three fundamental elements: 1. the spiritual state or the emotion, 2. colour, 3. form. Painting, considered as a plastic art, is nothing but finding the right balance between these three fundamental elements. We see therefore,that in organic unity nature can be excluded completely and that a purely plastic work of art is free from natural elements as well as from sentiment.’236

Painting must concentrate upon the proper means; indeed, ‘how’ becomes ‘what’ and it is not a false claim of ‘De Stijl’ to have achieved the culture of ‘l'art pour l'art’.

‘The strongest form of expression of every art is to be found in the exclusive use of its proper means.’237 This statement by Van Doesburg is completed by the negative assertion: ‘Plastic arts may leave the interpretation of stories, tales, etc. to poets and writers (......). Arms, legs, trees, landscapes, are not pictorial means. The pictorial means are: colours, forms, lines, and planes.’238 In this context, Van Doesburg once more joins the idealist tradition by quoting Poussin as an example: ‘The painter concerns himself more with aesthetic intentions than with natural forms.’239

But not only nature, every other outward interference should be excluded, in order to secure the painting's independent objectivity: ‘When the new plastic artists use mathematics, they may be compared to a Renaissance artist using anatomy. No more can we make a Renaissance work of art by a great deal of anatomical knowledge, than a modern work of art with a thorough knowledge of mathematics (including the four-dimensional). By mere mathematics we shall never be able to compose a painting - with (the aid of) mathematics, however, we may do very well. One can learn the means: their use however, is the hereditary rights of genius. What matters in art is to use everything, nature as well as science, as a means and not as an aim.’240

The exclusive means of painting, therefore, are colours, lines and planes. But they were more: by themselves they manifested plastic harmony. Van Doesburg explains this fact by writing: ‘Gradually, the material became obvious to the artist as being the bearer of the content.’241 In these few words, the early years of ‘De Stijl's’ development are summed up. Mondriaan, in his articles in De Stijl and in his later retrospective essays, fills in the details of this broad conception: ‘It is to be understood that one would need a subject to expound something named “spiritual riches, human sentiments and thoughts.” Obviously, all this is individual and needs particular forms. But at the root of these sentiments and thoughts there is one thought and one sentiment; these do not easily define themselves and have no need of analogous forms in which to express themselves. It is here that neutral plastic means are demanded. For pure art, then, the subject can never be an additional value, it is the line, the colour and their relations which must bring into play the whole sensual and intellectual register of the inner life......not the subject’242 And more specifically about the realizations of ‘De Stijl’: ‘We may call those (forms) neutral which do not evoke individual feelings or ideas. Geometrical forms being so profound an abstraction of form, may be regarded as neutral.’243 These statements coincide with Mondriaan's - and ‘De Stijl's’ - artistic development: ‘To create pure reality plastically, it is necessary to reduce natural form to the constant elements of form and natural colour to primary colour. The aim is not to create other particular forms and colours with all their limitations, but to work towards abolishing them in the interest of a larger unity. The problem was simplified for me, when I realized two things: a. in plastic art, reality can be expressed only through the equilibrium of dynamic movement of form and colour and b. pure means affords the most effective way of attaining this. When dynamic movement is established through contrasta of oppositions of the expressive means, rela-

tionship becomes the chief preoccupation of the artist who is seeking to create equilibrium. I found that the right angle is the only constant relationship and that, through the proportion of dimensions, its constant expression can be given movement, that is, made living.’244 This quotation applies to the very first creations of ‘De Stijl’ where rectangular composition is matched with pure colour. The next one deals with the period of 1918, immediately before the definite creation of neo-plasticisrn: ‘In my early pictures, space was still a background. I began to determine forms: verticals and horizontals became rectangles. They still appeared as detached forms against a background, their colour was still impure. Feeling the lack of unity, I brought the rectangles together: space became white, black or gray; form became red, blue or yellow. Uniting the rectangles was equivalent to continuing the verticals and horizontals of the former period over the entire composition. It was evident that rectangles, like all particular forms, obtrude themselves and must be neutralized through the composition. In fact, rectangles are never an aim in themselves, but a logical consequence of their determining lines, which are continuous in space; they appear spontaneously through the crossing of horizontal and vertical lines. Moreover, when rectangles are used alone without any other forms, they never appear as particular forms, because it is contrast with other forms that occasions peculiar distinction.’245 The course of development is concluded with a quotation, regarding the years of 1919 and 1920, thus the constitution of neo-plasticism: ‘Later, in order to abolish the manifestation of planes and rectangles, I reduced my colour and accentuated the limiting lines, crossing them one over the other. Thus the planes were not only cut and abolished, but their relationship became more active. The result was a far more dynamic expression. Here again I tested the value of destroying peculiarities of form and thus opening the way to a more universal construction.’246 The entire development towards neo-plasticism has been dictated by the ‘gradual perception, that the material is the bearer of the content.’ And the further development, Van Doesburg's creation of elementarism and the schism in ‘De Stijl’ resulting from this fact, were repercussions of the same facts. When Van Doesburg in 1925 introduced the diagonal into neo-plasticist composition, he did so in order to increase the ‘dynamic expression’, to which Mondriaan referred. ‘The rectangular composition, in which extreme tension, horizontal and vertical, had been neutralized, kept - as a remnant of classical composition - a certain homogeneity with the statics (support-charge) of architecture. Contra-composition (or anti-statical composition) has liberated itself from this homogeneity. Its contrasting relation to architecture is (but on another level) to be compared with the contrast between white and flat architecture and gray, curved nature. Elementarism only has liberated painting completely from convention.’247

Another quotation goes even further: ‘As neo-plasticism had already rejected (and quite rightly so) symmetry, which is associated to our corporal external structure, it would have led in its way to reject rectangular composition as well as the only possible means of expression, as it is associated with our natural organic structure. This is what elementarism achieves: by the suppression of

rigid statica it awakens in us a new spiritual motion, accompanied by a new vision.’248

Mondriaan's opinion on what he termed ‘a deviation from “De Stijl's” original conception’ is no less revealing: ‘Van Doesburg kept the rectangular relationship of the vertical and horizontal lines, but turned them to a 45-degree position. This in opposition to the natural aspect of reality. He called his conception “elementarism”. In this way he put the accent on the expressive means, while I saw relationship of equal importance with these means.’249 The difference in the ideas of Van Doesburg and Mondriaan, which came to light as a result of elementarism, is deeply rooted in the difference of opinion about the essence of painting, which developed between the two artists and which we have to examine later. But the entire evolution of ‘De Stijl’ was due to a desire to develop this principle: ‘the material is the bearer of the content.’

From this exclusive desire for purification results ‘De Stijl's’ conception of plastic laws. Having once rejected all outer interference, the artists of ‘De Stijl’ had to concentrate on their means and on composition, in order to express harmony. Oud, in the first volume of De Stijl, imputes impurity to a confusion between aims and means: ‘Impurity in art as well as in religion arises as soon as means are considered as aims. Thus painting could give subject-matter without art; building, details without art; religion, rites without faith; philosophy, reason without wisdom.’250 On the other hand, Mondriaan emphasizes the possibilities of pure painting: ‘Painting is capable of a consistent straightening and interiorization of the means of expression, without leaving the domain of these means of expression.’251 And, in the first number of De Stijl, he gives a definition of his conception of the laws and aims of painting: ‘Thus neo-plasticism means the manifestation of definitely established aesthetic relations. It is built up in painting by the artists of today, as the consequence of all preceding plastic manifestation - it has been realized in painting, as painting is the least bound of all arts. The whole profundity of modern life can be reflected in a painting.’252 Having once developed the new and purified means of expression, it was ‘De Stijl's’ self-imposed task to express harmony by the composition of these means and to bring the expression of harmonious beauty to ever greater perfection. Van Doesburg continues to propound this problem: in the last, memorial number of De Stijl we find notes such as: Equilibrium and perfection are more essential than form or object. If it is possible to arrive at the creation of a work of art by these two superior qualifies, I ask myself, of what ‘use’ are accidentais such as ‘form’ and ‘object?’253 We have thus to interpret the statement, that ‘the material is the bearer of the content’ in such a way, that the means of expression can manifest harmony, an objective beauty, which is not to be realized by other means. ‘This is the beautiful feature in the artist's battle that, again and again, he seeks the pure expression of harmony. Every time he expresses a new vision of beauty, he will experience more strongly that harmony, manifested in the present world, is such a force that a visual representation is unable to render it.’254

‘De Stijl's’ search therefore goes towards the discovery of the laws of harmony

and the possibility of applying these laws. ‘De Stijl’ has found the solution of this problem in the spacial and visual relationship of its abstract expressive means. Vantongerloo is very much concerned with this problem, as his mathematical inclinations urge him towards a scientific approach. In his recent work which contains many retrospective thoughts, he writes: ‘What importance should be given to nature and what importance to the abstract? This study aims at finding the role of each and at formulating an attitude towards them from the point of view of art. We shall have to conclude that, where the arts are in question, we must not only abandon nature entirely, but absolutely ignore it, since nature lies totally outside the sphere of art.’255 The task of the artist is therefore, to create something which is unprecedented in nature and which is only related to the world of natural appearance by a coincidence of its lawfulness.

‘As the man of science, the philosopher and the artist make use of abstract forms, (......) every science needs calculation and reaches its results by abstract means. A machine is not composed with any natural object. Abstract farms, obeying a law, are given to material, for instance, the construction of a bridge, which obeys weight, the aeroplane, which obeys stability. Thus everythng obeys a fundamental law(......). Thus the artist disposes of abstract means. For all that, the line, which does not represent a natural object, is the most perfect materialization of art. Natural lines do not represent the image of a thought, but a local image; the realization of a natural object is not the materialization of spirit(......). A line, in relation to another line, speaks to us about science, about philosophy, even about art. If the relations are equilibrated, the lines give us a sensation of aesthetics.’256 Vantongerloo thus stresses the need for precision and accuracy in art - he emphasizes the conformity of art and science. We have already seen in the first chapter, that science has indeed been one of the important sources of inspiration to ‘De Stijl’, and Vantongerloo wants to continue and to deepen this conformity: ‘For art is a science and not a fancy. Plastic art, that is, the pure means: colour and volume. The work of art is a composition by purely plastic means, directed towards an aesthetical end. So the work of art manifests unity.’257

To create such a work, with a precision that almost equals that of science, a complete command and a thorough knowledge of the means of expression are needed: ‘All plastic art and particularly abstract art shows the importance of the fact already emphasized that forms with their colours have a proper expression which is independent of our vision. The same fact is to be observed concerning the elements of these forms. It is not superfluous to realize that a square is not a circle, a straight line is not a curved line. The more neutral the plastic means are, the more the unchangeable expression, of reality can be established. We can consider all forms relatively neutral that do not show any relationship with the natural aspect of things or with any “idea”. Abstract farms or dislocated parts of forms can be relatively neutral.’258 Forms which bear any relation to the outer world of appearance, are therefore rejected, as they are only capable of disturbing the equilibrium of the work of art; at least they have to be completely neutralized, or straightened. ‘In order that art may be really abstract,

in other words, that it should not represent relations with the natural aspect of things, the law of denaturalization of matter is of fundamental importance.’259 This denaturalization is not only applied to apparent farms, but even to categories such as space: ‘...in painting three-dimensional space has to be reduced to two-dimensional appearance. This is necessary not only to conform to the canvas, but to destroy the natural expression of form and space. Only then is the equivalent space determination, which abstract art requires, possible in painting.’260 Through denaturalization by abstraction of all natural forms, ‘De Stijl’ artists approach the laws of plastic composition. Any natural element would be as alien to their composition (and would therefore upset it entirely) as a non-arithmetic symbol would be in a mathematical equation. And an equation can only conform to its laws, if its material is adequate. Then too, it is capable of representing reality in an abstract way. In this way the following lines of Mondriaan's essay may be understood: ‘Intrinsic reality - dynamic movement - is established in abstract art by the exact determination of the structure of form and space, in other terms through the composition. In painting, structure is established through the division of the canvas by means of forms (planes) or lines.’261 This notion of space-determination is further explained in another passage of his essays: ‘The action of plastic art is not space-expression but complete space-determination. Through equivalent oppositions of form and space, it manifests reality as pure vitality. Space-determination is here understood as dividing empty space into unequal but equivalent parts by means of forms or lines. It is not understood as space-limitation. This limitation determines empty space to particular forms.’262

When considering example III, given by Van Doesburg in his Bauhausbuch, it becomes clear what is meant by space-determination and by the rejection of space-limitation. There, Van Doesburg exemplifies the transposition of natural forms into an abstraction and he explains this transposition by a series of his paintings, starting from the motive of a cow. He quotes the significance of a cow to the peasant, the veterinarian, the butcher, the cattle dealer, and shows that this significance influences their respective visions. Then he opposes to these aspects the vision of the artist, which is entirely disinterested as far as the object is concerned: ‘he does not see details, as the peculiar characteristics of the object do not interest hum.’263 He is not concerned with the particular limitations but only with general importance of the object as part of spacial reality. Thus the artist develops a spacial approach to reality, an approach which may seem strange and useless to the public: ‘The artist speaks, from his inner and outer world, in words and mental images, which are current for him, as they are partly factors of the world where only he belongs. The public however, has another inner and outer world and the words by which it expresses its notions, characterize this world completely. It stands to reason that the perceptions of different people, everyone having another inner and outer world, cannot correspond.’264 We shall have to see what the significance of the arust's vision can be for the public, we shall thus have to examine the moral significance of abstraction.

After having broached a similar example - that of the viewing of a tree by men of various professions, and by the artist, Van Doesburg concludes as follows: ‘It is, however, sufficient if we see from these examples that the artist's perception is different in its nature to that of the layman; from this fact we may derive the following thesis: that the artist's task is to explain the image of the world by way of aesthetics, that is to say, according to art’265 This conception of art does indeed exceed aesthetical perfectionism, but on the other hand, it implies it by necessity. Without a precise handling of the abstract means of expression, such a task could not be fulfilled. Van Doesburg stresses this fact in his methodological lecture, reprinted in the Bauhausbuch: ‘In summarizing the various thoughts, developed about this subject, we may say that only the abstract accents are of importance to the artist and that only when they exclusively prevail, his work has aesthetical value. Having formulated the notion of aesthetics as a denomination of the idea of the fundamental essence of being, we shall have no difficulty in acknowledging the unequivocal manifestation of this idea as being the essence of all art.’266

The rendering of ‘world's harmony’ - that, therefore, is ‘Stijl's’ most ambitious conception of art. And as this harmony does not become apparent in the likeness of any particular object, as it is also an abstraction, the means of expression are necessarily abstract. That is what Mondriaan means when writing: ‘Art has never been a copy of nature, for such a copy would not have been strong enough to evoke human emotion. The living beauty of nature cannot be copied: it can only be expressed.’267 It is in order to attain this aim, that he warns time after time against the danger of subjective approach: ‘For nature cannot be copied and the predominance of our subjective impression has to be conquered. These plastic exigencies produced abstract art. Abstract art has grown out of the abstraction of forms, but it is not a simple abstraction. It is rather, construction after decomposition of forms. Avoiding the formation of limiting form, it can approach an objective expression of reality.’268

 

After having examined the question of ‘De Stijl's’ aesthetical principles and its means of expression, we have now approached the problem of the content of its work. Abstract art, or, as it has been called as well, non-objective art, has always been considered as having, by definition, no content at all. In spite of this notion, it is important to emphasize the significance of the content of ‘De Stijl's’ work and, at the same time, to stress the fact that it is indeed ‘non-objective’ only in so far as it is not concerned with objects. The answer to the problem is given, clearly and explicitly, by Van Doesburg: ‘The modern work of art, indeed, lacks subject-matter. But it does not lack a subject. This subject is of a pictorial nature, it is aesthetical balance, unity, harmony in a higher sense.’269 And Mondriaan completes this thesis about the content of ‘De Stijl's’ work when writing: ‘The laws which in the culture of art have become more and more determinate, are the great hidden laws of nature which art establishes in its own fashion.’270

This task, which ‘De Stijl’ had set itself, demands indeed an abolition of all

particular appearances; it demands even more a complete exclusion of subjective sentiments. It calls on man's clear, all-embracing vision and abhors all sentimental attachment to specific objects. The task ‘De Stijl’ had set itself - to make visible the laws of nature - cannot be trifled with by the concern for any particular object. It is with this intention-that Mondriaan writes: ‘We come to see that the principal problem in plastic art is not to avoid the representation of objects, but to be as objective as possible.’271

The desire for objectivity is the key to ‘De Stijl's’ entire aesthetical conception. ‘De Stijl’, as we have seen, is not concerned with the representation of objects; it is only concerned with the structure of things and not with their appearance. lts foremost aim is an objective, visible demonstration of the laws which reign over this structure. As its content is an abstraction, the means of expression have to be abstract as well; they have to be objective, as the content does not allow any interference of the subject. And they have to be dynamic, as the content which they try to express is motion itself. ‘De Stijl’ has striven for an elementary means of expression, because the content to be expressed had to be universal.

This summary of ‘De Stijl's’ principles defines the social task of ‘De Stijl’. A work of ‘De Stijl's’ neo-plasticism cannot be a direct appeal to the spectator, a stimulus towards any particular activity or action. The task of the work of art in view of the spectator has been changed, it has been more assimilated to that of the scientist: its primary importance is the creation of a method - alanguage - which is capable of expressing the laws of nature, and which may be handled by others to realize special results. Mondriaan stresses the importance of this aspect: ‘Though an aim in itself, neo-plasticism educates the conscious universal vision, as natural painting did in regard to the unconscious, natural vision.’272 And, in one of his later essays, he emphasizes the fact that this vision has to be dynamic: ‘In plastic art the static balance has to be transformed into the dynamic equilibrium, which the universe reveals.’273 He thereby intends that all universal events follow the laws of dialectics and that the language of art has - therefore - to be dialectical as well: ‘It must be emphasized that it is important to discern two sorts of equilibrium: 1. a static balance and 2. a dynamic equilibrium. The first maintains the individual unity of particular forms, single or in plurality. The second is the unification of forms or elements of forms through continuous opposition. The first is limitation, the second is extension. Inevitably dynamic equilibrium destroys static balance. Opposition requires separation of forms, planes and lines. Confusion produces a false unity.’274

‘De Stijl’ has indeed created a new artistic language. The artistic means of expression, until the beginning of the 20th century, had been dependent on objects and were - therefore - statical. But man, in the 20th century, is no more concerned with matter but with energy in nature. It is ‘De Stijl's’ achievement to have created an artistic language, which was in conformity with the laws of nature, that is to say with the activity of human thought, by being dialectical and dynamic. It is only for this property of the new language, that Mondriaan could define the aim of neo-plasticism: ‘It is the task of art to express a clear

vision of reality.’275 And it is in regard to this content of ‘De Stijl's’ work - which has now to be examined - that we have to understand Van Doesburg's thesis, which may otherwise seem presumptuous: ‘The aim of nature is man, the aim of man is style.’276

The content: Universal vision

‘What we understand by abstract art: It is the attempt to bring
about the world's own speech, instead of the language of our
soul, which is moved by the world's image’ (Franz Marc).

Having until now examined ‘De Stijl's’ aesthetic principles, we have to study the essence of its ‘oeuvre’ - the subject, ‘De Stijl’ artists wanted to present visibly without the use of subject-matter. We have already seen that it has been ‘De Stijl's’ ambition to attain - by abstract expression - a clear vision of reality. But it will become apparent in the course of our investigation, that ‘De Stijl’ was not concerned with the mere appearance of reality. What it tried to discern and to render visible, was the essential, the unchangeable qualities of reality.

‘Art - though an aim in itself - is, on the other hand, a means as well as religion by which the universal may be revealed, that is to say, plastically contemplated.’277 With this passage from the first volume of De Stijl, Mondriaan hints at ‘De Stijl's’ general trend of thought, at ‘De Stijl's’ conception of the world and of life. For it would be erroneous and deceptive to consider ‘De Stijl’ as a movement which confined itself to art: ‘De Stijl’ had a firmly established conception of its own with regard to life and reality and this conception was to be and has been expressed by its plastic abstract means. It is difficult to say which of the two existed first: the aesthetic expression or the general conception of life - they are so closely united that they cannot be easily separated, though with Mondriaan, the general conception of life most certainly was the primary cause. They certainly developed one another and both reached their mature manifestation in the paintings of 1917. Since then, the content - once established by its form - may be deduced and can be treated separately.

The progress of the search for the universal, the absolute reality, is adequately illustrated by a quotation from Mondriaan's notebooks, published by his friend the writer M. Seuphor: ‘What captivates us at first does not hold us afterwards (like toys). If one has loved the surface of things for a long time, one will finally look for something more. This “more”, however, is already present in the surface one wants to go beyond. Through the surface one sees the inner side of things, it is as we regard the surface, that the inner image takes shape in our souls. This is the image we are to represent. For the natural surface of things is beautiful, but the imitation of this surface is lifeless. Things give us everything, their representation can give us nothing.’278 From this quotation it becomes clear, that the universal vision, the absolute conception of the world, was born with the artists of ‘De Stijl’ not by mere speculation, but in the way of the painter: by observation and contemplation. Van Doesburg too had been developing in the same direction during the period since 1913: the influence of Kandinsky's

paintings and writings led him away from tangible reality, towards a search for the ‘spiritual in art’ and not in art alone. That is why he had read Hegel and he quotes his work in this context: ‘The spirit is a thing, infinitely superior to nature; in it, divinity manifests itself more than in nature. (Hegel). Thus it stands to reason, that works wrought according to the spirit will deviate from natural forms and the more or the less so, or entirely, in proportion to the state of distinctness of the spirit.’279 And we find similar expressions with all ‘De Stijl’ artists, even with Gino Severini, who was comparatively an outsider within the group: ‘The task of our modern art is to seek to determine the direction, the aim and the extension of the phenomenon and to bring it into relation with the whole universe, that is to say, to all other phenomena from which it is not really separated, belonging to the domains of our knowledge, apart from any notion of time and space. This brings us close to the platonic idea.’280

Indeed, ‘De Stijl's’ philosophical conception, its image of the word, has not been so very remote from the platonic idea. It is not surprising, that there can be found, in De Stijl, quotations from Aristotle and from Plotinus, all emphasizing the same conception: the existence of a creative force, governing the appearance of matter. ‘De Stijl's’ conception of this creative force did, however not directly spring from the ancient thinkers - it was influenced more by modern science. For modern science had not only taught it the permanence of energy, it had shown the identity of energy and matter and had already hinted at the possibility of the creation of matter out of energy. The results of modern science and the philosophical systems of ancient thought were both adopted by ‘De Stijl’. Indeed, they found a confirmation of their ideas in a sentence by Plotinus, which is quoted in De Stijl: ‘Art stands above nature, because it expresses the ideas, of which the objects of nature are the defective likeness. The artist, relying only on his own resources, rises above capricious reality towards reason, by which and according to which, nature creates.’281 In ‘De Stijl's’ conception of reality, an idea on nature's construction is therefore presupposed. Huszar writes of this fact in the first annual of De Stijl: ‘It is therefore logical that this method is preceded by a different conception of life. The r-cubist (another denomination of the neo-plasticist) has to believe in the absolute (reality) before he can work in it, as the means he uses to express his spiritually-aesthetical aims, are the result of his conception of life.’282 And another instance, quoting Mondriaan: ‘Neo-plasticism arises from the notion of a universal conception of life. The universal can beexpressed by pure relations between the subject and the universal; of the one extreme to the other.’283 The universal force in which the artists of ‘De Stijl’ believed and which they tried to express, had been revealed to them not only by speculation but by their own activity: the observing of nature. ‘Pure observation makes us see the original unity as being the permanent force in all things. It makes us realize, that it is this force which all things have in common. The essential generality has been termed by Aristotle as “substance”, as that which is, as the thing by itself, as that which exists by itself, independent of accidentals as size, form, properties, which only shape the exterior, by which substance reveals itself. Thus this exterior is only by means

of substance, what it is to us. As the substance is the permanent force, direct expression of the universal (that is, direct manifestation of the substance) is not only justified, but necessary, as the permanent force is the highest value.’284 This is how Mondriaan expresses his conviction of the existence of this creative force; from this fact he deduces the task of art and its content: ‘It is spirit, that makes him become man. Man - but it is the task of art to interpret the super-human. Art is intuition. It is the pure expression of this incomprehensible force, which works universally and which we can therefore call the universal.’285 It is this force that leads art, that leads ‘De Stijl’ towards its goal. And in Mondriaan's article we find this amazingly mystical passage: ‘The universal (the source of all art) never errs.’286

It is with this certainty, with the intention of finding the universal force, in all of nature's manifestations, that the artists of ‘De Stijl’ observe reality: ‘Nature too, shows style (......). For everything reveals the universal according to its own fashion.’287. And it is not the variety of manifestations, that is important, but the unity of all these, by the one creative force: To the neo-plasticist the universal is not a vague idea, but a living reality that manifests itself visibly and audibly. For him it is that which becomes apparent in and by the individual, what it holds as its essence, what makes it a unity. That, therefore, which is always the same, the unchangeable. This unchangeable which manifests itself by instability, is equilibrated relation of position by equilibrated relationship of dimensions (measures) and of colour(tone) and non-colour (non-tone).288 By this unity and its various manifestations, life attains its form: ‘The quantity, too, creates rhythm for us. This is as it were, the plastic expression of life for us men and it unites the particular into one.’289 All the appearances of nature are thus considered as manifestations of this force: ‘Expansion - an exteriorization of the active primary force - creates form, corporality, by growth, annexation, construction etc. Form comes into existence when expansion is limited. As the universal is the fundamental force (because all action comes from it) it is to be fundamental in plastic expression as well. If it is to be consciously acknowledged as fundamental, it has to be expressed clearly and directly.’290

The conception of an essentially universal force therefore determines ‘De Stijl's’ vision of reality. The expression of this force is the content of ‘De Stijl's’ painting and tangible reality is only a defective manifestation of this force: therefore, art can never be based on the appearance of reality. All the artists of ‘De Stijl’ adhere to this conception. Van Doesburg sees this force in all the manifestations of life: ‘The significance of life is the manifestation of one and the same thing always in a different manner.’291 Kok, ‘De Stijl's’ philosopher, describes this force: ‘Every form (object) is a coagulation of universality.’292

The mystical accent, which may sometimes be heard in the sentences quoted above, most probably finds its origin in the work of Dr. Schoenmaekers. His system was based on a similar conception of universalism and, by this fact, it may have obtained so great a hold on the founders of ‘De Stijl’. It is indeed a remarkable fact that Schoenmaekers had already termed this universal force

as ‘style’. ‘A positively mystical contemplation of the essence of nature's form will recognize more and more clearly the severe, absolute style in the depth of life and it will therefore easily discern every rippling disturbance that opposes style.’293. Elsewhere in his New image of the world he writes: ‘Who can hear the variations of a musical theme most clearly? He who knows best the essence of the theme and keeps hearing it in all the variations. He hears the variations spring from the theme, he hears variations as variations.’294 A similar universal conception of nature can be found in Dr. Schoenmaekers book, indeed emphasized, in a way which reminds one of mystical writers as well as of theological eloquence: ‘He (the positive mysticist) does not see the particular beside the absolute, but he sees the particular as being one with the absolute, as its proper infelt opposite. He sees the particular as the playful game of severe absoluteness.’295

For the artists of ‘De Stijl’, painting is one of the most appropriate means to manifest this universal force; it is in their opinion a force which is most clearly apparent to the eye: ‘Indeed, a means to unite abstractly, that is consciously, with the universal, is given to man by aesthetical contemplation. Every contemplative activity - as the disinterested contemplation defined by Schopenhauer - raises man above his natural nature. According to this nature, all his activities are directed at his own improvement, at the maintenance of his own individuality. His spiritual ambitions as well do not exist for the sake of the universal - as he does not know it. But in the aesthetical moment of contemplation the individual as such comes to be abolished. It has always been the essence of all painting to materialize in colour and line the universal, that comes to the foreground on that occasion.’296 Painting therefore becomes a means to approach the structure of the universe. ‘Plastic vision is conscious contemplation, or rather: penetration. It means discrimination, seeing the truth. It leads to comparison and thereby to the vision of relationship, or to the vision of relationship and thereby to comparison. It means seeing things, as far as possible, objectively.’297

The painters of ‘De Stijl’ consider the universal force as the only essential reality, which they attempt to discover again and again: ‘We must see deeper, we must see abstractly and first of all, universally(......). Then, exterior reality will become to us what it really is: a reflection of the truth.’298 The manifestation of this truth should be the aim of all human activity, and painting, in this respect, is in a privileged position. ‘And thus, the base of all life, of religion, science and art, is the striving for a clear vision of the universal.’299 In the dialogue on neo-plasticism, the painter answers the objection that all things in abstract composition would become alike with the following remark: ‘If it is one's intention to manifest what things have in common and not what makes them differ, this is not a drawback, but a necessity. For the particular, which leads us away from the principal, is abolished by this procedure; the common factor remains. The expression of things gives place to the pure expression of relation.’300

The universal force was to be the most important feature in man's vision of

reality. All the domains of spiritual activity tended to emphasize it and in the immediate past had shown the first realizations: ‘Distinctness, clarity, are claims of life and art. Philosophically, distinctness is created by knowledge; though only the highest knowledge interprets the universal. Aesthetically distinctness is manifested by pure plastic vision. Religiously it is faith in the sense of direct contemplation.’301 Modern painting had gradually come to realize this manifestation of the universal: ‘Modern painting has shown, in general, a consistent striving towards liberation from the individual (with increasing consistency and then accelerated speed); it has come (in neo-plasticism) to a clear expression of the universal; doing so, it is a manifestation of the present - even though it is ahead of its time.’302 By this conception the painters of ‘De Stijl’, and Mondriaan in the first place, arrive at an evaluation of their own period as being one of spiritual revolution: ‘Therefore this period is to be considered as the great turning point where humanity no longer tends from the individual towards the universal, but from the universal towards the individual, in order to realize it universally - for the individual becomes but truly real indeed, when it has been transposed into the universal.’303 The fact that their era is considered as a turning point, brings about an additional opposition to tradition, and for this reason Vantongerloo writes: ‘The new artist thus has to part with tradition and become conscious of universality: of the union of spirit and matter.’304

What then, is the universal force hitherto undiscovered and only indirectly expressed by plastic art? It is about the same as the ‘universalia’ of Mediaeval scholastic thought, as the ‘substantia’ of Aristotelean tradition. But it is at the same time energy in the modern sense of the word, as it has been discovered and described by physical science. Painting has proved to be one of the few means of revealing this universal force, the unity of all creation; thus it is painting's task to attempt its manifestation: ‘The exact expression of unity can therefore be manifested, it must be manifested, as it is not apparent in visible reality.’305 This is painting's obligation in regard to its content.

Van Doesburg, whose theoretical argumentation is much less speculative and more concerned with its point of departure, gives an example of the transposition of nature into its universal pattern when stating: ‘That the artist - that is a man who feels a need for communication - is not concerned with the bird or even with the bird's song, but only with the state of mind which has been wrought in him. This is his subject: there is no other. This is not new. But the way in which he embodies this state of mind is. If he is a painter, he will choose the colours and forms by which this state becomes evident. He arranges, multiplies, measures and defines the conformity, the relations, and the results of colour and form in relation to his emotion. This emotion and the inexhaustible source of pictorial means are the only things with which the painter is concerned. Nowhere is there room for the bird... the bird only exists in regard to his emotion; it is not the outward perception of the bird, which moves him, but its content, the universe.’306 This conception of a painting's content leads, of necessity, to the abstraction which Van Doesburg describes in the course of

his article: ‘The artist seeks the common in the particular. To find beauty is nothing more than to discover the general. This common is the divine. Ta recognise the divine in a work of art means to be moved aesthetically. A work could be made from straight and horizontal lines only (......), which could reveal the divine in the shortest time and in the most direct way.’307

Mondriaan endeavours to express the same thought, when he writes ‘In the instability of relations, there is one unchangeable relation: it is manifested plastically by the rectangular position which gives us a plastic hold.’308 And he expounds a similar argument as Van Doesburg's, only more speculatively, about the relation of abstraction and the appearance of life: ‘Pure plastic manifestation is not a reproduction of life. It is its opposite. It is the unchangeable, absolute, in opposition to the capricious, the changeable. The absolute is expressed by the straight line. Painting and architecture, according to the new aesthetics, are the consistent realization of a composition of straight lines in neutralising opposition and therefore a multitude of the duality of the unchangeable rectangular position.’309 The universal force reigns in all the fields of nature and Mondriaan stresses the fact that for him and ‘De Stijl’ artists it is more than a conception of reality; it is reality itself. These lines have the deep and convincing accent of a confession: ‘For the new man of today, the universe is not a vague idea, but living reality, which expresses itself plastically in a visual and audible way. Aware of the impossibility of expressing “the inner essence of existent things”, as this inner essence is pure abstraction, beyond every possibility of plastic representation, man perceives the universal in its appearance within the individual, as it only becomes apparent when tied to the individual. The false conviction of being able to express the essence of existing things by plastic representation has forced painting into symbolism and romanticism, into a passion for “description”. The realists are quite right: only by “reality” everything is revealed. It is therefore the appearance of reality that matters. Neo-plasticism demands a reality which expresses the objects in their totality and as a unity, as an equilibrated, neutralised duality. This excludes any appearance of palpable reality and any expression in which the individual prevails. The objects and things are brought into a universal means of plastic expression, which expresses things without having the pretension of representing them. This new reality is in painting, a composition of colours and non-colours, in music a composition of tones and definite sounds. In this way, subject-matter does not hamper the precision of composition. Composition becomes reality. The result, as a whole, is a complement to nature, which only supplies the exterior appearance.’310

The universal force is the subject of all neo-plasticist painting; and by this subject, all subject-matter falls into disuse. In the age of ‘De Stijl’ it is the task of art to express this universal force as objectively as possible and to demolish all obstacles which may stand in the way of objective expression: ‘Even the most perfect, the most general forms, the geometrical forms, have expression of their own. It is the task of art, the aim of all movement towards style, to abolish this distinct (individual) expression.’311 At the end of this pro-

cess of evolution, an objective expression of art's content, of the universal, will be attained: ‘In spite of all differences, all art, by the progressing culture of the spirit, will become more and more a definite manifestation of equilibrated relations; as equilibrated relations most purely express the universal, harmony and unity, which are the properties of the spirit (......). If we concentrate on equilibrated relations, we shall therefore be able to see unity in nature.’312

Mondriaan again and again stresses the fact that universal vision has become possible by the innovations of his period, but that it has not been sufficiently revealed to human society. The objective expression of universal reality has a long tradition but it only found its direct realization in the beginning of the 20th Century: ‘Objective vision - as far as possible - is the principal claim of all plastic art. If objective vision were possible, it would give us a true image of reaiity. For centuries our vision has been increasingly enlarged through the development of life, science and technology. Consequently, it has become possible to see more objectively. However, intuitively plastic art has always aimed at the universal expression of reality.’313

Even during the second world war Mondriaan stresses the necessity of universal vision and of its expression in painting and it is moving to hear how he clings to his vision of equilibrium and harmony amidst the chaos of the second war he experiences: ‘In our present mechanised world where the opposing factors of life are so strongly accentuated, that only combat can bring a solution, it is illogical to attempt to experience reality through fantastic feelings. At the moment there is no need for art to create a reality of imagination, based on appearances, events or traditions. Art should not follow the intuitions relative to our life in time but only those intuitions relating to true reality. Even in this chaotic moment we can near equilibrium through the realization of a true vision of reality. Modern life and culture helps us in this. Science and technical knowledge are abolishing the oppression of time.’314 In all his later essays he opposes this universal vision, which is only concerned with the fundamental essence of things, to another vision, which takes an active interest in accidental forms, events and appearances: ‘Although art is fundamentally everywhere and always the same, nevertheless two main human inclinations, diametrically opposed to each other, appear in its many and varied expressions. One aims at the direct creation of universal beauty, the other at the aesthetic expression of oneself, in other words, of that which one thinks and experiences. The first aims at representing reality objectively, the second subjectively.’315 And at another time: ‘Subjective reality and relative objective reality: this is the contrast. Pure abstract art aims at creating the latter, figurative art the former.’316 And he goes so far as to consider every particular sensation an interference with universal vision and its harmony. ‘It must be obvious, that if one evokes in the spectator the sensation of say, the sunlight or moonlight, of joy or sadness, or any other determined sensation, one has not succeeded in establishing universal beauty, one is not purely abstract.’317 But, on the other hand, the universal vision embraces all these determined sensations, they are all included in its equilibrium. Therefore

Mondriaan can write: ‘So we see neo-plasticism not as a denial of full life: we see it as a reconciliation of the duality of mind and matter.’318

Indeed, the artists of ‘De Stijl’ oppose their vision of reality to the traditional one, as harmony is opposed to chaos. A passage from an article by Van Eesteren casts a clear light on this conception: ‘For those who might feel afraid of such abstract beauty, it may be remarked that our nature is capable of recognizing perfection but that it can only temporarily realize it. Thus chaos or the imperfect, amidst which we often feel amazingly well, has been saved. Nevertheless we all strive for perfection and only that which approaches perfection most closely is really beautiful.’319 Perfection is not to be found in nature and it is the task of the artist to reveal it by this universal vision. For Mondriaan, perfection is the ultimate aim as he knows that perfection cannot be found anywhere: ‘Though the universal is manifested by nature as the absolute, the absolute does only occur in nature hidden and veiled by natural colour and form. Though the universal manifests itself as the absolute, in line by straight line, in colour by the plane and the purity, and in relation by the equilibrated, it only reveals itself in nature as the tendency towards the absolute...’320

From this conception of a universal force, which can be manifested by art, Van Doesburg draws the conclusion, when formulating the aims of ‘De Stijl’: ‘Modern art is the direct mediator between man and the absolute. The modern artist abolishes the illusions of delusive relations. His aesthetic conscience only reacts on what is above the relative, on the universal. By the abolition of the illusion of delusive relations in the individual, in nature, he brings to the light the elementary plastic relations to which the world is subjected.’321 And he characterizes this tendency of modern art as the basis of a new conception of culture: ‘How should this unity of style become apparent, if the development of art in general had not forced the artist to employ the general forms and relations, which nature hides for Visual recognition behind a veil of caprice, as the building material for their art. As a building material it is a means, not an aim (......). The forms of the old culture decay, because the essence of a new culture is already intrinsically extant in humanity.’322

The universal force is thus the only content of ‘De Stijl's’ creations and its manifestation is the task of its artists. It is an exclusive task, as the universal force cannot be manifested directly by words, for words still are bound to carry a particular significance: ‘The aim of art - plastic art, music and especially painting - is to express the idea of creation according to its specific ways, by its special means. It therefore stands to reason that the idea of creation or the aesthetical moment cannot be absolutely described. (......) Rather, it is the task of the artist to materialise all the accents of the aesthetic idea. It is the essential value of the plastic work, that these accents become visible, audible and tangible, that is to say concretely apparent to us.’323

Therefore ‘De Stijl’ is not only ta be considered as a new trend in painting, as a formalist or aesthetic movement, but as the plastic manifestation of a new and yet very old conception of life: universalism. None of ‘De Stijl’ artists has stressed this fact as explicitly as Van Doesburg has done: ‘The painters of this

group, wrongly called “abstractionists” do not have a preference for a certain subject, knowing well enough that the painter has his subject within himself: plastic relations. For the true painter, the painter of relations, this fact contains his entire conception of the world. That is why he can do without any subject-matter (in the usual sense).’324

It would therefore be a mistake to consider ‘De Stijl’ exclusively from the point of view of art history, that is to say as a consistent development of the life of forms. Its content is as important as the form it has logically given it. ‘De Stijl’ thus aims at establishing and manifesting a new conception of the Cosmos. As so many movements in the early 20th Century - anthroposophy, theosophy, the revival of the rosicrucian movement - it attempted to exceed the limitations of time and space and to attain a notion of the structure of the universe. Every period makes its efforts to create an image of the Cosmos; to write or to paint its own cosmogony. It is not surprising that the 20th century in doing so, has found its symbols in the field of mathematical abstraction. ‘De Stijl's’ desire to manifest this cosmic force has been quite explicitly expressed: ‘Thus it interprets in a stronger way the cosmic rhythm, which flows through all things.’325 It is Mondriaan who thus formulates ‘De Stijl's’ desire and Van Doesburg finds another definition: Here representation (imitation) comes to an end; here begins the aesthetical transformation (rendering) into another reality that is deeper than the particular one: a cosmic reality.326 And in his essay of 1930 Mondriaan once more hints at the infinite expanding value of his subject: ‘That which art conveys and makes us see and feel by this purely plastic expression is difficult to determine. Byit, art expresses beauty, truth,goodness, grandeur and richness - the universe, man, nature.’327 The root of this sweeping statement may already be found in Mondriaan's article in the first number of De Stijl: ‘The truly modern artist consciously discerns this emotion of beauty as being cosmic, universal.’328 And in the same number of De Stijl Van der Leck, whose few articles are of a great importance and clarity, emphasizes the same conception: ‘This is the positive result of modern painting's destructive character: that it pursues the representation of visual reality with its tragic accents, to cosmic values of space, light and relations, in which all earthly plasticism, or “the case” is contained and presupposed.’329

Before this vast conception of the universe, the individual emotion has to be silenced. ‘De Stijl's’ universal conception is, more than anything else, the reason for its anti-individualistic tendency. Mondriaan in his later essays expresses this feeling: ‘It must be emphasized however, that art is expressed through universal emotion and is not an expression of individual emotion. It is an aesthetic expression of reality and of men realized by universal perception.’330 And elsewhere, but in a very similar way: ‘In order to express universal reality, traditional conception starts from individual limiting forms; modern conception starts from the perception of universal reality. The form becomes really a “meeans”.’331 The first quotation regards the individual properties of the subject, the second those of the object; in both cases, the individual aspect is considered as an interference with universal reality. Both forms of prevailing individualism

can be abolished by conscious perception of human situation in the universe: ‘Only conscious man can be a pure mirror of the universal; he is capable of being consciously one with the universal and thereby rising consciously above the individual.’332

Van Doesburg, in his defence of an essentially objective and serene art, goes even further; he rejects all forms of emotion, as being contradictory to universal equilibrium. ‘The spiritual, the completely abstract, expresses the human essence with precision, whereas sensitivity does not even reach the level of the intellectual qualities and must therefore be considered as belonging to a lower degree of human culture. Art should not move the heart. Every emotion, be it grief or joy, implies a rupture of harmony, of equilibrium between the subject (man) and the object (universe). The work of art should create a state of equilibrium between it and the universe; sentimental emotions do create exactly the opposite state. They are the consequence of a confused, inadequate conception of life, which is a result of our individualism, of our attachment to nature. All sentimental emotions should be reduced to pure proportions of space.’333

Similar ideas can be found with all of ‘De Stijl’ artists, as the universalist conception is an essential property of ‘De Stijl’. Oud has formulated this idea in the first volume of De Stijl: ‘Paradoxically speaking one could say that the struggle of the modern artist is a struggle against sentiment. The modern artist aims at the general, whereas sentiment (subjective vision) leads towards the particular. The subjective is the arbitrary, the unconscious, the relatively indefinite, that can be sublimated, by consciousness, to relative distinctness. To this end, the subjective is to be regulated and organised by consciousness, so that it may lead to style by its relative distinctness. This organising and establishing of distinctness is the aim of modern art.’334

By the preceding quotations, ‘De Stijl's’ aversion to emotion and individualism has become clear; it results from a universalist conception which has brought ‘De Stijl’ in opposition to all artistic tendencies which base themselves on the emotional approach to reality. ‘De Stijl's’ approach to reality is quite different; while it aims at an objective view of the universal force, it has to exclude all casual aspects of its object as well as every influence of the subject, which could interfere with the validity of the result. The aim of ‘De Stijl’ in its search for objective reality is truth; and as it aims at truth and not at sincerity, its method of approach has to be strictly objective, that is to say, as exact as the methods of science or logies. ‘De Stijl’, in its attempt to present an objective manifestation of the universal force, has done away with the traditional ‘licentia poetae’ and has established a method that should equal science and abstract philosophy in its objectivity. In the Manifeste of concrete art Van Doesburg in 1930 writes: ‘The predominance of individualism, as well as the predominance of the local genius, have always been a great obstacle to the birth of a universal art’335 and he continues: ‘The work of art is not created by the fingers nor by the nerves. Emotion, sentiment, sensibility, have never helped art on towards perfection. Only thought (intellect) creates, at a speed unquestionably higher

than that of light (......). The evolution of painting is nothing else but an intellectual research into truth by optical culture.’336

Thus painting is placed similar to logies or science, or to any other intellectuel research; for painting is concernd with objective laws, which have to be established and cannot be established but by means of reason. Van Doesburg had already hinted at this conception as early as in 1918, in the first volume of De Stijl: ‘The plastic laws of art are at the same time the fundamental laws of nature. Thus in pure plastic realization the essence (the universal harmony) and not the outward aspect of nature comes to complete expression in the artistic phenomenon.’337

Art and science follow parallel roads - this fact, hitherto not admitted, is stressed by ‘De Stijl’. Vantongerloo formulates it as follows: ‘Science and art have the same laws’338 and in his book Art and its future: ‘I do not therefore intend to say that art is nothing but the science of plastics. But it is inevitable to know this science in order to create a work of art. It is indeed impossible to manifest unity by a composition which is not subject to the plastic laws.’339 He then describes his research, which led him to the discovery of some of these laws: ‘The spectral analysis of the absolute shows us different successive and well characterised manifestations: sound, warmth, light or colours, chemical rays are, to different degrees, manifestations of the spectrum of the absolute.’340 And in his article in the first volume of De Stijl, he ventures on a similar analysis of reality: ‘The invisible in creation becomes visible for our spirit and the visible part of creation shows us the invisible. The visible and the invisible together constitute harmony or the laws of unity. They are based on these laws and therefore proclaim the glory of creation (......). These are the laws of nature and he who desires to create must obey them.’341

Vantongerloo considers the plastic laws equal to the laws of science; Van Doesburg and Mondriaan compare them to the laws of abstract philosophy, of logics. Van Doesburg: ‘As we try to understand these relations by reason, we try to contemplate these same relations by way of beauty, that is to say, by art.’342 And Mondriaan: ‘Pure plastic vision leads to the notion of construction, which is the foundation of everything existing.’343 And elsewhere: ‘Neo-plasticism has found the new reality in painting, by abstracting the outward superficial appearance and only expressing (crystalizing) the inward essence. It has established new reality by the composition of rectangular planes of colour and non-colour, which take the place of representation of limited forms. This universal means of expression makes it possible to give the exact expression of a great eternal lawfulness in relation to which the objects and all existence are only its indistinct embodiments. Neo-plasticism gives expression to this law-fulness, to this ‘unchangeable’ by an exact, distinct, i.e. a rectangular relation.’344 In his Bauhausbuch Mondriaan stresses the parallelism between philosophy and art: ‘Philosophy as well as art manifest the universal; the first as truth, the latter as beauty (......). Some progressive spirits entirely reject logies. Does that mean liberating art? Is not art the visible materialisation of logics?’345 And this trend of ideas is once more resumed in his later essays, when he writes: ‘Abstract art is

in opposition to the natural vision of nature. But it is in accordance with the plastic laws which are more or less veiled in the natural aspect. These laws determine the establishment of equilibrium, opposition, proportion, division, relationship, etc.’346

The artists of ‘De Stijl’ were deeply concerned with the universal force and with its laws. As they intended to establish and to materialize these laws,