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Amsterdam Honors Mondrian with Major Exhibition on 150 Jubilee

Employees pose for a photograph with "Composition: No. II with Yellow, Red and Blue" by Piet Mondrian prior to the New York spring season of evening sales at Christie's gallery in London, Britain, April 22, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
Employees pose for a photograph with "Composition: No. II with Yellow, Red and Blue" by Piet Mondrian prior to the New York spring season of evening sales at Christie's gallery in London, Britain, April 22, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
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Amsterdam Honors Mondrian with Major Exhibition on 150 Jubilee

Employees pose for a photograph with "Composition: No. II with Yellow, Red and Blue" by Piet Mondrian prior to the New York spring season of evening sales at Christie's gallery in London, Britain, April 22, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
Employees pose for a photograph with "Composition: No. II with Yellow, Red and Blue" by Piet Mondrian prior to the New York spring season of evening sales at Christie's gallery in London, Britain, April 22, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

Squares, lines, colors: this abstract linear approach to art helped the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) gain fame around the world. Mondrian, who, many art historians would argue, was the inventor of the abstract, would have turned 150 this year, according to the German News Agency.

To mark this jubilee, the museum with the world’s largest collection of Mondrian works is now honoring the artist with a major exhibition.

Running until September, Mondrian Moves in the Kunstmuseum Den Haag features major works in a gallery that even has its own dedicated soundtrack – techno music made in the style of Mondrian’s abstract methods.

“Mondrian had a great influence on 20th century art,” said director Benno Tempel at the show’s launch in The Hague on the last day of March. The museum wants to show “how Mondrian moved between his friends and contemporaries and how great his artistic influence was on artists after him.”

The museum owns more than 300 works by the painter, making it the world’s most extensive Mondrian collection. And it is now also showing numerous works by other artists influenced by his unmistakable abstract style.

For the exhibition, Steven Brunsmann and Marco Spaventi even composed a piece of techno music based on the painter’s ideas. This can also be heard when looking at the pictures. At the same time, the exhibition also shows how closely Mondrian was connected with other artists, such as his Dutch colleague Theo van Doesburg or the American dancer and singer Josephine Baker.

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Jungle Music: Chimp Drumming Reveals Building Blocks of Human Rhythm

In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
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Jungle Music: Chimp Drumming Reveals Building Blocks of Human Rhythm

In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)

Like humans, chimpanzees drum with distinct rhythms - and two subspecies living on opposite sides of Africa have their own signature styles, according to a study published in Current Biology.

Previous work showed chimpanzees pound the huge flared buttress roots of rainforest trees to broadcast low‑frequency booms through dense foliage.

The idea that ape drumming might hold clues to the origins of human musicality has long fascinated scientists, but collecting enough clean data amid the cacophony of the jungle had, until now, proven elusive.

“Finally we've been able to quantify that chimps drum rhythmically - they don't just randomly drum,” lead author Vesta Eleuteri of the University of Vienna told AFP.

The findings lend fresh weight to the theory that the raw ingredients of human music were present before our evolutionary split from chimpanzees six million years ago.

For the new study, Eleuteri and colleagues - including senior authors Catherine Hobaiter of the University of St Andrews in the UK and Andrea Ravignani of Sapienza University in Rome - compiled more than a century's worth of observational data.

After cutting through the noise, the team focused on 371 high-quality drumming bouts recorded from 11 chimpanzee communities across six populations living in both rainforest and savannah-woodland habitats across eastern and western Africa.

Their analysis showed that chimpanzees drum with definitive rhythmic intent - the timing of their strikes is not random.

Distinct differences also emerged between subspecies: western chimpanzees tended to produce more evenly timed beats, while eastern chimpanzees more frequently alternated between shorter and longer intervals.

Western chimps also drummed more frequently, kept a quicker tempo, and began drumming earlier in their signature chimp calls, made up of rapid pants and hoots.

The researchers do not yet know what is driving the differences - but they propose that it might signify differences in social dynamics.

The western chimps' faster, predictable pulse might promote or be evidence of greater social cohesion, the authors argue, noting that western groups are generally less aggressive toward outsiders.

By contrast, the eastern apes' variable rhythms could carry extra nuance - handy for locating or signaling companions when their parties are more widely dispersed.

Next, Hobaiter says she would like to study the data further to understand whether there are intergenerational differences between rhythms within the same groups.

“Music is not only a difference between different musical styles, but a musical style like rock or jazz, is itself going to evolve over time,” she said.

“We're actually going to have to find a way to tease apart group and intergenerational differences to get at that question of whether or not it is socially learned,” she said. “Do you have one guy that comes in with a new style and the next generation picks it up?”