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The picture »New York City I« by the artist Piet Mondrian in the exhibition »Mondrian.
Evolution« in the art collection NRW: Wrong or right?
Photo:
Rolf Vennenbernd / dpa
Train levels: Piet Mondrian's works with their strict lines are among those pictures where, as a layman, you have to think: Is it hanging the right way round?
At the same time, as a layman, one assumes that people with art expertise know better.
It is all the more astounding what the art collection of North Rhine-Westphalia now offers for the opening of the exhibition »Mondrian.
Evolution« on the 150th birthday of the Dutch avant-garde painter (1872 to 1944) revealed: The famous tape picture »New York City 1« has probably been hanging upside down for decades.
The show uses 90 pictures to trace Mondrian's development from landscape painter to master of abstraction.
The picture »New York City 1«, created in 1941, is the highlight and end point of the presentation.
And now, of all things, this well-known picture of red, yellow, blue and black adhesive strips that cross horizontally and vertically is hanging the wrong way round?
The problem: The picture is not signed
It has been part of the NRW art collection since 1980.
In contrast to the almost identically sized sister picture in oil that was created at the same time and that hangs in the Center Pompidou in Paris, the adhesive picture has been shown turned 180 degrees since Mondrian's death in 1944, said curator Susanne Meyer-Büser.
It is also striking that in a photo taken a few days after Mondrian's death in 1944 in his studio, the sticker can be seen on the easel in a different orientation: the denser stripes are on the upper edge and thus run exactly like the oil painting in Paris .
The course of the adhesive tapes also confirms the expert's assumption.
Meyer-Büser believes that Mondrian glued from top to bottom.
At the top of the picture, he still had control over the strips and applied them precisely: "It babbles downwards." There, the strips were not clipped cleanly, so that half a centimeter was always missing.
In the Düsseldorf hanging, however, the unclean edges are now at the top.
The direction of the adhesive strips ultimately convinced the restorers, according to the art historian.
It should be noted: »The painting New York City 1 from the art collection is upside down.«
The problem is that Mondrian didn't sign the picture.
According to Meyer-Büser, the hanging error may have happened as early as 1945, when the picture was first exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art.
Perhaps it had already been turned over when the transport crates were unpacked.
The estate executor Harry Holtzman later wrote “Mondrian” in large letters on the wooden frame.
Did he "not look properly" either?
In any case, the picture was included in the catalog raisonné and thus art historically accepted, said Meyer-Büser.
The art collection will no longer turn the adhesive tape picture.
After all, it has been upside down for more than 75 years and consists of sensitive adhesive strips.
"If I turn the work over, I risk destroying it," said Meyer-Büser.
Hanging it upside down is also part of the story of the picture: »And it tells a lot about looking and accepting authority.«
And anyway: Mondrian dealt with reflections all his life in order to sharpen his own perception and that of the viewer, said Meyer-Büser.
"Perhaps there is no right or wrong orientation at all?" After all, art is in the eye of the beholder.
sak/dpa