My grandmother turned 80 so everyone showed up at the theather tu then since we were riding along, we went to my dad's childhood friend who does art. surrealist landscapes to be precise. Spoiler talking about surealism we had to carefully step over the doorframe into the home/atelier because the painter had just been in. then we went to a small chapel which is currently in use to display said art. then we had a picnic in the graveyard, talked about art. there was great disagreement about the popularisation ( but not appreciation) of Mondriaan and the missuse of the abstract simplicity as a shorthand and crutch for meaningless copies made in improper media by people unaware of the talent and method behind it. and wether people are elitist to think such bland copies should not be called "Mondriaan/mondrianesque" and wether to slap the brushes out of the hands that make them or not. really nice graveyard too, lots of grass, surrounded by maple trees. it was a good day
I think it's difficult because early abstraction only makes sense in the context of the time, to appreciate it now you can either try to put yourself in the modernist mindset of the 1920s or whenever (which becomes more about appreciating history than art imo) or you can get all post modern about it and treat it as essentially a kitch motif to be reused for the value of it's celebrity or recognisability (which is the equivalent of buying an iron maiden tshirt at top shop). Since I don't want to do either, I usually just ignore early abstraction, though I do have a soft spot for Malevich.
if you count the method and idea behind art as history then yes and no. for example the library has a small photo collection by a man who called the series "Mondriaanse landschappen" which I enjoy more imagine white brick walls, a blue garage door, red dumpster and a window covered by a piece of yellow plywood. the idea behind that, taking the recognisability of the abstract style and doing something creative like that is interesting and worthwile, without that idea it is a series of photos of the backs of buildings and back alleys Malevich's art I find to be less static than what Mondriaan is most famous for, and I do not like Mondriaan on a purely aesthetic level, the reason he came up was that currently The Hague has red yellow blue and white blocks painted and stuck in a lot of places to advertise/Popularise it for some culture thing and he was born there, same with Den Bosch/S' Hertogenbosch which has little creatures from the works of Jeroen/Hieronymus Bosch all over shop windows because the local museum was able to put together a great exhibit on it for a while. Escher, also being from The Hague, would be harder to do, stairs would be a nightmare.
