Page 30 - Studio International - March April 1975

form in Gris's work is cool and but simultaneously representational in a `transformed himself into the zero of
dispassionate, the shapes in Malevich's non-imitative fashion. Malevich on the form' : for in December of the same year
painting are handled very physically, like contrary when he first saw synthetic at `0.10 The Last Exhibition of Futurist
fragments of metal, bent and twisted by a cubist works (he was later to take a more Painting' (the title hints at a reductionist
powerful fist. dispassionate, objective and historical intent) he must have stunned even the
But it is in the next phase of Malevich's attitude towards Cubism) seems to have most progressive of the avant garde when
work, initiated towards the end of 1913 felt that their creators were in search of he launched the suprematist movement
under the very direct stimulus of Picasso's some super reality of a transcendental by showing thirty-six totally abstract
new, synthetic cubist manner (examples nature which challenged the subject's works, introduced in the catalogue by the
had been acquired by Shchukin), that existence. In Woman at a Postercolumn of Black Square, which hung icon-like,
more mysterious, complex developments 1914, for example, the subject can to a across the corner of his space. Following
began to take place — developments that certain extent be reconstructed with the the futurist practice the paintings were
were to result in the explosion of the help of the title. But the figure's pictorial accompanied by a manifesto.
Black Square. Synthetic Cubism had identity is now menaced rather than The suprematist manifesto makes
been the result, in part, of Picasso's and reinforced by the large oblongs and exciting reading, but it is in many ways a
Braque's experiments with collage and quadrilaterals (more dominant and baffling and difficult document. Malevich
papier collé. In their paintings forms aggressive as independent pictorial had a passionately enquiring mind, but
became simpler and bolder, and now shapes than those to be found in any he was virtually uneducated, and this was
instead of beginning with a clearly legible cubist painting) so daringly balanced in a a handicap which he never totally
subject, which was subsequently space which now seems to hang in front overcame. The manifesto is strongly
fragmented and analysed (and hence to a of the figure and at times in front of the futurist in tone and style, although it has
large extent abstracted) in the light of the picture plane. about it also an almost biblical grandeur
new cubist use of a variable viewpoint, Works of Malevich's `cubo-futurist' that is lacking in its Italian counterparts
the Cubists were building up their and `alogic' periods (the two styles were and prototypes. In it Malevich has much
canvases in a more abstract fashion, in concurrent and complementary, but to say in praise of Futurism; he admires it
terms of flat interlocking planes which whereas the first relied most heavily on for its subject matter, with its emphasis
they subsequently qualified in such a foreign influences, the second, in which on dynamism and mechanization,
way that they took on representational the imagery was more fanciful, although he condemns the Futurists for
significance, or over which they overlaid represented in many ways a more remaining too interested in the outward
their subjects. Malevich's understanding indigenous development) were shown at appearance of objects. However, he goes
of the earlier phases of Cubism had been the Tramway V exhibition, mounted in on to say, approvingly, that through the
at times idiosyncratic but acute, although Petrograd in February, 1915; here it depiction of motion and speed the
he was never really interested in the all became evident that, together with Futurists succeeded in destroying the
important (for the Cubists) concept of Tatlin, Malevich was to be the spearhead `wholeness of things'. He makes it clear,
simultaneous vision. But it is my belief for future developments in revolutionary however, that 'we (the Suprematists)
that he originally misunderstood the later Russian art. And shortly after this, in the have abandoned Futurism, and we, the
developments of Cubism, and it was space of a few months, Malevich had most daring have spat upon the altar of
largely as a result of his misreading of
Synthetic Cubism that Malevich was to
reach such revolutionary conclusions of
his own.
In Picasso's synthetic cubist canvases
the subject is always immediately
identifiable, and Picasso himself would
undoubtedly have seen the abstract
pictorial substructure of his works as
reinforcing the realism, the materiality of
his subjects, as helping to lend them
weight and substance. Malevich on the
other hand seems to have viewed the
areas of papier cone in cubist works, and
the flat, slab-like planes derived from
them, as new configurations in some way
working against the subject, as under-
mining and challenging its importance
and supremacy. Malevich's work of 1914
is at first glance strongly cubist in
appearance. But although many of his
canvases do seem to have had a starting
point in concrete reality, in much of his
work the subject defies a logical visual and
intellectual reconstruction — the kind of
reconstruction which is essential to the
mechanics of Cubism — and the paintings
can perhaps best be understood as
medleys of disconnected fragments
buried in an abstract pictorial
architecture. The Cubists had
instinctively moved towards a synthetic
idiom to a certain extent, at least, because
they felt that the works of their previous,
hermetic phases had at times come
dangerously close to abstraction and
because they were seeking for new ways
to reaffirm the legibility, the materiality
of their images, new ways of allowing the
spectator to extract the subject from the
abstract complex of planes in which it
was embedded; from the first they had
sought an art which was anti-naturalistic

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