Defeat Destijl is part of a series exploring potential outcomes of Lila, a Sanskrit term for the ‘cosmic game,’ the creation, shaping, evolution, and destruction of the universe. It is also a vandalism of the language of Destijl and its memorialization of straight, horizontal or vertical lines and simple, primary color palettes. Destijl was more than an aesthetic movement, however. It was arguably a ‘Platonic’ striving for a purity of form reduced to essences and represented a desire for a Utopian ideal in the wake of World War I. 

 

Defeat Destijl is an intervention on Mondrian’s Victory Boogie Woogie, the last and unfinished work in the oeuvre of one of Destjl’s most famous leaders. It is an exact copy of the unfinished Victory Boogie Woogie, re-drawn in inversion, with primary colors turned into monochromatic values and rotated from diamond to square. Defeat DeStijl takes VBW to an alternative conclusion, turning the work into a gameboard playing out a chaos of outcomes that result from chance and strategy, the throwing of the dice. Defeat Destijl may or may not have hidden within it a path to Utopia. But we are the players. And we may be blind to Utopia, even if it’s right in front of us.