Victory Boogie Woogie 1944

Piet Mondrian made Victory Boogie Woogie in the 1940s, using oil paint and tape on canvas. This was, of course, a traditional medium, but Mondrian radically exploded its conventions. Notice how the painting isn’t quite finished – you can still see the tape he used to set out his composition. The texture is built up through countless small blocks of color, a mosaic of gesture. It’s not just an image, it's a performance, an accumulation of labor. Now, Mondrian was aiming at a kind of universal harmony, but you might also see this painting as a reflection of his time: the syncopated rhythms of jazz, the grid of city planning, and the relentless pulse of industrial production. The painting embodies a utopian vision, but also the real conditions of making and experiencing art. So next time you look at abstract art, consider not just what it represents, but how it was made, and what that process tells us about the world.