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accept the structural limits of two-dimensional depiction, that is, accept the obvious flatness of the canvas surface, and build from there without recourse to illustrational illusionism. He was confident because he could replace the lost sense of reality, the loss of the depiction and sense of volume and mass with a sense of energy derived from his handling of color, light and rhythm that would appear to be equally real, or at least, real enough for painting. Of course, throughout the development of Mondrian's later painting there were hints and suggestions and inflections of volume and mass. It's not as though these things were ever really lost. It is, rather, that their representation by the devices of conventional illusionism was properly suppressed to get on with the business of abstraction.

Pure color is the beginning of Mondrian's sensationalism. Here we are given the intensity of hue as a pleasure and a tool in its own right, as well as, a surprising conveyor of feelings of volume and mass. Light follows, created by a preponderance of white pigment and numerous high contrast encounters with the black bars cutting across the painting's surface. This sensational light is hard to pin down, but it does seem to suggest that color travels, which, in turn, suggests that color has some substantiality of its own.                                       Finally, with rhythm, the painter's ultimate tool, Mondrian pulled it all together. "Broadway Boogie -Woogie" is a measure of all abstract painting.

It is here that Mondrian rattles the bones of human figuration for the last time; it is here that the white rectangle steps out of the background landscape into its own space. It is here that abstraction is truly born again. Mondrian has shorn up the shallow space of abstraction