I hope there is a person out there who laughed their ass off about purposely hanging that upside down and no one noticing for decades
Abstract painting hung upside-down get a shrug from me.
Representational art hung upside-down? Now that’s a giggle.
Maybe it was upside down in his studio!
Who placed the wire/mounting hardware? Was it the artist or the gallery? Entirely possible it was upside down on the easel for a time because it would be easier to access the area he was working on.
Also - when it comes to this sort of thing - orientation isn’t really that important.
That’s bound to be the theme of at least one carnival float next year.
Possibly at Cologne, though.
" Le Bateau caused a minor stir when the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which housed it, hung the work upside-down for 47 days in 1961 until Genevieve Habert, a stockbroker, noticed the mistake and notified a guard. Habert later informed *The New York Times, which in turn notified Monroe Wheeler, the Museum’s art director. As a result, the artwork was rehung properly."
What a tortuous chain of events; it could be the plot to a Wes Anderson film. I’d like to see Adrien Brody cast as “the guard”, and Tild Swinton as “the stockbroker, Genevieve Habert”.
@Mister44 Orientation is, I hear, a Social Construct.
˙ǝɯ oʇ ǝuıɟ sʞooן ƃuıʇuıɐd ǝɥ⊥
How about rotating it by 90° four times a year.
Make it an event, a party to celebrate art, artists and the people who enjoy them. And let the art dealers pay for it.
The joke is still on the gallery, the image is still 90 degrees out of true; Mondrian created it as a table cloth.
Or a ceiling painting to decorate the bridge of - you know what, scratch that.
That is not true.
Humans have a primal understanding of color, composition, etc. of the world around them. Art works to support or offset our expectations.
There is a significant difference in how that piece of art is perceived, depending on whether the far-apart yellow or the close-together blue dominates the upper part of the canvas.
One could argue for either orientation, but the point is the artist would have had a specific orientation in mind, and created the piece based on that.
Jimmy Hill, Jimmy Hill, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy; Jimmy
Fair point, but I’d argue with most of Mondrian works and some other artists, the composition is equally strong regardless of orientation (or at least in multiple orientations.)
I am not sure how Mondrian worked, if he rotated canvas to better access specific areas, whether the “up” and “down” was predetermined. But I do know artists like Pollack didn’t have a set orientation while working on his works. He worked around the whole piece. Certainly the dimensions usually dictated a landscape format vs portrait, but IIRC my modern art history classes, he would sometimes decide on proper orientation after the fact.
You’re right an artist usually has a specific orientation in mind either before, during, or after the piece is completed. I am not suggesting Pollack or Mondrian didn’t usually have a “proper” orientation in mind. But it isn’t always clear if they did, and I don’t think the artwork suffers from a different orientation in some cases. I used to look at a lot of abstract expressionism and I would often turn the books around to see how orientation changed the composition. I was trying to “get” what makes good composition. And in some works you can definitely find a clear "winner’. But other times I felt more than one option were equally strong.
As with all art, it is subjective, YMMV.
Alternative headline: “Mondrian Painting Takes On A Whole New Meaning.”
Alternative headline: “Mondrian Painting’s Meaning Just as Obscure as Ever.”
@the_borderer ISWYDT. Well played.
And when the clocks go back?
(sorry, trying to be topical).