Page 35 - Studio International - March April 1975

(Left) Malevich, Suprematist Painting. one of pessimism. When Malevich own personal salvation, but for the
Eight Red Rectangles, 1915, 57.5 x 48.5 cm. described Suprematism as 'a new future of art.
Oil on canvas. Stedelijk Museum, machine, that is a new motor of the With the suprematist 'whites'
Amsterdam organism without wheels, steam or Malevich virtually stopped painting and
(Above) Braque, Guitar, 1912, petrol'," he was suggesting that he had during succeeding years he gave himself
96.3 x 56.7 cm. Oil on canvas with created a new vehicle which artists of the over to teaching and writing. The
papier collé, pencil and chalk. future could steer to uncharted territories. suprematist canvases of the 1920's
The Museum of Modern Art, New York Certainly his followers saw his ascribed to him were almost certainly
(Right) Malevich, The Environment (`reality') achievements in this light. And if carried out by his students, possibly
which Stimulates the Suprematist developments in Russia were often to designs of his own. Like all his
(from 'The Non Objective World' ) metaphorically soon to throw a spanner contemporaries he was deeply concerned
into the works of the Suprematist with social questions : he adopted as his
infinitely more educated and hence a `machine', the repercussions of slogan 'art into life', and banded together
more accessible writer, was to clarify his Malevich's achievement are still alive in his followers in Vitebsk (the seat of his
master's position in a lecture entitled the artistic ethos which surrounds us first concentrated activities as a teacher)
`New Russian Art,' delivered in 1922. today. Attempts have been made to relate into a group called 'Unovis' or
He distinguished between two kinds of his views to a wide range of philosophic `affirmation of life'. His students, many
sign language in painting. One type, he structures from pre-Socratic times of them little more than children, wore
posits, is derived from our knowledge of onwards; I have come to believe that he black squares stitched on to their clothes
the world and natural phenomena and read widely but in a random, and in 192o, on the anniversary of the
can be easily read and identified, since indiscriminate fashion. Quite obviously Revolution, they transformed the grimy
the idea exists before the pictorial sign he thought deeply. But he was also one of town into a pageant of coloured signs.
for it is created. 'Now the second nature's mystics, and it is dangerous to Eisenstein was to write: 'All the main
possibility: a sign is designed, much forget his lack of education and the streets are covered with white paint
later it is given its name, and later still its extreme simplicity of his intellectual splashed over the red brick walls, and
meaning becomes clear. So we do not origins. Perhaps it is true that ultimately against this white background are green
understand the signs, the shapes, which his thought had most in common circles, reddish-orange squares, blue
the artist created, because man's brain with certain basic Greek Orthodox rectangles. This is Vitebsk 1920. Kazimir
has not yet reached the corresponding spiritual traditions, and one authority has Malevich's brush has passed over its
state of development'. 30 suggested in particular affiliations with walls. 'The squares of the town are our
It could be argued that within the the Hesychastic method according to palettes', is the message these walls
cycle of his own art Malevich succumbed which by prayer the mystic detaches convey"."
to the principle of destruction inherent himself from the sensible world to obtain Given his social concerns and the
in a Hegelian system of dialectic; and the ultimate revelation, the glimpse of conviction that easel painting was dead,
there is more than a suspicion of truth in the unknowable." To this extent his it was only natural that he should have
the argument. But I believe that the works can perhaps be viewed as a form of turned his attention to architecture. And
ultimate gesture of renunciation was not artistic meditation or prayer, not for his together with his students in Vitebsk and
105