Week 10: My Questions & Answers
1.What was going through your mind when you creating âthe grey treeâ?
Once, I visited a retrospective exhibition of Van Gogh in Amsterdam, which also opened up another way for me to see the world. I started trying to release color on the canvas. 1911 was a turning point for me. In Paris, I saw cubist works like Picasso and Braque. The new enlightenment from cubism prompted me to abandon the tension and instability of curves.Â
The work came at a time when I was beginning to experiment with Cubism. I came back to the theme of trees in a large drawing in black chalk, in which my unmistakable aim was to bring the three-dimensional volume of the bare tree, with its twisted branches, onto the surface of the picture, into the second dimension.My plan was to transform the thing that i saw in front of me into a rhythmic sign on my sheet of paper.
2.What was going through when you created âDe Stijlâ, was it politically motivated?
I was motivated by the World War I. De Stijl was founded in 1917. We advocate abstraction as a universal language by reducing form and color to essence. They are made up of black, white, red, yellow and blue lines and planes. In response to the horrors of World War I and the wish to remake society in its aftermath.
De Stijl has a double meaning; "De" refers to a particular style, while "Stijl" means "pillar" or "support", often referring to the column structure that supports the cabinet. Our concept is ignore the particulars of appearance, that means natural form and colour. it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour. With these constraints, my art only use primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical lines. And that is what De Stijl presented.
3.Why you used primary color and how did you used them?
I worked on stretched and lightly primed canvases and thus knew the size and format of each design before I began. Each design was developed by moving long, thin strips of transparent paper around on the canvas and noting their chosen positions on the strips themselves.
By using basic forms and colors, I believed that the vision of modern art would transcend divisions in culture and become a new common language based in the pure primary colors, flatness of forms.
4.Does the primary colors and lines in your work âComposition with Red Blue and Yellowâ Â have different meanings? If so, What exactly they present?
The Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow demonstrates my commitment to relational opposites, asymmetry, and pure planes of color. I composed this painting as a harmony of contrasts that signify both balance and the tension of dynamic forces. I viewed the black lines not as outlines but as planes of pigment in their own right; an idea seen in the horizontal black plane on the lower right of the painting that stops just short of the canvas edge. The red, blue and yellow doesnât have their specific meaning, Whatâs going on my mind is using primary colors to present a harmony of contrasts. Like how the large red square at the upper right, which might otherwise dominate the composition, is balanced by the small blue square at the bottom left. I used varying shades of blacks and whites, some of which are subtly lighter or darker. This variety of values and textures create a surprising harmony of contrasts.
5.What would be your thoughts on your âComposition with Red Blue and Yellowâ using  on fashion and architecture nowadays?
I'm honored and what surprises me is that my work and style can influence different fields other than painting. Such a style seems to be out of touch with the elements of real life, but people can simplify the language of lines and squares into neo-shapeism to explore the dynamics between color and form. I feel really pressure with that.
