Dutch exhibition “Around Mondriaan” gives eyes, but also ears and nose a living | Art & Literature

For example, musicians Steven Brunsmann and Marco Spaventi composed a completely new techno piece, based on Mondrian’s ideas about music. This will be available for listening to the exhibition via a special app, as will the sounds of Jacob van Domselaer (1890-1960), who converted Mondrian’s painting into music at the beginning of the last century. Music was much more often associated with Mondrian, for example, during his lifetime piano concerts were given on special evenings when his work could be seen.

Birgit Sijbrands and Anh Ngo of fragrance producer IFF also created a new fragrance. According to the museum, it is “inspired by the rhythm and dynamics of the Victory Boogie Woogie”, one of his most famous works. They looked, among other things, at which scents evoke associations with certain colours.

The museum also evokes the scents that must have hung in Mondrian’s studios in Amsterdam, Paris and New York. Caro Verbeek, who is a scent historian, looked into this. “In Amsterdam he still had a lot of things to paint, such as a cashmere shawl and a Persian carpet. There was also a lot of smoking and it was damp.” In Paris he complained about his coal stove and the smell of the nearby Gare Montparnasse station also entered him, Verbeek knows. “In New York he started working with tape and glue, he ate a lot of oranges and he used orange boxes to make furniture.”