Classical artists have always valued intelligibility and coherence and thus have favoured clearly articulated form and colour. Modernist classicism stands opposed to modernist romanticism, notably Expressionism and Surrealism in all of its figurative and abstract manifestations. The modernist romantic artist turns in on his or her creative action, expressing his or her self, as it were. The classical artist formulates a problem external to self to be investigated and resolved and articulated as clearly as possible. But this problem solving is not without its romantic side, at least not for Kidner. What he decides to investigate objectively is generated by a profound sense of wonder, intuition and feeling. He then proceeds in a rational and conscious manner but with a passionate devotion, more than that, with a rage for order. And that passion must be conveyed to the viewer. As he has remarked: ‘Unless you read a painting as a feeling then you don’t get anything at all.” To state it in another way, the pioneers of the constructive movements put their art in the service of universal absolutes, whether utopian or spiritual. Mondrian, for example, believed that his design was the consummate symbol of nature as well as the guide to a future utopia in which perfect men and women would come into being and live in perfect harmony. Kidner has no such illusions or pretensions. He does rely on mathematics and science, because he prizes the truths they reveal, but these truths are only partial, and he chooses which to investigate on the basis of the irrational promptings in the here and now of his being. Kidner yearns as avidly as Mondrian did for an absolute design, but he can only conceive of his in personal and temporal terms. Irving Sandler