Abstract

Art

This article presents information regarding the art and style of painter Ben Nicholson. Nicholson is the first English artist to have put prettiness to a truly virtuous use and to have detached it from the picturesque, and this he has done by imprisoning his native aptitude for the pretty in a canon of abstract forms that derives largely from Piet Mondrian and, in so far as it permits only hair-thin lines, is even narrower. Working exclusively, until recent years, with ruled and horizontally based rectangles and exactly plotted circles, Nicholson has subjected himself to a discipline whose penalty for error is so severe that the artist can leave absolutely nothing to chance, and therefore the discipline exerts a pressure calculated to extract from prettiness only its positive values.