Piet Mondrian's Painting Has Been Displayed Upside Down for 75 Years
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An art historian recently discovered one of Piet Mondrian's paintings has been hanging upside down for 75 years.
"New York City I," created by Mondrian in 1941, is an interlacing of different colored adhesive tapes. It was first displayed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1945, but has been at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20 museum in Düsseldorf since 1980.
"The thickening of the grid should be at the top, like a dark sky," curator Susanne Meyer-Büser explained, per the Guardian. "Once I pointed it out to the other curators, we realized it was very obvious. I am 100% certain the picture is the wrong way around."
Indeed, a photograph of Mondrian's studio that ran in Town & Country's June 1944 issue shows "New York City I" sitting on an easel the other way around. The story about Mondrian's studio can be found in the fashion section, and shows a model in various black gowns posing in front of Mondrian's work. On page 68, "New York City I" is spotted:
It's clear from the photograph in T&C that the thickening of the grid is at the top, not at the bottom as it has been displayed for the past seven decades.
"Was it a mistake when someone removed the work from its box? Was someone being sloppy when the work was in transit? It’s impossible to say," Meyer-Büser continued. One reason why it may have been displayed incorrectly: There is no signature, perhaps because the Dutch artist hadn't finished it before his death.
Yet, the work will remain upside down for the foreseeable future. "The adhesive tapes are already extremely loose and hanging by a thread," Meyer-Büser said. "If you were to turn it upside down now, gravity would pull it into another direction. And it’s now part of the work’s story."
She added to another reporter, "maybe there is no right or wrong orientation at all?"
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