History is usually written by the victors. History of art is usually written by the curators. The museums, the specialists, the ones who arrange the art galleries we sometimes visit.

But sometimes, they’re wrong.

At the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, the curators were bizarrely wrong. Since 1980, the German museum has displayed New York City I, a seminal 1941 work by the Dutch abstract titan Piet Mondrian. Millions have walked past it and even art historians have lectured on it. But the whole time, the painting was upside down.

Lines and Art

Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian, was a Dutch painter and art theoretician often regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He was a pure modernist, famously proclaiming in 1914 that art has “no direct relation to reality.” For Mondrian, art was abstract and above reality. It was a quest to find universal values and aesthetics.

Mondrian is famous for pioneering abstract art, known for his iconic, minimalist paintings featuring bold black grids with primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and white/black/grey squares and rectangles, a style he called Neo-Plasticism. He sought universal harmony, evolving from realistic landscapes to geometric abstraction, influencing modern art, design, architecture, and even fashion with his balanced compositions.

It’s the kind of art that makes many of us take a step back and ponder, “what is this?”. Apparently, even the experts feel that way sometimes.

Mondrian created New York City I shortly after fleeing Europe for the United States. He fell in love with the boogie-woogie rhythm of Manhattan. He wanted to capture that kinetic energy. Instead of painting, he chose colored ribbons of paper with an adhesive backing.

This material choice is the smoking gun.

Upside-down paintings

In 2022, Susanne Meyer-Büser, a curator at the museum, was prepping for a new exhibition on the artist. She looked at the work, especially the thickening of the lines at the bottom of the frame. It looked like a skyline. But Mondrian didn’t paint skylines. He painted the feeling of a city.

Mondrian worked top-down. It’s a matter of ergonomics. You don’t lay fragile tape strips starting at the bottom of a vertical canvas; you hang them from the top to let gravity help you find the vertical. Meyer-Büser noticed that many of the yellow lines stop just millimeters short of the current “bottom” edge. If you flip the painting, those gaps appear at the top, consistent with an artist starting a line and not quite reaching the end of the canvas.

Then she looked at the archives.

She found a photograph from June 1944, taken in Mondrian’s studio shortly after his death. There, sitting on the easel, was New York City I. The dense cluster of yellow, black, red, and blue lines was at the top. The “skyline” was actually a dark, heavy canopy.

“Was it a mistake when someone removed the work from its box? Was someone being sloppy when the work was in transit?”, the curator said. “It’s impossible to say.”

So, the the painting was upside-down. The fix seems simple, just take it off the wall, rotate it 180 degrees, and hang it back up.

But they can’t do that.

Hanging by a Thread The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is keeping the painting upside down. Image via Wiki Commons.

Because Mondrian used ribbons instead of painting, this work of art is a conservation nightmare.

Adhesive tape is not a material meant to last decades. The rubber-based adhesives used in the 1940s oxidize, dry out, and break apart.

Right now, New York City I is in a delicate state of equilibrium. The tapes are hanging by a thread, quite literally. They have spent decades sagging in one specific direction. Gravity has pulled the molecular structure of the adhesive downwards. Switching it upside down would reverse the gravitational pull.

If the museum were to flip the artwork now, the brittle material could break apart. So, the curators faced a choice: Display the work correctly and risk destroying it or display it incorrectly and preserve it. They chose the latter.

Some might argue that the “wrong” hanging is a testament to the success of abstract art. The image works both ways; it truly transcends reality as Mondrian wanted. Critics might say this shows that there’s not much to abstract art at all, if you can’t even tell which way is up.

Ultimately, this is exactly the type of conversation art is meant to spur. When the museum decided to keep it upside down, it was a victory for conservation, but it forced us to ask ourselves what art really is. Is it the work of art we’re looking at, or is it what the artist intended for the work of art to be? Is it our interpretation of it?

It turns the viewer from a passive consumer of culture into an active participant. You aren’t just looking at a grid; you are engaging with the physics of the tape, the history of the error, and the fragility of the object.

Mondrian wanted to capture the energy of New York City. NYC is many things, but perfect and ordered is not one of them.Perhaps, in a way, the painting finally matches its subject.