Originally posted in Milk Magazine, Hong Kong,
Date: Oct, 2007
In recent years, collecting chairs and tables designed by famous masters has become popular. Even if people cannot afford the originals, many enjoy collecting miniature chair models from Japanese candy toys. Among these chairs, one very classic work is the Red and Blue Chair, designed in 1918 by Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld. Its distinctive form and criss-crossing structure represent the achievement of the early twentieth-century Dutch De Stijl movement, also known as Neo-Plasticism.
From today’s perspective, Rietveld’s design still appears very avant-garde and experimental. His work was influenced and inspired by the abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian, one of the founders of the movement. Mondrian’s paintings can be difficult to understand: the lines are simple, and only a few colour blocks are used. Many people think abstract art is profound and hard to understand. Therefore, we should first understand what kind of creative approach abstract art is.
The Method of “Reduction”: Removing the Unnecessary
To understand Mondrian’s paintings, we need to look at his artistic exploration. Mondrian painted a series of landscapes, seeking the pure harmony of nature. Starting from the forms of trees, he repeatedly used brushstrokes to explore the rhythm between branches and leaves as seen by the viewer. Through a process of “reduction”, he gradually removed unnecessary lines from living subjects, until only horizontal and vertical lines and the three colours red, yellow and blue remained.
Mondrian wanted to capture rhythm, rather than three-dimensional space or symbolic meaning. Complex tree forms became simplified, transformed from three-dimensional space into a flat surface. The rhythm between lines reflects Mondrian’s pursuit of pure harmony. Through simplification, all scenery could reach what he saw as a balanced image. The picture was formed from basic shapes and lines, making him a pioneer of abstract art.
Abstract art does not focus only on the visible, realistic world, but on the relationships between objects. For example, when we see a basket of fruit, we notice strawberries, apples and oranges. Mondrian, however, would focus only on the lines of the objects. When we look at his version of a fruit basket, it may be difficult to identify the fruit through the simplified lines alone, but we can still feel the rhythm of their arrangement. This is Mondrian’s pursuit of nature’s pure harmony.
The De Stijl movement was a search for a great ideal. Mondrian and others believed that beauty would appear once the balance of nature was found. Mondrian once said: “When things disappear into proportion, life can find balance.”
The Method of “Addition”: Reconstructing the World
Mondrian used “reduction” to understand the world, while Rietveld used “addition” to reconstruct simple components. He transformed Mondrian’s lines and colour blocks into chairs, furniture and houses.
In 1924, Rietveld built the first modular house, the Schröder House. The building is made up of different geometric components, with horizontal and vertical lines extending in different directions. Modernism placed function and efficiency at the centre of design, changing the direction of later architectural development.
From the architectural drawings of another De Stijl founder, Theo van Doesburg, we can see how buildings used blocks and cubes, combining them according to need and function to create suitable living spaces. Rietveld’s Zig-Zag Chair is another clever design, using only four rectangular boards to form a chair. Traditionally, a chair was made from different parts such as the back, seat and legs, each with its own function. Rietveld boldly simplified all these parts into four rectangular boards. As a result, the components of the back, seat and legs could be interchanged, greatly reducing production costs.
In graphic design, Neo-Plasticist typography was also modular. Identical rectangular strips were combined in different ways to create recognisable letters or design patterns. With no unnecessary lines, image and text became closely connected, creating a stronger visual impact.
Neo-Plasticism
Neo-Plasticist design continues to influence the world. Artists and designers from different periods have responded to its contribution. In the 1960s, fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent created a series of dresses inspired by Mondrian’s paintings. The A-line dress, combined with geometric colour blocks, contrasted with the curves of the human body.
In the 1980s, Hong Kong director Patrick Tam also used Mondrian-style divided compositions in Nomad, creating a calm and objective visual style. The horizontal and vertical lines reflect Mondrian’s pursuit of pure beauty: calm, structured and tightly organised. They also echo the modernist ideals of the First World War period. A great ideal of the age was triggered by a few paintings and developed into a powerful movement of thought.
Today, when we look at every corner of the city, we can still find Mondrian-like compositions: the relationship between sunlight and the walls of buildings; the divisions of platform screen doors in MTR stations; the crowded scenes of people and vehicles in the streets. These create a continuous rhythm. For more than ninety years, they have reminded us that order and regularity can express a calm sense of beauty — a beauty detached from reality.
At the same time, this also brought Mondrian’s exploration of beauty to its limit. Modernism certainly achieved efficiency and production benefits, but it gradually moved away from human exploration of nature. Its mechanical structure makes people feel as if they are living in a cold world. When the concept goes beyond what people can accept in daily life, what remains is tension and repetitive rhythm.
In Week 4, we were shown a movie called Godzilla (1954). A Japanese monster 
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