Moving from 2D to 3D

The Proposal:

Let Piet Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie" guide the construction of a three dimensional model. Use basswood and glue to construct the model.

The Process:

I studied "Broadway boogie Woogie" off and on for several days and considered possible approaches to constructing the model. I was very intrigued by this painting. I wanted to explore the differences between the painting's colors as well as their relation to one another. I folded the painting in various ways and traced the blue, red and grey squares on separate pieces of paper in order to explore the painting further. The painting consists of lines broken into smaller squares and I was interested in the relationships between continuity and separation. I knew I wanted to represent the separate colors somehow and considered the possibility of assigning a certain height to each color. I also wanted to separate the larger areas of color fom the smaller ones.

After exploring the painting and researching Mondrian for a few days I decided to create a practice model out of chipboard. I believed that the yellow was the base color, red was twice as high, blue was three times as high and grey was four times the height of yellow. I interpreted a small piece of the painting using this method. After seeing a rough version of my three dimensional interpretation, I decided that I wanted to make the basswood model in two separate layers: the top layer would represent the lines broken into smaller squares and the bottom layer would represent the larger areas of color present in the painting. I wanted to be able to separate the rows of smaller squares from the larger squares, but I also wanted to see the relation between the two. I was also eager to see what kind of shadows the top layer would cast upon the bottom layer.

I then bought my basswood and began constructing my final model. I first approximated the length of each intersecting line and cut pieces of wood to resemble the lines. After forming the grid, I cut pieces for each color: the small red pieces were assigned the height of 1/4", the blue pieces as 3/4", and the grey as 1" tall. The pieces representing blue were also a little thicker than those representing grey and red. I felt that there should be some difference other than height. As I studied the painting the areas of blue stood out to me as points where shadows were situated and therefore I chose blue as the sites to be modelled with thicker pieces of wood. I viewed the grey spaces as the highest points in the painting and I ultimately decided to make them the highest points in the model. I then attached the small pieces of wood onto the modelled grid in correspondence to the division of squares in the painting. I left out some of the squares but I felt this reflected the spirit of "Broadway boogie Woogie". Although the little squares in the painting all look to be the same size they slightly differ. By leaving out a few of the squares I reflected the sense of subtle irregularity. In addition, while I chose to assign certain heights to each color, the pieces were not always cut to the exact height and I feel this also reflects the irregularity present in the painting.