visiting Jan Andriesse

As homage to Piet Mondriaan and to possess a Mondriaan himself the painter Jan Andriesse copied Mondriaans "composition with yellow lines" (1933 / 80 x 80 cm / Haags Gemeentemuseum) as precise as possible. By copying it he studied it and he found some remarkable details about the small painting. The yellow line on the left and the yellow line on top these lines have the same width. If they are continued outside the painting they form a square as is to see in the small drawing on the left bottom corner. Mondriaan said he didn't use mathematical systems to construct his paintings, he worked directly with his intuition on the canvas by drawing with charcoal the compositions he had in mind. It could take weeks and sometimes months to make corrections and the composition was crystallized enough to start with painting colours. For Jan Andriesse it was also the most difficult task to do, mixing the right yellow colour.

Bottom left corner of the photo a small poster of German propaganda : "British planes have no mercy for peaceful citizens, therefore stay at home".



Yesterday I visited Jan in his studio boat on the Amstel river. I had to because he is one of the rare artists who is working with the golden ratio. Yesterday afternoon he explained to me the triangle of Kepler. A triangle Jan Andriesse discovered quite some time ago when he was living in New York. He used to paint on a rectangle with the proportions 1 : 1,25. Slowly the proportions of the rectangle changed in 1 : 1,27. By reading and studying he discovered Kepler and his triangle with the proportions of 1 : 1,272.
Thank you Jan for explaining Kepler's triangle. For explaining Barnet Newman's wide rectangles. For telling many interesting stories about mathematics and philosophy. For the gossip and the one liners : "stay at home, read Baruch..."



The sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical function that describes a smooth repetitive oscillation. On the photo there are 9 moulds or templates Jan Andriesse made with the sinusoid that represents the decreasing wave of water when it is split by a boat or duck. Jan tried to make paintings with the 9 beautiful templates but he failed again and again. The reason why was explained by Jan by a quote of T. S. Eliot : "by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good". The 9 templates finally delivers paintings which are simply too beautiful, too boring, too perfect. The human irrational disappeared and therefore the result is dissatisfying.



On the studio wall of Jan Andriesse : a rectangle after the triangle of Kepler, one of the diagonals in the rectangle which is from the same length as the elegant hanging chain bow.
Less is more, stay at home, read Baruch ...