Page 46 - Studio International - October1968

picture, placed them together, working to a artist, in his struggle against aestheticism, found a square, so that here they can find their way down.
uniform system, according to which he built up strong-point in the new technical material. This We are saying that if on the one side the stone of the
his picture. It was with this that cubism started. is the achievement of Tatlin, who discovered square has blocked the narrowing canal of painting,
These early works found no appreciation from the material not only for the eyes, but also for the then on the other side it becomes the foundation-
public at first, on the contrary they were rejected. touch. His problem was the adjustment of the eye stone for the new spatial construction of reality.
Thereupon a campaign against public inertia was to the sense of touch. The merit of Tatlin and his colleagues lies in the
started, waged under the name of 'Alogism'. In In 1914 he creates some reliefs, still basically fact that they accustomed the painter to working
1912, Malevich and Morgunov had executed a cubistic, but he is already modelling from stucco, in actual space and on contemporary materials.
series of works which bore no relation to the logic glass, iron and wood. He goes on to make a com- They approached constructive art. But this group
of the mind. Take, for example, the picture plete break with everything related to flat-surface reached a kind of material-fetishism and forgot the
Englishman in Moscow. This movement demon- pictures. In 1916 he creates the 'angular contre- necessity of creating a new plan.
strated that the logic of painting is something relief', a body tensed in space, on wires. In the At times this reminds one of building a concrete
different from the logic of the mind. So the methods West, this thing was erroneously termed machine- railway-station from a Gothic design.
of Dadaism were already being employed in art, on the strength of a superficial analogy. The necessary warning emanated from Suprem-
Russia in 1912. Technology has surely exerted its influence on the atism.
The analytical period led painters to abolish re- new artists. We have suddenly realized that the At a time when painting was being harassed by
presentational painting. Larionov creates the plastic art of our time is not created by the artist, everything possible, by everyone not involved in it,
theory of Luchism (or 'ray art'), the representation but by the engineer. The vitality, the uniformity, it was essential to start with a purge. Suprematism
not of things but of the rays emanating from them. the monumental quality, the accuracy, and perhaps had set out to free painting from all the classifica-
Kandinsky achieves a kind of musical painting, in the beauty of the machine were an exhortation to tions imposed on its essential nature, that means
which he expresses the state of his soul at any the artist. There was a desire to be an inventor, to from those based on the immediate effect of colour
moment by stenographic splotches of colour. be materialistic; but people had not perceived that on the eye. But colour is always confined to a flat
Malevich shapes Suprematism. they still remained in the romantic period. They surface. Thus the form is created. It is essential
Then war breaks out, and the relationship seized on material, regarding it as they had that it be unequivocal. The form which is un-
between Russia and the West is severed and has previously considered the still-life, that is from the equivocal, and that means immediately recogniz-
remained so almost to the present time. The point of view of its beauty. They made use of its able to everyone, is the geometric form. No one is
further development of Russian art takes place as elastic properties for playing with form. Finally going to confuse a square with a circle, or a circle
it follows paths which are isolated from the world they even endowed this material with a symbolic with a triangle. At that moment when the square
outside. Let us examine the basis on which Russian meaning: Iron is strong, like the will of the pro- or the circle is dissected and distributed over the
painting has grown up during the last decade. letariat, glass is clear, like its conscience. So they flat surface in a mass of colourful fragments, a
Two opposite forces characterise present-day put together a new body, which was not a machine, relationship is formed between the individual
Russia and these are given expression. There is the did not accomplish any task, and did not directly parts. This relationship had to be organized.
village, close to the soil, colourful, still enclosed in serve any useful purpose. One thing, however, this The result was not a personal affair concerning
medieval manner; and the town, not yet clearly art did achieve; it cut a way into the old idea of one individual artist, the intention was to create a
defined, but even now showing a strong tendency art, thereby launching the operation for the system of universal validity. To be effective, this
towards Americanization, and expanding to the conquest of art. system had to formulate for itself its own individual
outermost limits. The artists do not direct their It was the economy of the age which created the interpretation of space. That is the white plane—
attention to the colours, but concentrate on the machine. The machine showed us movement, infinity. Suprematism indicated both the possi-
materials. The character of the village, its colour- showed us circulation. It showed us life and how it bilities for the forming of this space, namely the
fulness, the slow rhythm of life, which permits of vibrates and palpitates from the forces that flow static and the dynamic. The static was the partition
contemplation, bring forth a painting of pure through it. Futurism sought to build up a kind of of the plane, the given flat surface, by means of a
colour and abstract form. These features have been painting which places the spectator at the central vertical and horizontal axis into a set of component
definitively crystallized in the pure Russian school point of what is happening. We were taught parts, which built themselves up on the same axes
of Suprematism, of which we shall speak later. anatomy from anatomical atlases or by the in a clear relationship to each other. The dynamic
The influences of the town were naturally of a dissecting of corpses; but what an anatomy we was the placing in infinite space of such complex
different kind and have brought the Russian would have learned if we had been able to pene- colour-shapes as would convey to us the impression
painters closer to those of Western Europe and in trate the living, pulsating body of a human being of movement, of powerful forces in operation. This
particular to the Paris painters, who, during that or of a plant. developed on a diagonal axis and between two
period, were nearing the consummation of Cubism The artist's standpoint in the world was altered, intersecting axes. In the history of the evolution of
and looking for its logical sequel. So we have the material of his trade became richer, within painting the white surface of the suprematist
considered matters in this way. The painter is the him were generated new possibilities for assimi- canvas is the ultimate expression of space. The
master, who works with colour as his material. lating things, and yet he continued to move about blue and gold background of Byzantine and Gothic
Absolute painting demands that the canvas should on the same old path. He kept revolving round the painting took the initiative in making the eye pene-
no longer be painted with the colours of the object which had already been created by others. trate into the depth of the picture. The perspective
palette. Surfaces should be so prepared, chemically Yet something definite was certainly accomplished of Renaissance painting made the surface area of
and physically, that they capture the true spectral in that he no longer stood in admiration in front of the canvas recede as far as the horizon. (In the Last
ray and reflect it. Only then, through the differ- the object, but moved all round it, that is to say he supper by Leonardo, one can measure the exact
ences in wavelengths of the light rays, do we obtain absorbed and then endeavoured to represent his number of metres from the table to the horizon.)
the pure impression of colour. impression—not only in three but in four dimen- The Impressionists created their space through the
Hitherto the painter has set about things diff- sions. It was high time to break this circle of undisguised, vibrating brushstroke, dominating the
erently. He takes the pigment, the coloured admiration. The simple solution was to plunge whole canvas. The Futurists shattered the single
earths and powders, binds them with oil, with into the abyss with conviction, so as to reach the vanishing-point of the lines of perspective and
lime, or with egg-yolk, which gives the colour an bottom not as a corpse but as a new-born man. This scattered the fragments all over the canvas.
appropriate intensity. This the painters apply to the was not to be done in desperation, but with full Suprematism swept away all the fragments
canvas. By this method we obtain an equivalent consciousness and utmost force. and opened the way to infinity. Suprematism
of the absolute colour-impression and not the In 1913 Malevich exhibited a black square favoured reality, which is contacted only with the eyes.
colour as such. That the painter should restrict painted on a white canvas. Here a form was So it achieved illusionism. Thus in the history of
himself to taking his colour-material only from displayed which was opposed to everything that painting we observe a chain of impressions of
ready-to-use tubes is a prejudice created by the was understood by 'pictures' or 'painting' or 'art'. space and Suprematism is the last link in the chain.
colour-manufacturers. The new painters have Its creator wanted to reduce all forms, all painting The new impressions of space are removed from
employed for their artistic purposes, for their to zero. For us, however, this zero was the turning- the canvas, with its flat surface covered with
colour and surface-effects, not only cinnabar, point. When we have a series of numbers coming painting. Suprematism has confined the dynamic
ochre or cadmium, but also paper, chalk, cement, from infinity ... 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 ... it comes right within itself, the dynamic as the origin of tensile
glass and copper. Then artists started to dissociate down to the 0, then begins the ascending line forces. Suprematism has not, like Impressionism,
the colour material from the flat surface, resulting 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... portrayed movement; it has not, like Futurism,
in the painted relief. In Russia, however, attention These lines are ascending, but already from the depicted the appearances of movement. It has
was soon transferred from the artistic properties of other side of the picture. It has been said that the formed dynamic tensions by means of the relations
the material to its organic properties. The new centuries have brought painting right up to the between flat surfaces and colours. As a result of