The Black Square By Kazimir Malevich As An Example Of Suprematist Art

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Abstract art comprises a plethora of artworks that exemplify a movement away from the formal, academic styles emphasized throughout history. Such a change is especially evident in Russia during the early 1900s. In the years leading up to the Russian Revolution (1917), Russia lost a number of wars which exhausted an obscene amount of manpower and tax dollars, causing major discontent from the people, specifically the peasants and the industrial working class. The Revolution led to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II and the collapse of the Russian empire, as well as the rise of socialism under Vladimir Lenin. This inspired an art movement characterized by abstract, geometric figures that was intended to lead viewers away from the material realm through utopian ideals and radical politics. The Black Square by Kazimir Malevich contains a rich history and style that has a unique meaning, making it a special piece that challenges the pre-Revolution politics of Russia.

The Black Square is a suprematist piece that was painted in 1915 using oil on linen. Today it hangs in The State Tretyakov Gallery located in Moscow, Russia. It was first featured at the Last Futurist Exhibition 0.10 at the Dobychina Art Bureau in 1915-1916, where zero symbolizes the end of the old world, creating a fresh new beginning and ten is for the ten artists who were featured in the gallery. Malevich was opposed to representing the real world in art; rather, he felt that a simple black square encompassed a “supremacy of pure feeling.” At the original debut of The Black Square, Malevich even wrote, “Up until now there were no attempts at painting as such, without any attribute of real life…Painting was the aesthetic side of a thing, but never was original and an end in itself.” This idea in itself made Malevich the founder of Suprematist style. It didn’t stop there–the square itself was not the only geometric figure present in this painting. In 2015, X-ray analysis revealed a colorful array of squares and other shapes underneath the black paint. Perhaps Malevich intended for this to one day be discovered. A simple black square creates the illusion that the painting lacks depth, but it really only lacks depth when viewing it from the surface. The Black Square could represent the complexity of human emotion, that pure feeling is difficult to achieve because many feelings shadow a primary emotion at any given point.

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Another Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying (1915) features an assembly of yellow, navy, and red rectangles of various sizes and was also in the original 0.10 exhibition. Malevich used paintings like these to create a sort of language that uses stretched, rotated, and overlapping geometric planes as the basic components of his message. He saw great importance in clean lines and brush strokes. His work is ultimately about the supremacy of form. For example, White on White (1918), Suprematist Painting (1916-17), and Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Kite (1915) are some of his other suprematist paintings. White on White is simply a white square floating weightlessly on a white canvas in connection to Malevich’s fascination with airplanes. He wanted to create a utopian feeling through a sense of elevation.The others also represent utopian ideals using the same styles.

The iconic Non-Objective Painting no. 80 (Black on Black) by Aleksandr Rodchenko was painted in 1918 in response to Malevich’s White on White by creating a sense of dynamism through black arches and suggesting that art should be grounded by its objectiveness rather than the white which suggests infinite expansion. Rodchenko rejected this idea of transcendence and focused on the materiality of paint itself. He wanted art to connect to the real world while Malevich believed in using abstraction as a complete break from reality. It was clear that they had different opinions on utopian ideals in society and used art as a language to communicate with one another. Still, both artists conveyed strong political themes in their paintings as they were created in a time of great turmoil. The Black Square would be a perfect addition to the conversation, not only because of its obvious fit with the other Suprematist paintings, but its ability to counter Rodchenko’s argument by using black to showcase his opposing political narrative in the revolutionary climate.

The Black Square also contradicts the importance of religion in pre-Revolution Russia. At the time of the Russian Empire, the Russian Orthodox church was the center of life, similar to the Catholic churches in Western Europe. It was common for an important religious figure to be hung in the top corner of a room. It’s no coincidence that Malevich also chose to hang his piece in the top corner of the 0.10 exhibition–he was challenging the existence of religion. The fall of the Russian Empire and the rise of radical socialism essentially eliminated the religious culture of Eastern Europe and demonized religion.

The Black Square is central to Malevich’s movement and identity. It stayed with him through his life, becoming his symbol. He signed some of his later works with a little black square and inevitably marked his coffin and his grave. This painting was symbolic in exploring art’s connection with the world at a time when the world around Malevich seemed to be collapsing. He thought of The Black Square as a manifesto for nonrepresentational, writing that “art is the feeling of reality without any images. A square is not an image, like a button or a socket is not electricity.” He managed to put more power into a square than math itself ever has. The piece created a revolution within a revolution.

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