Power to the viewer!

As a painter, I want to give you the power to see whatever images, symbols, or interactions you need to see in my compositions. 

This is why I decided to paint a set of 36” square canvases with a palette limited to black, white, and grays mixed from them.  Thus, the variables at play were value, shape, and the combination of shapes to form a composition.  From the beginning, I decided to limit my shapes to basic geometric forms:  square, rectangle, line (well, not true one-dimensional lines, which would be quite invisible), and circle.  This decision resulted from my 2020 reading and writing on Russian Suprematism as championed by Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935). 

Uncovering the Work of Female Renaissance Artists

Think of the artists of the Italian Renaissance — Botticelli, Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Titian, da Vinci — all men. Were any women painting successfully and at a large scale in the naturalistic style that took hold in Italy during 1400-1650?

Yes, even though women were barred from art instruction or learning anatomy. This short NPR article and podcast reveals the work of the organization Advancing Women Artists, and shows some of the work of Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588), Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), and the later Violante Ferroni (b. 1720).

Two quotes really struck me. The first, from Linda Falcome, director of Advancing Women Artists:

"Art is a living entity and a piece of art has its life," she says. "You know, it gets hurt. It gets damaged. It needs renewal. It needs to be talked about and paid attention to, et cetera."

And from art restorer Elizabeth Wicks:

"It seems to me to be about the middle of the 19th century when these paintings stop being mentioned in the guidebooks," she says. "Women artists stop being mentioned. And if nobody writes about you, then you fade from history."

Kazimir Malevich, 8

How did Suprematism differ from Constructivism?

The term constructivism stems from the Working Group of Constructivists, founded in Moscow in March 1921 by Karl Ioganson, Konstantin Medunetski, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, and Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg.   The movement was concerned with literally and figuratively constructing a better world through collective action of creators, in contrast to visual works created by individual artists [Lodder 2003].  Suprematism (in its manifestation in painting as well as writing and architecture) was not motivated by utilitarian goals.[1]

However, during the 1920s Malevich turned his energies to teaching, writing, and models and sketches for architectural works, and even “Suprematist designs for fabric and ceramics” [Guiliano 2013].  He began to argue that Suprematism could be applied in utilitarian ways[2]:  “The utilitarian constructions of technology, which develop out of the skillful pitting of one natural force against another, have in them no trace of an ‘artistic’ imitation of natural forms;  they are new creations of human culture” [Malevich, trans. by Dearstyne 1959: 30].

Lazar (“El”) Lissitzky (1890-1941), twelve years younger than Malevich, became a pivot between Suprematism and Constructivism.  Rather than focusing specifically on utilitarian creations to further the building of a socialist society, “for Lissitzky, the essential task at hand was to use art as a symbolic, ideological vehicle with which to assist in the transformation of consciousness both in communist Russia and in the capitalist West;  for the Moscow constructivists, the imperative was to contribute in a direct, hands-on manner to the building of the new society that had actually come into being in Russia” [Lodder 2003: 30]. 

In late 1921, the Soviet government sent Lissitzky to Berlin “to establish cultural contacts between Soviet and German artists” [Perloff 2003: 7]. In 1922, he was a founding member of the International Faction of Constructivists, based in Berlin.He served as a bridge among Suprematist ideals, Russian Constructivist practical goals, and the International Constructivist use Constructivism’s aesthetic and formal ideals with Suprematism’s focus on personal psychological effect. 

Below, I attempt to relate Suprematism (for which Malevich (1878-1935) was the chief theorist), Russian Constructivism, International Constructivism, and the work and tenets of El Lissitzky, who was active in all three movements.

Suprematism (1913-21]: Art drives interior consciousness;  best achieved through a vocabulary of simple, flat shapes and limited colors.

Russian Constructivism [1921-34]: “Art” is irrelevant;  creators must design and build to improve the collective, communist future;  this requires movement into the third (and fourth) dimensions.  Followed Marx’s dictum that “Art must not explain the world, but change it” [quoted by Lodder on p. 37].

Lissitzky [esp. 1921-34]: Art is a means to increase collective consciousness in the pursuit of socialist ideals.

International Constructivism [1922-1950s]: Embraced total abstraction via visual and actual three-dimensionality of simple forms.  The IFC’s Statement also emphasized the role of art in social progress, but this was not evident in all manifestations of International Constructivism.

This characterization emphasizes the contrast of Suprematism, which mirrored the anarchy of the period surrounding the Russian Revolution, versus Russian Constructivism, which considered thoughtful and ambitious design as a driver of a new order. However, the Soviet state had other purposes for art. Rather than a tool for creating a new order, visual, written, and musical arts were to glorify the worker, peasant, and the nation.

_______________

[1] However Shatskikh [2012: 94-8] emphasized that the very first exhibition of Malevich’s Suprematist works was at the exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Verbovka, Ukraine in November 1915, and that the catalog listed the artworks as designs for a scarf and for a pillow.  Thus, while the motivation for the work was not utilitarian, from the beginning, Malevich seemed willing for them to be the design basis for everyday objects.

[2] Compare the previous footnote.  Malevich’s written emphasis on Suprematist design as the basis for objects and buildings began during the 1920s, but his recognition of this seems to have been present from the start.

_______________

Guiliano, Charles.  2013.  Review of Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 13 May – September 7 2003.  Berkshire Fine Arts (20 September).  https://www.berkshirefinearts.com/09-20-2013_kazimir-malevich-suprematism.htm, accessed 5 Nov 2020.

Lodder, Christina.  2003.  El Lissitzky and the export of Constructivism.  Ch. 2 (pp. 27-45) in Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow, ed. by Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed.  Los Angeles:  Getty Research Institute.

Malevich, Kazimir,  trans. by Howard Dearstyne.  1959.  The Non-Objective World.  Chicago:  P. Theobald.  (Originally written and translated into German in 1927.)

Perloff, Nancy.  2003.  The puzzle of El Lissitzky’s artistic identity.  Ch. 1 (pp. 1-25) in Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow, ed. by Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed.  Los Angeles:  Getty Research Institute.

Shatskikh, Aleksandra, trans. by Marian Schwartz.  2012.  Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism.  New Haven:  Yale University Press.

Kazimir Malevich, 7

Scandal, 100 years later

Shatskikh [2012] placed the creation of Black Square on June 8 (old calendar), 1915, or 21 June in the Gregorian calendar.  Malevich’s insight to eclipse all non-objective figuration with a black square, creating the “zero point” for painting, came suddenly.  Indeed, he painted over a non-objective composition.  His later comments to colleagues and students included “fiery lightning bolts crossing the canvas in front of him” and afterwards “he could not eat, drink, or sleep for a full week” [Shatskikh 2012: 45]. 

Black Square, 1915

Malevich’s self-reported impact of this insight helped Shatskikh respond to the uproar that occurred in 2015.  The director of Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery announced that new analyses of Black Square (housed in the gallery) revealed penciled-and-erased writing in the white border of the painting:  “A battle of negroes”[1] [Nueendorf 2015;  Shatskikh 2017;  Grovier 2018;  Vakar 2018].  The director noted that the handwriting was that of Malevich.  Vakar [2015, translated 2018] concluded that Malevich penciled this inscription shortly after completing the painting, and erased it when he recognized the significance of the painting.  Shatskikh [2017] vehemently disagreed, arguing that Malevich immediately recognized the significance of the painting, and that the painting, painted in oil over another Suprematist painting[2] that had not yet fully dried, would not have been dry enough for penciling and erasing for years.  She implied that the penciled comment was an act of “inscribed vandalism” during the 50 years when Malevich was a non-entity and avant-garde art was officially reviled in the Soviet state.

[1] The phrase almost certainly alludes to a late- nineteenth century French satirical painting, titled A Battle of Negroes at Night and, in a reprinting, A Battle of Negroes in a Cave on a Dark Night.

[2] which itself was painted over an earlier painting by Malevich.  Painting over a not-fully dry oil painting is probably what caused the severe cracking of the black paint in Black Square.

Grovier, Kelly.  2018.  The racist message hidden in a masterpiece.  BBC Culture, 12 March.  https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180312-the-racist-message-hidden-in-a-masterpiece, accessed 22 Nov 2020.

Grovier, Kelly.  2018.  The racist message hidden in a masterpiece.  BBC Culture, 12 March.  https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180312-the-racist-message-hidden-in-a-masterpiece, accessed 22 Nov 2020.

Neuendorf, Henri.  2015.  X-ray analysis gives shocking new insights into Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square.  Artnet, 13 November.  https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/kizimir-malevich-black-square-363368, accessed 22 Nov 2020.

Shatskikh, Aleksandra, trans. by Marian Schwartz.  2012.  Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism.  New Haven:  Yale University Press.

Shatskikh, Aleksandra.  2017.  Inscribed vandalism: The Black Square at one hundred.  e-flux journal #85 (October).  https://www.e-flux.com/journal/85/155475/inscribed-vandalism-the-black-square-at-one-hundred, accessed 21 Nov 2020.

Vakar, Irina, trans. by Antonina Bouis.  2018.  Kazimir Malevich: The Black Square.  Köln:  Verlag der Buchlandlung Walther König.