Cubist art has had a great influence on my aesthetic. I recall standing in the Prado Museum of Madrid on Picasso's 125th Birthday, taking in all of his work...and crying. Being in a room with the most significant pieces of an artist's body of work is like gazing through a window at the artist himself. Picasso's view on the world was so revolutionized through his art.
Picasso may have reinvented anatomy in art, but Piet Mondrian's De Stijl also had some invention in mind that is worthy of looking at. Mondrian took the idea of abstract art and made it into simple geometry, claiming it to be the end all be all of artistic expression.
I see similarities in the ideas of Picasso and Mondrian and their two camps. They reinvented expression by stripping down the form of something to its naked truth. The tragedy of Mondrian is that his truth is a truth of calculation and numbers. The duality of relationships that he expresses in his manifestos and artwork are mere crossing lines. Picasso, on the other hand, strips down the form to something more abstract and perhaps rough, but this is a worldview closer to the truth than the sterile landscapes of Mondrian's canvas.
Due to my interest in the world of nostalgia, I find both fragmented styles to be of great intrigue, however, Picasso achieves the best of both worlds by giving an accessibilty of meaning to the viewer. Mondrian, however, claims no meaning.
Picasso wins the battle absolutely. He has brought me to tears and brought me to this, a place where the abstract is still beautiful and accessible. Filmicly and through my paintings I hope to achieve the same naked truth and absolute beauty that Picasso conveys in his work.
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