The works of conceptual abstract painter Piet Mondrian have become part of pop culture.
The works of conceptual abstract painter Piet Mondrian have become part of pop culture, and today his designs appear on modern home accessories, Yves Saint Laurent clothing, furniture and board games.
Piet Mondrian, a Dutch artist and representative of the De Stijl movement, created at the beginning of the twentieth century and is best known for his works with asymmetrically arranged squares of primary colors. Professor of Modern Art at Stanford University, Nancy J. Troy, in her work ˝The Afterlife of Piet Mondrian˝, explores how Mondrian's legacy was left to commercialization after his death. She found that both Mondrian's aesthetic and his name could be applied to almost any product or service. Unfortunately, precisely because of mass reproduction, Mondrian's aesthetic has become a design cliché. Nancy J. Troy is convinced that today art and consumerism are intertwined. Mondrian's simple shapes, lines and primary colors are therefore really easy to adapt to everyday use.
The era of reproducing Mondrian's prints began in 1965, when Yves Saint Laurent presented a very popular model of a dress printed with Mondrian's geometric pattern. However, this was not the first appearance of his patterns in the fashion world! Mondrian himself lent his works for the backgrounds of fashion shoots, and thus his aesthetics were already well known to fashion lovers until the appearance of Yves Saint Laurent dresses.
The popularization of the artist's legacy continued in Hollywood, where in 1985 the trendy Mondrian Hotel was opened. Then vases, watches, shoes, stationery and many other trinkets appeared on the market, on which the influence of the famous artist's aesthetics is undoubtedly recognizable.
