Kazimir Malevich.
Black Suprematistic Square.
1914-1915.
Oil on canvas.
79,6 x 79,5.
The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
The works, 39 of them, were shown at the second futurist exhibition (the "Zero-Ten Exhibition") in Petrograd. The room was dominated by the trademark «Black Square», officially titled «Four-Cornered Figure», which was hung high in one of the corners, almost like an icon, among paintings of other squares, rectangles, crosses, circles and other geometric shapes in a few basic colors, variously arranged on white backgrounds. These abstract and supremely basic paintings were expressions of a "higher consciousness" that progressive artists, both in Russia and abroad, had been talking about for the past years, where objects and concepts acquired a clear-cut simplicity. Malevich combined this idea with the traditional Russian piety that he had come to know in his childhood, giving his paintings an almost icon-like air.
At the same time, the picture power bore in itself chaos and destruction, tightened the spectator in a chasm of world harm. Mentally weakened person could make after long contemplation of the «Black Square» a suicide. It has been noticed repeatedly.
«The Black Square» causes till now hot discussions. We will result absolutely opposite statements of critics:
«The Square concentrates in itself infinite world space, bears expression« all »in an impenetrable black surface» (Sarabianov).
«In general, all grimaces and jumps round the «Black Square» remind a mass psychosis when people, not to seem the uneducated think out weight of beautiful words that nobody doubted that they have understood: this picture a true masterpiece. Remember G.H. Andersen and it tje «Dress of the King» (J. Ushakov).
Now we will result the opinion of the ordinary citizen placed on one of forums on the Internet: «the Black Square became a symbol of the end of an epoch of realism, romanticism, something ennobled and unearthly. It has absorbed all paints, has absorbed all schools in which young artists stayed for years. Has swallowed hundreds and thousand still-lifes, sketches and landscapes. Has swallowed even Monu Lizu. It symbolized itself the end of an epoch of a carolling of aspiration to beauty and idyll. It has shown something other - where all has come. Than all has ended».
In "Kitsur Shulhan Aruh" it is told: «On an establishment of wise men, it is necessary to leave on a wall opposite to an entrance door an unplastered square, the size an elbow on an elbow (48х48) that every time, having seen it, to remember the destroyed temple».
Malevich has executed the square according to the specified sizes. Similarity of a picture to a Judaic symbol in many respects can explain its improbable popularity. But not all could track the following analogy. The certificate of destruction of a temple has turned to the Darkness synonym. The darkness destroys and plunges into chaos temples and souls of people. «Eternal Darkness» named the «Black Square» in 1617 Robert Flud.
Malevich - the sectarian afflicted with creation of own belief. Its reports on art have religious names: «God won't throw off». It denies God of Shabby and New Precepts. A name to you the Cassimere. For Malevich there is no division into good and harm, God and the Devil. Its Universe - a stream faceless, безоценочных forms.
Temptation to create the world which does not have the bases in the Ox Divine, there was a celebration of the Devil of the Russian Modernism masking under abstract judgements, an aspiration to originality. Consequences of such choice bear till now terrible fruits.
«The artist who has prayed on a square, glanced in a black hole and not started back in horror, doesn't trust muses and angels; at it the, black angels, pragmatic and happy, knowing how much terrestrial glory and how to grasp it».
The transaction with the Devil has brought to Malevich a world fame. The black square is recognized by its best picture that an eye denying love to burn human souls, piercing them from the best catalogs, grasping in museums, at exhibitions. The black square seduces, entices, blinds, forcing to glorify it. Gradually it gets into an essence looking, forcing to renounce everything that is expensive, from close people, bases of outlook, belief to withdraw in emptiness, in destruction, in a zero.
On materials
It is translated by program PROMT
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Simple movement of a brush Malevich has once and for all spent непереходимую line, has designated a precipice between old art and new, between the person and its shade, between a rose and a coffin, between life and death, between God and the Devil. By its own words, it «has reduced all in zero». The zero has for some reason appeared square, and this simple opening — one of the most terrible events in art for all history of its existence…
Ingenious intuition of the artist, prophetical insight of the Founder it has groped the forbidden figure of the forbidden color — so simple that thousand passed by, crossing, neglecting, without noticing…
The few to it planned «a victory over the Sun», the few dared to throw down a challenge to the Prince of Darkness. Malevich has dared — and, as well as it is necessary in truthful stories about trade with the Devil, about возжаждавших Fausts, the Owner willingly and immediately was and has prompted to the artist the simple formula of a non-existence.
In the end of the same 1915 — already with might and main there was a First World War — the ominous cloth has been presented among other futurists at an exhibition. Malevich has simply hanged out all other works on walls in the usual image, it has intended to "Square" a special place. In the remained photo it is visible that «the Black square» is located in a corner, under a ceiling — there and how it is accepted to hang up an icon…
Malevich has meaningly hung out a black hole in a sacral place: the work he named «an icon of our time». Instead of "red" — black (a color zero), instead of the person — a failure (a zero of lines), instead of an icon, that is a window upwards, to the public, in eternal life — a gloom, a cellar, the hatch in an underworld, eternal darkness.
A.Benua, Malevich's contemporary, the magnificent artist and the critic of art, wrote about a picture: «the Black square in a white salary is not a simple joke, not a simple call, not the casual small episode which has happened in the house on the Mars field, and it is one of certificates of self-affirmation of that beginning which has the name nasty thing of desolation and which is proud of that it through arrogance, through arrogance, through violation of all love and gentle, will result all in destruction»…
During the period to "the suprematism" invention (Malevich's term) he professed "alogism", attempt to overstep the bounds of common sense, professed «struggle with логизмом, naturalness, petty-bourgeois sense and a prejudice». Its call has been heard, and the square has appeared before it and has incorporated it. The artist could be proud of that glory that the transaction with the Devil has brought to it; he also was proud…
Critics lovingly write about Malevich: "«the Black square» has incorporated all picturesque representations existing before, it bars the way naturalistic imitation, it is present as the absolute form and art in which free forms — not connected among themselves or interconnected — make sense of a picture" announces.
Truly, the Square "bars the way" — including to the artist. It is present «as the absolute form», — it is true also, but it means that in comparison with it all other forms aren't necessary, for they by definition aren't absolute. It «announces art...» — and here it has appeared a lie. It announces the art end, its impossibility, its uselessness, it is that furnace in which art burns down, a muzzle in which it fails…
It is translated by program PROMT
http://www.promt.ru
Alexander Blok.
July 2, 1912.
Worlds, years go by. The universe is bare.
Its eyes of gloom are staring at us.
And you, my soul, worn-out, unaware,
Hold forth that happiness will come to pass...
And what is happiness? The chilly evenings
In darkening gardens, god-forsaken wood?
Or vicious taste of wine, and wanton feelings,
Perdition of the soul, and jovial mood?
Is happiness a moment, brief and solid?
Is it oblivion, a dream, and peace and quiet?..
As you wake up - it"s flight again, so horrid,
Touching your heart, unknown crazy flight...
You take a breath - and see you"re out of danger...
That"s where you feel a sudden push again!
The spinning-top set going by some stranger
Flies buzzing in a hurry, like insane.
As we get hold of sharp and sliding border
And listen to the buzzing sound of chime,-
Don"t we go mad amidst the motley order
And change of made-up reasons, space and time?..
When will it stop? We won"t be able, really,
To listen to this din without end...
How terrible it is ! How wild ! Extremely! -
Give me a hand, forget it all, my friend!