Is Piet Mondrian Just Lines Anyone Could Paint?

Look at a famous Piet Mondrian painting and an uncomfortable thought might enter your head:

“Seriously? €30 million for this? My child could paint those lines.”

And technically, yes. You could buy a canvas, some black paint, add a few rectangles in red, yellow and blue, and produce something that looks vaguely Mondrian-ish before lunch.

But that doesn't necessarily make Mondrian junk.

The important question isn't whether you can paint something similar today. It is whether you would have invented the idea more than 100 years ago.

Mondrian didn't begin by painting rectangles. He was actually a skilled traditional painter who produced landscapes, trees and other recognisable subjects. Over decades, he gradually removed details. Trees became simpler. Shapes became geometric. Eventually, almost everything disappeared except vertical and horizontal lines, white space and primary colours.

In other words, those simple paintings were the destination, not the starting point.

There is also more thought behind the compositions than randomly drawing lines. Move one black line slightly, enlarge a red rectangle or add another splash of blue and the balance changes. Mondrian was obsessed with finding harmony using as few visual ingredients as possible.

Does that make a painting worth €30 million?

That's another question entirely.

According to this article about Mondrian and the Stedelijk Museum, one of his paintings is expected to fetch around €30 million at auction in London this autumn.

Nobody spends €30 million because the paint and canvas are worth €30 million. The buyer is paying for rarity, history, cultural importance, provenance, prestige and, yes, probably a healthy dose of rich-person competition.

You are completely allowed to stand in front of a Mondrian and think, “I don't like it.”

But saying “anyone could paint that” misses the interesting part.

Anyone can copy the lines now.

Mondrian was one of the people who made those lines matter.