Mondrian Memory

On the list of 2020's disappointments this item is nothing, but the loss of San Francisco's Mondrian House merits a moment of reflection. (It's only an intangible loss because the house has been painted over--see above before and after.)

The two-story home at 2140 Great Highway, separated from Ocean Beach by a sand dune covered in ice plant, was one of those unexpected encounters that stood as a vivid treat in what can seem an ever-more-predictable Bay Area landscape. The taut balancing of blue, yellow and red planes within a meticulous white grid also had been a presence for at least 20 years.

No longer. Just like that favorite store or saloon that has closed for good because of the coronavirus....The house changed hands last year, and earlier this month the color scheme changed too. The garage door and front entrance are now soft yellow. Everything else is a sky blue that already looks washed out.

Composition with Yellow, Blue,
and Red (Tate.org)

Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) created a distinctive style, "restricted to the three primary colours and to a grid of black vertical and horizontal lines on a white ground," that once one becomes conscious of it one sees duplicated everywhere.

Mondrian dresses became fashionable in the '60's. Their rectangular frame, perpendicular lines, and primary colors were minimalist and futuristic. They echoed the block letters and basic colors of the nascent computer age, the transition from the complexity of analog to the simplicity of digital 1's and 0's.

That world, along with the Mondrian House, exists no longer.

YSL Mondrian dress (pleasure photo)