Talking at cross purposes: Piet Mondrian & Ad Reinhardt

Devotees of geometric abstraction this season would be hard put to find a gallery exhibition more impressive than “Mondrian and Reinhardt: Influence and Affinity”[1] at PaceWildenstein. Borrowing important works from museum and private collections, the gallery offered a tête-à-tête between the seminal modernist and a painter known for his forbiddingly austere canvases. PaceWildenstein has garnered a reputation for mounting museum-caliber shows matching artists whose connection is, at times, tenuous. That commercial considerations play a part in such pairings is understood. Hitching Reinhardt, whose estate the gallery represents, to Mondrian is a gambit designed to enhance the former’s stature. Still, perhaps a specialized exhibition such as this one—which required an eye sympathetic to an often difficult brand of abstraction—could only be attempted by a gallery....