The painting “Decorum” was inspired by the work of Piet Mondrian, more specifically his work “Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow”. This geometric space of Mondrian divisions was disturbed by figures taken from Edward John Poynter’s painting “Festival”.
Women decorate a minimalist space with flowers. The title of the painting refers to the principle of harmony of works, according to which the topic imposes the use of a specific genre, and the creator cannot mix artistic means belonging to different types of work in one work. Therefore, this painting is a contradiction of this principle and one may wonder whether combining artistic genres is really inadvisable.
On the other hand, the topic refers to the problem of decorative art, which changes over the years along with the prevailing trends and fashions. Does beauty lie in richness or simplicity? Is decorativeness important for art or is only the message important? Or maybe you can combine both? Or to put it another way: can it be separated? Can Mondrian’s paintings, although strongly supported by theoretical ideas, be considered less decorative?
As Hans Hoffman wrote in 1948: „It is the greatest injustice done to Piet Mondrian that people who are plastically blind see only decorative design instead of the plastic perfection which characterizes his work. The whole De Stijl group from which Mondrian’s art was derived must be considered a protest against such blindness.”
But what is this artistic perfection and is it a universal value? And does art have to be perfect?
