Page 34 - Studio International - January 1972

Malevich
Suprematist Composition 1914/15
Pencil on paper 10 x 7 3/4 in.
Courtesy Annely Juda
24
the world picture' because they are 'liberated Ringbom points out that Russian symbolists,
from all finiteness' and can create 'values of even more than French, 'tended to work out
unconditional necessity',29 thereby freeing man their aesthetic notions into an all-embracing
from the mutable world of the organic into an Weltanschauung... against the "materialism of
inorganic 'great world beyond the living'.30 It science, the positivism of philosophy, and the
is here that the influence of German trans- naturalism of the arts" as Valery Bryusov
cendentalism with its harsh attack on materialism formulated the aims in 1909'.33
is significant. The revival of interest in German The antithesis of matter is spirit, and for
romanticism can be seen in both Western Hegel spirit is essentially Freedom, containing
Europe and Russia. Worringer, for example, its centre within itself. The unity of matter lies
quotes Schopenhauer to define 'the visible in an idea outside itself, but spirit is self-
world' as 'the work of Maya ...transitory ... an contained and self-conscious. Soloviev
illusion and a dream of which it is equally true believes one has 'no right to limit man to the
to say that it is, as that it is not'31 on the one data of visible reality' while 'the ideal man is
hand, while Huysmans's des Esseintes cites more essential and real than the visible mani-
him as the priest of pessimism and of 'the festations of human beings' ;34 for Malevich
nullity of existence'32 on the other. Sixten the worth of man lies not in the material but in
consciousness. By way of comparison, Karl
Marx objects to this complete negation of
material, and especially to Hegel's real world
which reaches expression only in the idea,
because for him 'the ideal is nothing else than
the material world reflected in the human
mind'.35
2
Kandinsky's desire to realize 'pure composition'
is similar in many respects to Malevich's search
for 'the non-objective world', for both, using
Kandinsky's words, seek to eliminate 'the
objective (real)... and to clothe the content of
the work in "immaterial" forms'.36 The purpose
of art, and, for Hegel, philosophy, is to realize
the consciousness of man above a dumb and
disunified material world that defies accurate
representation. Yet the irony is that Hegel, like
Marx (and like the mystics), refuses to accept an
imperfect world : imperfection is simply a
transitional phase which will lead back to
perceiving a perfect, harmonious and organized
world. Worringer describes this interim as a
loss of 'the feeling for "the thing in itself" ...
(which) stands not only at the end, but also at
the beginning of our spiritual culture'.37 For
Malevich, the process of history is a similar
movement towards a state of existing perfection.
For in dissociating himself from nature, man
has cut himself off from perfection and seeks to
understand what he has lost as if he had
`slipped and fallen overboard from the absolute'.
What is perfection now becomes a mystery since
nature 'has no units which can be taken as a
whole'38 or none that man can discern.
Ernst Fischer believes that the separation of
man from nature is one of the most profound
problems of human existence. Both Hegel and
Marx call this dissociated and unfulfilled condi-
tion in man 'alienation' (Entfremdung): for
Hegel philosophy is born because of this increas-
ing estrangement, this loss of unity, this
division of matter into independent units.
History is the process of becoming unified
again, of re-establishing contact with Absolute
Spirit, almost as the Christian re-establishes
contact with God. Hegel, Marx and Malevich
have this in common : that the separation of
man from nature causes alienation which is