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villages only to destroy them again. potential. Hegel calls the art of this third period appearance'.101 The freeing of painting from
However, there are also certain similarities romantic, realized in the highest art forms of the three dimensional illusion is, for Malevich,
between the theory of the additional element and poetry, music and painting respectively, forms an integral part of the development of the
Hegel's evolution of the world spirit. Hegel which destroy the sensual quality of art in additional element towards Suprematism. He
divides history into three periods. The first favour of the spiritual. The immediate existence admires Cezanne for his 'purely painterly
represents the total 'immersion of Spirit in of the classical form is reflected into perception of phenomena' and for bringing
nature',85 a period when man 'did not know `self-conscious inward intelligence'.96 Rather back painting to two dimensions 'thus
that the spirit, or man as such, is free in than the intuitive pagan Gods of Greece and restoring to it its own true nature'.102 It is the
himself ',86 a period of total unselfconsciousness. Rome, the God is now Christian who can make same two dimensional quality that Hegel
In art, Hegel calls this period symbolic, for man himself manifest through the Holy Spirit, for admires in painting because of its distance
begins to recognize himself in nature, and as `Romantic art gives up the task of showing him from massive or sensual attachments, its
part of it, and he resorts to grotesque (God) as such in external form and by means of distance, as Worringer puts it, from the
exaggeration in order to suggest the presence of beauty'.97 Berdyaev extols this art form too `unclarity' imposed upon the object by its
the spiritual in nature. 'Natural objects are in since it no longer 'believes in final attainment three dimensionality. For Hegel, architecture
the first instance left just as they are, while, at of beauty here in this world ...beauty is always `possesses mass as operative in the properties
the same time, the substantive Idea is imposed that which speaks of another world... an of heavy matter' while sculpture assumes 'the
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upon them as their significance, so that their upsurge beyond the limits of the world'. complete sensuous attributes of space'. But
function is henceforth to express the same, and But, most important, Hegel's romantic art painting 'liberates art from the sensuous
they claim to be interpreted, as though the Idea appeals to the emotions, the soul and spirit. completeness of space which attaches to
were present in them'.87 In From Cubism and It is the word 'feeling' that features so material things by restricting themselves to a
Futurism to Suprematism of 1916,88 Malevich prominently in The Non-Objective World. plane surface' .1°3 Malevich felt that if the
talks of the art of 'the savage' as that which Joost Baljeu points out that in the German text Renaissance masters had 'discovered the
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`copies the real forms of nature'. Like Hegel, of 1927 the word Erregung is used." It is not, surface of painting', they would have
Malevich considers such art to be 'totally then, simply man's emotional life that is achieved something of greater value than a
unconscious' and only 'the shape of a man or affected, but his spirit as well, an excitation Madonna or a Giaconda, for 'a picture is simply
animal' can be discerned. As a result, the that involves the whole man. In a long passage, a plane' upon which is expressed 'the demands
consciousness of the savage developed only 'on Hegel describes the response derived from of purely painterly-plastic, subjectless and
the side of nature', by imitating, without romantic art as just such an involvement: objectless expression'.105 Thus Malevich
creating new and superior forms of art. `The object of art is free concrete realizes what Hegel feels the true nature of
Hegel's second phase shows a gradual intellectual being, which has the function painting to be, a moving away from the
movement towards a state of consciousness, but of revealing itself as spiritual existence for material world, its mass and sensuality, towards
nevertheless this initial separation from nature the inward world of spirit ... it must a liberation of the spirit. Only thus can the
is 'imperfect' and 'derived immediately from address itself to the inward mind, which range of painting increase substantially,
the merely natural state, consequently related coalesces with its object simply as though although for Hegel not as completely as poetry
to it, and is still encumbered with it as an this were itself, to the subjective (the purest art form expiating 'exclusively in
essentially connected element'.89 Historically, inwardness, to the heart, the feeling, the inner space and inner time of ideas and
man becomes conscious of the possibility of which, being spiritual, aspires to freedom feelings' um) or philosophy (the highest form of
freedom, while knowing that only some men in itself and seeks and finds its the self-conscious man). Nevertheless through
were free and not man as such. Hegel calls this reconciliation only in the spirit within. It this new freedom, painting can express
artistic period classical, suggested in the form is the inner world that forms the content `through coloured surface and line... whatever
of sculpture, and characterized by the of romantic art, and must therefore find can find room in the human heart, as feeling,
idealization of the human form, the removal of its representation as such in inward feeling. idea and purpose' for 'whatever is capable of
all sensual defects, and the suppression, as The world of inwardness celebrates its shaping into act is capable of entering into the
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Worringer puts it, of 'anything that might triumph over the outer world and in its varied content of painting'.
cloud or vitiate the directly convincing medium manifests this its victory, owing
expression of material individuality'.90 For to which the sensuous experience sinks 3 NON-OBJECTIVITY
Malevich, this second phase has been diverted into worthlessness'. 100 In Malevich's theory of the non-objective
by 'aesthetic taste ... from the realism of the The combination of emotional and spiritual world, there are certain similarities with Hegel's
world' entering 'the blind alley of idealism'.91 response coupled with the subduing of the Doctrine of Being from Logic of 1812-16, and
Classical form unites the spiritual and the material world which Hegel describes is also with the dialectic method in general.
sensual, the divine and the human, but the the non-objective world that is portrayed in Hegel describes matter as self-destructive
unity is immediate and not reflected on; nor is it Suprematism, an art so minimal that the because it inclines towards its opposite
self-conscious, despite, as Malevich says, the physical world is eliminated in favour of the searching for a unity outside itself. Malevich's
portrayal of 'man is his complete form, both simplest geometric elements. `non-objective' world is a world where the
inner and outer'.92 Berdyaev describes such art Hegel's choice of painting as one (even object has negated itself, destroying the
as 'pagan' and 'the classical perfection of form, though the least) of the romantic art forms is also phenomenal content. The resulting state is a
that immanent attainment of beauty in this highly significant. Whereas architecture (the paradoxical situation where both object and
world, and by means of this world' but without art form of the symbolic period) provided a non-object join together in an awareness of a
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an 'upsurge towards another world'. temple to enclose the spirit, and sculpture of new reality. Jacob Boehme describes the
Hegel's final period elevates the spirit from the classical period allowed the spirit to `supersensual' state as just such a fusion
limited forms of freedom to 'pure universal partially enter the form of man, painting, between Nothing and All so that both acquire
form... in which the spiritual essence attains through its two dimensional quality, no longer absolute status and defy rational definition in
the consciousness and feeling of itself'.94 Hegel aspires to mass or sensuality. As Worringer totality.
believes that the whole process of history is says, painterly abstraction demands a type of `Whosoever finds it (the supersensual life)
directed towards rendering the 'unconscious representation that 'reproduced the object finds Nothing and All Things ... But how
impulse a conscious one',95 where man as man neither in its three dimensional corporeality finds he Nothing ? Why, I will tell thee
is totally free, a freedom that realizes his true dependent upon space, nor in its sensible How. He findeth it, findeth the
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