Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930

That's Primary Colors and Lines: Confessions of a Futile Search for Appreciation of Mondrian

Upon first glance, my difficulty finding the significance of Mondrian is apparent. Any viewer without prior knowledge of the painter or history that says they find it beautiful and touching most likely said the emperor had clothes on. It's rectangles and precise angles and primary colors. But if one looks more closely, and studies the attempted meaning and depth of the work they will find.....

Rectangles, precise angles, and primary colors.

Mr. Mondrian, with all due respect, come on. I mean, I get it. I get the aim. Red, blue, and yellow, the formula for all other colors, are in their most reduced form next to white while the lines with different dimensions isolate the colors from one another, accentuating their purity. But to me, this meaning is not a diamond in the rough. It's a piece of quartz on the other side of the continent in an undiscovered cave under a mine-zone. And not worth the effort searching for the effort he put forth.

Maybe, having not studied it, I don't yet understand modern art. Maybe my young mind can't dive deep enough to appreciate the complexity in right angles. But for now, to my mind and my eyes, that's what it is. Right angles. And when an artist claims a right angle, a thing necessary to physics and engineering and nature since always, as a piece of his signature style, I don't quite buy that.

But what do I know? All I see is primary colors and lines.