Malevich's Development of Suprematism
P.J. Worsfold, 4/5/2006
What can an artist, who is profoundly concerned with expressing reality, paint, if he believes, that "in reality, form does not exist"? (Crone 47) From 1915 to 1920, Kasimir Malevich answered this question with suprematism; by shifting his artistic gaze from the objective to the nonobjective, Malevich looked past form. He released painting from its representational servitude to the reflected and to the implied of the natural world and found, in simple geometric shapes and pure colour, a new set of "symbols with which to render direct feelings" (Kuspit 92). Malevich took universal truth and emotion as his subject matter and expressed it in a style that he hoped everyone would understand. While living and working in Moscow, Malevich and the followers of his suprematist movement, created art for a time that was characterized by arguably the most important social uprising of the 20th century. While Russians struggled to define their individual and collective identity through the fever-pitched din of political upheaval; technological advancement; financial decay; war and government oppression, suprematism offered an alternative. Malevich's work introduced a world based in absolute truth and structured by the elegant principles of weight, speed, and movement. Following a brief summary of the events in Malevich's life and in Russian society that inspired suprematism, this discussion will consider key elements of the movement's subject and style. Finally, in an effort to illustrate these elements, three of Malevich's most well known works will be analyzed in more detail. These works are Englishman in Moscow (1914), Black Suprematist Square (1913), and Untitled (Suprematist Painting) (1915).
Although Malevich's oeuvre spans three decades, his works of 1915 to 1920, made during his suprematist period are regarded by many as his greatest achievements. Thus, these works and this period will form the basis of this paper. Discussion of his life pre-suprematism, most importantly his neo-primitive and cubist work, has been necessarily limited to that which directly effected his arrival at suprematism. Similarly, Malevich's post-suprematist return to representational painting, while fascinating, is a topic that exceeds the scope of this discussion.
Kasimir Malevich was born in 1878 near the city of Kiev, in the Ukraine. His parents were Ukrainian Poles who, relative to the poverty that many in their village lived in, could be described as lower-middle class. Malevich's father worked as an administrator at various sugar refineries, while his mother raised their six children. Inspired by a visit from an artist commissioned to paint a church in his village (Douglas 7), Malevich began teaching himself to paint in his early teens. His preferred subject matter consisted of the peasants and the countryside that surrounded him (8). In his later years, Malevich often mentioned his admiration for the hard-working honesty in the peasants' life. Their brightly coloured attire is thought to have inspired his palette.
At the age of 17, Malevich entered the Kiev Art School. However, his time there was cut short when his father's work took the family to the town of Kursk. Although he was initially disappointed, the family's move to Kursk was ultimately important in Malevich's artistic development. Kursk was a major hub on the Russian railroad and it was a city inhabited by many young men on the move and looking to make their mark on the world. Malevich met a number of like-minded aspiring artists in Kursk and for the next nine years, he participated in a variety of artists' groups and exhibitions.
Realizing he would need further academic training if he hoped to advance in the art world, Malevich went to Moscow in 1904 with hopes of attending the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In preparation for the school's entrance exam, he studied at Fedor Rerberg's Moscow art studio. Unfortunately, for Malevich, studying at the school was not to be, starting in 1905, he failed the entrance exam three years running. While taking small commercial jobs and participating in the occasional show with other young artists, Malevich continued to study and work at the Rerberg studio until 1910 (9).
During these formative years, while perfecting his technique, Malevich diligently learned about the world of modern art in Western Europe. Although he absorbed all he could from the many art journals of the day, undoubtedly the most important early exposure he had to Western art came in the years 1909-1912 (9). During this time, every Sunday, Russia's best-known collector of modern art, Sergei Shchukin, would open his collection to the public. At these showings, Malevich and many other young artists were able to study the works of Gaugin, Monet, Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso (Nakov 8). While at the time, it was popular for Russian artists to visit the major European art capitals to study, Malevich was not able to afford such a trip. Critics have suggested that these circumstances were crucial in forming Malevich's unique style. Malevich was exposed to Western work enough to be inspired by it and to learn from it, but was never so immersed, that he lost his own voice or his uniquely Russian perspective (12).
Throughout his early years as an artist, Malevich's subject matter often depicted the rural settings and hard-working peasants he remembered as a child. Malevich's style however, was more varied. In the span of a decade, Malevich moved from painting realist compositions, which were inspired by the folk art of the itinerant peredvizhniki people, through to symbolist, impressionist, and fauvist periods (Handy 56). Grouping his early work by style, in a chronological order, is difficult due to contradicting research on the matter. However, for the purposes of this discussion, the value in documenting Malevich's early work is mainly to underscore that the abstraction found in suprematism was not the product of an arbitrary or whimsical decision, rather it was the result of practice, experimentation, and growth.
By 1911, Malevich was coming into his own as an artist. He painted in the Russian cubo-futurist style, which was a uniquely Russian interpretation of French cubism and Italian futurism (Nakov 10). One of his best-known works of this period is The Knife Grinder of 1912. Following his cubo-futurist work, Malevich entered his trans-rational period, which resulted in works such as Englishman in Moscow (1914). Ideologically, trans-rationalism was to be a vital segue into suprematism. Based in the field of linguistics and often connected to nonobjective painting, the trans-rational movement saw some of Russia's top intellectuals come together to assert new ideas on the how the mind creates meaning out of the world around it. The trans-rationalists sought to explore a state that they referred to as zaum, which they described as a world beyond that which we perceive with our senses.
The themes of trans-rational thought were explored in the futuristic opera; Victory Over the Sun. Shown in St. Petersburg in December of 1913, the opera was a collaborative effort between the poet Kruchenykh, the musician Matyushin, and Malevich (14). As is implied in the opera's title, the work was intended to be an assertion of what the trans-rationalist's argued was their superior, nonobjective way of perceiving the world. The group believed that in acknowledging a state of greater truth past that which we see with our eyes, they achieved a metaphorical victory over the sun's illumination of the objective world. Malevich would bring these notions to his canvas the following year.
Before entering a deeper discussion of suprematism, it is crucial to consider both the artistic and socio-political climate of the time, as Malevich's work is as much a product of these factors as it is of his individual experience. Malevich painted throughout the course of the Russian avant-garde period. This was a time in Russian history that spanned the years 1896 to 1932, (Nakov 4) where a variety of modern arts flourished in Russia's major cities. During this time, Russian galleries, private and public, opened their doors to modern Western works including those of the impressionist, symbolist, fauvist, and cubist masters. Additionally, Russian artists and art dealers visited various European art centres, such as Paris and Munich, where they established important ties between Russian and Western modern art worlds. During the avant-garde period, the Russian art scene, particularly in Moscow was abuzz with the assertions of rival art groups, each proclaiming theirs as the most relevant movement of the day. Collaborations and cross-discipline inspiration were commonplace as Russian poets, filmmakers, scientists, musicians, artists, mathematicians, architects, and craftspeople worked to advance their trades.
As history has shown elsewhere, brilliant art is often inspired by equally grim social realities. The Russian avant-garde, of which suprematism was an integral part, demonstrates this notion to a tee. By the turn of the century, Russia's out-dated economy lagged well behind its Western counterparts and inflation was running out of control. While his government oppressed the poverty-stricken people, Russia's ruler, Czar Nicholas II lived in splendor. As matters worsened, particularily following the Bloody Massacre of 1905, many in the Russian intelligentsia began floating, and rallying support for, anti-czarist revolutionary ideas. Finally, as Russia entered World War I and losses mounted, revolution broke out and the autocratic rule of the czar collapsed during 1917's February Revolution, which was subsequently followed by the October Revolution led by Lenin's Bolsheviks.
Although no research suggests a pre-revolution connection between Lenin and Malevich, they were undoubtedly influenced by the same social conditions and their respective movements share a similar fervor and sense of liberation. Following the October Revolution, many within Russia's avant-garde found government sponsored positions within art schools and organizations. A sad irony to the artistic benefits that the revolution brought, were the government led appropriations of large private collections such as Shchukin's, which were so vital in nurturing Russian arts only a few years before.
Returning to 1915, as the social climate in Russia was building toward a revolution, Malevich's art seemed one-step ahead. Opening on December 19, "0, 10 (Zero-Ten): The Last Futurist Exhibition" held at the Dobychina Gallery in Petrograd, marked the first major public exhibition of Malevich's suprematist works. While most literature denotes this 1915 exhibition as the debut of suprematism, it should be noted that some art historians, mark 1913 as the year suprematism was born. This dating is supported in Malevich's own writing where, upon completion of his Black Suprematist Square in 1913, Malevich recalls, "I felt only night within me and it was then that I conceived the new art, which I called Suprematism" (Malevich 8). Furthermore, Malevich apparently exhibited his Black Suprematist Square in 1913. At the sight of his work, he described the public sigh, "before us is nothing but a black square on a white background!" (68)
Confusion of dates aside, Malevich apparently learned from his earlier showing. To accompany his artwork at the "0,10" show, Malevich wisely produced a booklet entitled, From cubism and from futurism to suprematism, which set forth many of the basic tenets and motivations of suprematist art. The show must have been a remarkable sight. As Malevich's booklet boldly announced, "art is moving towards the pictorial end of itself," (Nakov 4) on the gallery walls hung 39 works depicting simple two-dimensional systems of pure colour planes. Malevich's works, many of which were untitled (Douglas 46), demonstrated a combination of absolute abstraction, geometric simplicity and colour purity the likes of which no one had seen before.
In the works Malevich displayed at the "0,10" show and with his subsequent suprematist compositions, he is attempts to present the essence of the world that the trans-rationalists believe exists behind our objective understanding of things. Based on this notion, his subject matter is an absolute reality or truth. Whereas past movements were concerned only with reflecting or representing "the nooks and crannies of nature," (6) Malevich separated painting from terrestrial narratives and illustrations, suggesting rather that each of his "suprematist constructions" were "autonomous and living" (6). Thus, each work embodied or presented its own truth, rather than a reflection of another object. According to Malevich, in the past, painting had been a "slave to an extra-pictorial world," (8) whereas he offered a new paradigm, one that was liberated, nonobjective, and based on a superior, hence the name suprematism, perspective of reality.
In suprematist works, subject necessitates style. When studying a suprematist composition, one immediately notices its simple geometric shapes; pure and diverse palette; sense of motion; and typically aerial perspective (Malevich 67). Speaking about the suprematist style, Malevich said, "art is the capacity to create a construction not derived from relationships between forms and colour, not founded on the aesthetic taste advocating the prettiness of the composition, but based on the weight, the speed and the direction of movement." (Nakov 8) Aside from Malevich's own comments, much can be learned about the suprematist style by referring to the works of those who influenced it.
With regards to suprematism's simplicity in form, one must consider the deep influence the Russian futurist poet, Velimir Khlebnikov had on Malevich. Aside from writing the introduction to Victory over the Sun, Khlebnikov wrote the influential essay To the Painters of the World. In this work, Khlebnikov argued, "the goal (of painting) is - to create written language, common to all peoples... to construct written symbols that can be understood and accepted by the entire population of this star" (47). This sense of universal understanding is crucial to suprematist work and the symbol-like quality of suprematist art, which might remind the viewer of modern street signs, is a direct result of Khlebnikov's influence on suprematist style. A second major influence on the primitive simplicity of suprematist style was the Russian nonobjective theorist Vladimir Markov. In 1912, Markov wrote, "how good it is to be wild and primitive, to feel like an innocent child who rejoices equally at precious pearls and glittering pebbles and who remains alien and indifferent to their established values" (Kuspit 88). Malevich's use of primitive forms, which are inherently devoid of material value and are ideally suited toward expressing nonobjective subject matter, is a direct result of Markov's writing.
With supremacy, Malevich hoped to "reach the summit of the true, 'unmasked' art" and "from this vantage point to view life through the prism of pure artistic feeling" (92). Both the sense of height and purity in Malevich's above statement are valuable elements to the suprematist style. In his paintings, Malevich suggests a sense of departure from the Earth as a means to achieve a new perspective. He accomplishes this by giving his works an aerial perspective, when looking at his paintings it is as if the viewer is flying high above, looking down at a new world. Regarding his preference for the aerial perspective Malevich wrote to his musician friend, Matyushin, "the Earth has been abandoned like a house infested with termites. And in fact, in man, in his consciousness, there is a striving toward space. An urge to take off from the Earth." (Douglas 26) Furthermore, by placing many of the elements of his composition at a diagonal angle, Malevich achieves a sense of motion and energy that augments the feeling already created by the aerial perspective.
The first of Malevich's works that this discussion will explore in more detail is Englishman in Moscow. Although, not a suprematist work, this piece anticipates much of what suprematism would deal with (Handy 57). In this work, Malevich offers the viewer a very literal view of concepts that are central to the motivations of suprematism, although less obvious in their compositions. Secondly, I will discuss a work that Malevich likened to the most basic building block of suprematism, his Black Suprematist Square. Finally Untitled (Suprematist Painting) will be analyzed, this painting is a personal favourite and one that I feel offers the best articulation of suprematist concerns.
Figure 1: Englishman in Moscow, 88 x 57cm, oil on canvas, 1914
Painted in 1914, Englishman in Moscow is an 88 x 57cm oil on canvas abstract painting. The nonsensical or alogical composition mixes familiar iconographic images; such as a fish, a sword, a saw; a pair of scissors, a church, a ladder, and a businessman's upper-torso; with geometric shapes; and text. The painting is a product of Malevich's trans-rational period and it deals with the notion of concealment (Douglas 82) and the idea that the physical objects, which make up our surroundings, hide a deeper truth behind them. This concept is well executed, in a collage like fashion, Malevich deliberately places the various iconographic images over top of each other, with each new image concealing what lies under it. This is most apparent in the centre of the work, where the fish blocks half of the businessman's face. The sharp contrast between the white of the fish and the wide range of colours used in the rest of the work, coupled with the fish's prominent placement, help guide the viewer's eye not just to the fish, but to the man's face. The man's one visible eye stares directly at the viewer, further expressing the theme of obscured vision. In a similar vein, the words zatmenie, meaning eclipse, and chastichnoe meaning partial are placed at the painting's top and bottom respectively (Douglas 82). Line is a very powerful element in this work. Although one can see the artist's stroke in the colouring of the various shapes, the well-defined, solid contour lines of the work's various elements add an unnerving intensity to the piece, a feeling added to by the presence of the sword, saw and scissors. A large red arrow that starts on the painting's upper left side and ends in the lower right corner unites the work and pulls the viewer's eye through its composition.
Black Suprematist Square is without a doubt the most important work of the suprematist movement. Completed in 1913, this oil on canvas painting measures 79.6 x 79.5 cm. The work consists simply of a large solid black square placed on a pure white background. Shape and colour contrast are the painting's central elements. Placed directly in the centre of the work, the square fills approximately 90% of the canvas and completely dominates the composition. Adding to the work's bold, visual power is the stark contrast between the white of the background and the black square. To Malevich, the Black Suprematist Square represented art's conceptual turning point from all that preceded him to his new suprematist vision; this work was the "first step of pure creation in painting." While conservative critics saw it as a negation of the past, (AG 15) Malevich called it the "majestic newborn." According to Malevich, this work represented the building block of art's new beginning. To underscore the value Malevich placed in the Black Suprematist Square, at the famous "0,10" show of 1915 he mounted the work in the top corner of the gallery room. In a traditional Russian home, this space would have been allocated for a religious icon.
Figure 2: Black Suprematist Square, 79.6 x 79.5 cm, oil on canvas, 1913
Untitled (Suprematist Painting) of 1915 is an abstract oil on canvas painting that measures 101.5 x 62 cm. With its white background, diagonally placed geometric shapes and aerial perspective, the work exemplifies suprematist composition. A large black rectangle placed at the top of the painting dominates the work. Partially covering this rectangle, and just to its left, Malevich has placed an arrangement of twelve smaller rectangles, most of which are red, orange or blue. Dividing the composition are two thin horizontal lines, which are placed, on a slight angle, at about one third up from the canvas' bottom. Below these lines, there is another grouping of eight rectangles of various colours. Placed on top of three of these rectangles Malevich has painted a medium sized red square. The work is well balanced and exciting, in it, one can imagine a sense of serenity in flight. Of this piece and other like it Malevich said, "(they) transport me into an endless emptiness, where all around you see creative nodes of the universe." (Douglas 86)
Figure 3: Untitled (Suprematist Painting), 101.5 x 62 cm, oil on canvas, 1915
In suprematism, Malevich sought to create art that was relevant for his time, and for a brief period, his work found acceptance within the Russian establishment and from an assortment of artist followers. However, the heady times of suprematism's arrival settled into a new form of the same government oppression. As internal creative differences fragmented much of the Russian art world, the autonomy that suprematism celebrated became sharply out-of-step with Soviet ideals and the movement disintegrated. While he continued to paint throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, the government came to view him as an undesirable, going so far as to imprison him for a short period. Virtually forgotten and poor, Malevich of died of cancer on May 15, 1935, in Leningrad. Although the Soviet era tried to remove him from the annals of Russian art history, thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union and a renewed interest in Russian modern art, today Malevich is regarded as one of the 20th century's most important artists.
Works Cited
Breaking Free of the Earth, Kazemir Malevich 1878-1935. Dir. Barrie Gavin. Prod. RM Arts in association with Channel 4 and LA Sept. Videocassette. RM Arts, 1990.
Crone, Rainer, and David Moos. Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure. London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1991.
Crone, Rainer. "Malevich and Khlebnikov: Suprematism Reinterpreted." Art Forum Dec. 1978: 38-47.
Douglas, Charlotte. Malevich. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1994.
Faerna, Jose Maria, ed. Malevich. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1995.
Handy, Ellen. "A Mind of Winter: Malevich in America." Arts Magazine Mar. 1991: 54- 58.
Kuspit, Donald. "Malevich and Khlebnikov: Suprematism Reinterpreted." Art Forum Dec. 1985: 86-93.
Malevich, Kasimir. The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism. 1959. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 2003.
Nakov, Andre. Avant Garde Russe. New York: Universe Books, 1986.