MBTW

My goal for some compositions is to reduce or eliminate a distinction between “object” and “background.”  In those compositions I try to give black, gray, and white near-equal precedence, so that one does not appear to be painted “over” the other. 

Before working on the canvas, I sketch each composition – roughly at first, to develop the balance of forms and values that I want, and then in exact scale and value.  Each painting is thoroughly planned.  However, there is a “discovery” stage, when I study the finished painting in each of the four orientations afforded by the square canvas.  I select the final orientation based on its psychological and interpretive impact. 

I want to maximize the impact of each painting, but I don’t want to determine the nature of that impact.  That’s why I’ve given each painting a simple numerical title.  You’re welcome to develop your own, personal subtitle for each painting – I have!

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). 

But if we take away the color?

Despite my obvious love of color, I’ve started a new series of paintings that eschew color and representation, to focus on composition and implied meaning.  The MBTW series https://www.jwharrington.com/mbtw currently comprises thirteen 36”x 36” canvases painted using only Mars Black and Titanium White pigments.  By eliminating the associations of colors and their juxtapositions, I can emphasize the non-objective nature of the compositions.   Associations abound nonetheless, derived from the interweaving of positive and negative spaces.  Some have a range of shades from black to white, some are only black and white, some are dominated by dark shades, some by light or white.  I absolutely don’t have a favorite among these twelve, but here’s an example of what can happen despite such a limited palette:

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.