Page 35 - Studio International - June 1974

From the first intuition (or the idea if you indicates Malevich's reinforcement of the symbolic meaning and a psychological reading
prefer) of a non-objective painting, to real analytical tendency, for Picasso and Braque this of the images, far removed from any purely
suprematist painting and the famous picture of a same 'return to the subject' appears as an act of pictorial consciousness. Malevich's technique
Black Square on a White Ground, leads a long `thematic regression' and means the has an analytical direction24 and a formo-
analytical path, far more interesting than the abandonment of the experimental path. creative desire lacking in the surrealists.
dispute over dates, or even the first The appearance of `A-logical' works shows They remain preoccupied by the preservation of
fragmentary appearance of the idea of the Malevich's dissatisfaction with the merely an 'immaculate' and 'hidden' psychological
Black Square. Like Gnedov's Poem of the End, formal path, which he had pursued in his meaning, while Malevich brought about his
such a plastic idea could only mean at this time cubist works of 1913. They achieve an analytical contradictory encounters to destroy this old
the plan of a rupture. But this interpretation of assimilation which collides at the limits of nearly mythological level of the existence of the
the Black Square does not exhaust the symbolic abstract circular compositions, but which subject. For Malevich, the psychological validity
significance of this work; for if the Black remain imprisoned by a sterile formalism of of the images was at this time one of the enemies
Square in 1913 marks the end of a conception of which Malevich was quite aware22. Thus he to be fought, for he wanted to be free of a
painting, in 1915 it inaugurates a new returned to an exploration of the limits of subconscious submission to psychological
vocabulary contained in nuce in this pictorial the meaning of the image, by which the stereotypes (mythological). In 1916 he was to
symbol. In the cultural context of 1913, the painter exhausted the other compositional declare with pride 'You will never see the smile
significance of this image could only have the element in the canvas. In his book 'New of a sweet Psyche on my square' (Letter to
limits indicated in the text Victory over the Sun - Systems in Art' Malevich illustrates the Benois, January 1916). It shows this 'moving
to show primarily the victory over the old principle of the battle against the tradition away' (ostranenie) which is the basis of all the
world, by symbols arrived at with the help of causal discourse of images by the linguistic theories of the Russian formalists;
this practice, the tabula rasa, of which Malevich contradictory juxtaposition of totally `a-logical' theories - let us stress - which came after
so often afterwards spoke to his pupils. images. This technique should be situated in Malevich's work and explain the attention a
The complete elaboration of the new a perspective of wilful irrationality, already critic like Sklovski gave to the plastic arts.
non-objective painting was to be carried out frequently experimented with by the trans- Several paintings as well as a large number
during a long analytical journey, illustrated in rational language of futurist poetry. To the of drawings mark Malevich's creation from the
great detail by numerous works from 1914 and analytical analysis of a victim, elaborated end of 1913, to the first exhibition of
1915. according to the rules of a Cubist reading of suprematist works (which took place at the end
`One day I sat Beauty on my knees. And I forms is superimposed, a purified and totally of 1915). They show the conceptual solidity of
found her bitter. And I insulted her'. (Arthur 'a-pictorial' formula of the single subject of a an evolution unique in its logical determination.
Rimbaud.) representation, the naturalist image of a cow.23 Through a certain number of works, we can
From December 1913, Malevich exhibited The two principal components of the image are study in detail this remarkable moment in the
works presented under the title of made clear and contrasted : the cow = history of a representative convention which is
Trans-rational Realism (zaoumny realizm)20 illustrative mimetism, the cubist analysis —the consciously destroyed, its mechanisms of
These canvases were in opposition to the artistic image as a means of consciousness meaning and interaction between the different
works2' entitled `Cubo-Futurist Realism'. The (predominantly formal perception). Here is components being exposed with an
latter showed the artist's attention to problems Malevich's commentary: 'The above drawing astonishing determination and clarity by the
of form and those of the dynamism of the subject represents a moment of struggle through the Russian painter. The only other example in
(futurist element), while in the Trans-rational' confrontation of two forms : that of the cow the history of modern art that we can find is
or `A-logical' works, the painter's attention was and that of the violin in a cubist construction. Marcel Duchamp, concerned with the same
concentrated on the relational consequence of Logic has always placed a barrier against new analytical lucidity in the destruction of the single
the meaning of the image, opposed to a very subconscious movements. The 'A-logical' meaning of the representation. Nevertheless,
advanced formal analysis (analytical cubism). movement has been created to free it from Malevich's evolution is characterized by a
The appearance of this new category of works preconceptions.' This technique of the violent formo-creative desire and an analytical
marks an important change in the Malevichian confrontation of the meaning of images (the consciousness of the functioning of the different
concept of painting. The criteria of a new anecdotal nature of the subject) opposed to a components of the 'image', lacking in Duchamp.
logic of the meaning of the image, inspired by purely formal meaning (pure plastic) curiously Malevich is far freer in the face of psychological
the trans-rational postulates (zaoum), whose resembles the principle of 'chance encounter' of stereotypes than the French painter, who
source must be sought in the logical system of Lautréamont, who places an umbrella next to a remains confined in the end by the limits of a
Ouspenski, places modern painting on an sewing machine, the same principle of dream sociocultural tradition far more rigid in its
analytical path enabling it to avoid the formal stimulation at the basis of the associations of submission to literature.25 Thus the 'reactive'
dead-end of the cubist discourse, whose limits surrealist images. However, we must not lose side of Marcel Duchamp remains bound to a
Malevich had clearly seen. The 'movement sight of an essential difference characterizing large extent by the linguistic value of the images,
beyond the problematic of Art' (old) of which Malevich's method: his conscious desire to find while in two years Malevich destroys any
all his companions were clearly aware, led him contradictory compositions, opposing the possibility of the regeneration of the old
to an area of questions ambitiously covering meaning to the formal envelope normally schema of meaning, forming this indissoluble
form and content. It would be a mistake to attached to it, in our order of symbolic unity : plastic form - thematic meaning
think that this problematic was the concern of equivalents, and thus allowing the mutual (narrative-literary subject). 'The misfortune of
Malevich alone. At the same time, the cubists destruction of the two components which the characters of the Final Limit lies in that they
(Picasso and Braque), were reintroducing the create the unity of the artistic image, as moved towards this limit, before having paid
subject into their 'synthetic' compositions, conceived for centuries in the tradition of an their debt to the past . . . Only someone ready
whose name alone indicates their direction. imitative art (of 'external reality' of the to lose everything will make new discoveries'
Marcel Duchamp, for his part, continued to neo-Platonic concept, etc.); while for the (Ouspenski, The Inner Circle, 1913). The
oppose form and content, by moving as far as surrealists, it is above all a question of Portrait of Matiouchine (Autumn 1913)26 is one
possible from a commonly accepted associative revealing a 'hidden' meaning, to light the spark of the first and among the most radical works
logic. In 1914, his researches were to result in of psychological stereotypes, a spark then we can place in this category. The fragment of
the destruction of painting as a language. At the making possible the manifestation of a new form. the Portrait is included in a very complex
moment when the reintroduction of the subject The latter always remains dependent on the composition of the 'analytical cubist' kind

285