for Victor Coleman
Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie
[which the English for some perverse reason
pronounce bugee wugee
& this is not, one gathers,
because they’ve seen any of the remarkable photographs
by Widgee – who probably knew every theatre
& late-night restaurant on Broadway –
from 4th up into Harlem –
]
was painted in 1942. The
Germans
from whom Mondrian has intelligently fled
are pouring into Russia
& the Russians are dying by the thousand as they stop them
cold in the huge white snow & blow their heads off
like slaughterhouse chickens
might, if they had stopped
to think,
have learned something from this painting. It is
a favourite of art critics, but it is not really about
Broadway at all; it is about New York as a set of grids
& according to Mondrian there is no poverty
& no stock exchange
it is all colour & music & Oklahoma –
pretty girls in flapper skirts perhaps, although it is 1942,
& perhaps they are drinking Pernod. Who the hell cares,
it’s a great painting, isn’t it, his only gureat,
& who the hell was Lissitzky – just some goddamn Russian
& probably dead of a head wound cf
Appollinaire
in that remarkable photograph showing the wide head-bandage
after he defended Paris from the Germans in WWI.