Piet Mondrian was terrible at landscapes. In Chicago's Art Institute the Modern Wing holds one of his pre-masterpieces, a muddy landscape depicting a house and a knobby, dying tree. It looks like an amateur Van Gogh. A kindergarden knock-off. Impressionism, was not Mondrian forte. But, he would eventually find his genius. It was hidden in, of course, those blocks of primary color that are at once so perfect, so hard to get our of your head.

A Mondrian is a favorite for interior design. Instantly recognizable and so graphic, a Mondrian is a painting that seems totally okay to have a reproduction of. The paintings have been reproduced millions of times from pop artists to clothing designers.

But don't write it off as just pop or kitch. There is more to the works that meet the naked eye.