Page 37 - Studio International - June 1974

Nos. 39-77 of the catalogue; the Black Square,
referred to as Kvadrat (Square), is No. 39. The
exhibition took place at the 'Artistic Salon' of
Madame Dobytchina, No 7 Champ de Mars, St
Petersburg. There are 154 numbers in the catalogue
of this exhibition: works by Altman, Marie Vassilieff,
Kliun, Men'kov, Pestel, Popova, Puni, Xana
Bogouslayskaia (Mme Puni), Rozanova, Tatlin and
Udalzova. For this occasion Tatlin made a personal
folder comprising a biographical notice written by
Nadejda Udaltzova and illustrations of his
'Counter-reliefs'.
2 At the Exhibition of the Union of Youth,
December 1913—January 1914, Malevich showed
works of 'trans-rational-realism', as he did in Paris
at the Salon of the Independents in 1914; amongst
others he sent Samovar and the Portrait of
Ivan Kliunkov, paintings still of the analytical
Cubism phase.
3 Obviously we cannot exclude the possibility of a
later inscription, or a drawing done during the
twenties, when Malevich was rethinking his
evolution.
Conclusions that Guy Habasque proposed in
3957. The opinion of J.-C. and V. Marcadé stating
that 'the painter was simultaneously working in
different directons' (Catalogue Malevich — drawings,
Jean Chauvelin Gallery, Paris 197o) seems incorrect
to us, where Malevich's evolution up to 1919 is
concerned. We can easily imagine that Malevich
carried out his researches in different directions at
the same time (pure geometric form, meaning,
destruction of the subject, study of movement of
forms independently of the subject etc.), but it is
inconceivable that his researches do not arrive at a
common denominator, which in this case is the
specificity of his artistic development, as discussed in
the text. It is even certain that if Malevich achieves a
'multi-stylistic' level, his evolution lies in this
deliberate exhaustion of these different 'stylistic'
paths (Cubism, Futurism, 'A-logical' destruction of
the subject etc.).
5 If it is difficult to imagine that a Suprematist work,
and even more so the Black Square (as a painting)
could have seen the light of day in 1913, it is impossible
that it would not have had an influence on other works
by Malevich or his comrades at that time. They,
however, during 1914-1915 still remain fully
involved in cubo-futurist painting and 'A-logical' art.
5a Cf. Interview with Marcel Duchamp, Bulletin of
the Museum of Modern Art, 1946, vol. XIII, nos 4-5,
p. 19 and following. In the light of this analysis, the
fiercely nationalist position of Larionov in 1913 and in
January 1914 (during Marinetti's visit to Russia) may
appear very paradoxical. In fact, the violence of his
reaction only goes to prove the vulnerability of his
An Englishman in Moscow 191 ? forms part of the pictorial convention of aesthetic, whose limitations he was surely aware of.
88 x 57 cm two-dimensional reduction, which he wants to 6 The appearance of the collages in the autumn of
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1912 (September, according to Paulhan,
endow with a new meaning, beyond the Cubist Painting, Paris 197o) accurately marks the end
illusionist mimetism of 'what we see' (the of this direction.
6a We refer to the catalogue, Abstract Art in England,
`Baths' (Bani), in large capital letters. `illusion of the senses' of Kant). The 1913-15, London, Gallery d'Offay-Cooper, 1969.
Like the Malevich drawings mentioned above, contradiction between what we 'see' and what For a theory of 'pure form', reference should be
Ivan Puni's pictures takes part in this maximal the artist wants us to see defines the field of made to the writings of Roger Fry, Letters, London,
provocation of the meaning of the visual image, action of figurative convention, whose 1972. From 1913 onwards, Fry had conceived his
theory of 'pure form' (c.f. Letter to Dickenson, dated
a phase in the examination of the semantic definition of components is in fact reconsidered. 18 February, 1913).
foundations of a system of representation that The picture Baths calls for the establishment of This article, 'The foundations of the new creation
this very picture out-modes. The inscription a new agreement in understanding regarding and the reasons for its incomprehension', published in
No 3 (March 1913) of the journal Union of Youth,
filling the white quadrilateral clearly opposes the the meaning of what we should see. Another of pp. 14-22, was written as a theoretical reply to the
`representative' meaning of the 'artistic images', Puni's works called Window Washing,36 from critic Alexandre Benois's attack on Cubism (article
`the little bits of nature', violently attacked by 1915 too, also shows the preliminary phase of titled 'Cubism or Derision' (Koubizme ill
Malevich in his manifesto From Cubism and this deliberate conflict of the meaning of the koukouchizme) published in the paper The Word
(Rec) on 23 November, 1912). The points in
Futurism to Suprematism of 1915. Marcel images with the form they take. Figurative Mayakovski's public speech in December 1913 and
Duchamp's famous urinal baptised Fountain elements, similar to the skilful amalgam of the January 1914 reproduce Rozanova's postulates word
for word and in the same order, thus providing proof
which comes to mind as a comparison, seems to Englishman in Moscow by Malevich, arbitrarily that the cubo-futurist group (Union of Youth), to
us to belong to a group of questions other than juxtaposed and opposed to the title of the work, which Rozanova was secretary at the time, shared a
those concerning the meaning of representation. create the provocation of the meaning of the generally accepted direction. (c.f. Hardjiev, `Tourne
koubo-foutouristov' in Maiakovski : materialy i
He particularly attacks the ontological statute of image which is finally liberated from mimetic issledovanija, Moscow, 1940, p. 405.).
what can be considered as a 'work of art', while representation. Ten years later the Belgian 8 However, in his 1919 text Malevich indicates that
`Suprematism was born in Moscow', apparently
Puni and Malevich never abandon the limits of surrealist, René Magritte, made an eloquent contradicting the hypothesis regarding the production
representation inside the two-dimensional commentary on this question with his image of of Victory over the Sun which took place in Petrograd.
space of the picture. Puni's inscription still the pipe (This is not a pipe). q A mistake by Malevich, or a lack of accuracy in our
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