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9

At least, this is what we would have to believe if we believed that Mondrian's neo-plasticism were the only way to true abstraction, that the best that cubism had to offer was abstract figuration, that the future of cubism would always be bound to depicted reality and to three-dimensional expression.

But, we ask ourselves, can there be abstraction without figuration? Can there be art with only two-dimensional depiction? The answer to the first question is, not likely, because art, even when limited to line and plane, will yield shape, and the shape itself becomes the figuration. The answer to the second is yes, there can be art with only two-dimensional depiction, if we're not too fussy. In this case, we have to accept some substitution, basically energy for mass, something that we can feel for something that we can see. If Picasso's mass, his pictorial power, was drawn from structural considerations through Cezanne with line, plane and volume, Mondrian's strength, his pictorial energy was drawn from surface concerns through Impressionism with color, light and rhythm - the other basic ingredients.

Surrender to sensation was the source of Mondrian's success. Here was a man, who unlike Picasso, we assume, would rather get stoned than get laid. One man capable of extending the effort toward abstraction after confronting cubism. The other man bound to retrenchment after engaging (with) his own great discoveries. Mondrian was able to go on because what he saw in Kandinsky and Malevich, the same things that Picasso had seen, painterly materiality and flatness, didn't seem so destructive or threatening to him. If he saw that these developments out of and alongside of cubism were to become a threat to the depiction of reality as defined by its essence - three dimensionality - he wasn't worried. He was confident that he could