Most people aren't aware that Mondriaan was an established painter who started out with realistic paintings and only gradually became more abstract. "De Grijze Boom" is a very nice snapshot of this aesthetic transition.

Staring at one of his paintings of rectangles at Musée des Beaux-Arts in Paris was when I felt like I for the first time understood abstract art.

Oh yeah, there's something really different about actual paintings compared to photographs of them. Especially with abstract art you often have to see them in real life to "get them".

I remember reading an article about an instructor who was leading a class on generative art, and one of the students was trying to recreate Mondriaan-style artworks on the computer. But when they looked deeply into his art, they realized just how painterly his art was, even the "lines and boxes" pieces, in a way that was really difficult to replicate on a computer.

The images and captions made me read the article.

Fantastic. Thought provoking.