Is there a logic in the 'neoplasticism' compositions of Piet Mondrian? J Zanker1, A V Kalpadakis-Smith1, T Holmes2, S Durant1 |
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1Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom |
| What is beauty? Can universal aspects of aesthetics be captured by composition rules? In the tradition of experimental aesthetics (Fechner, 1876) we are interested in the compositional rules behind a confined set of some of the most iconic paintings of the 20th century - the austere geometric patterns of Piet Mondrian who coined the name 'Neoplastic Abstraction' for his works between 1921 and 1939. A systematic analysis of the geometric and colour relationships of the small number of objects used in a pattern (horizontal and vertical lines, patches of colour filled with a small set of 'primary' colours) provides a unique description of each individual painting with a small number of parameters. This database was used (a) by means of statistical analysis, to get a better idea of the regularities of the compositions used by Piet Mondrian, and (b) to generate artificial look-alikes of Mondrian paintings ('Mondri-Makes') that are used to test experimentally the solution space for possible compositions with regards to aesthetic preference (Holmes & Zanker, i-Perception 3 (7), 2012) |
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