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Black Square

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For other uses, see Black Square (disambiguation).
Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915, oil on linen, 79.5 x 79.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Black Square (also known as The Black Square or Malevich's Black Square) is an iconic 1915 painting by the Kyiv-born artist Kazimir Malevich. The first version was completed in 1915 and was described by the artist as his breakthrough work and the inception for the launch of his Suprematist art movement (1915–1919).[1] In his manifesto for the Suprematist movement, Malevich said the works were intended as "desperate struggle to free art from the ballast of the objective world" by focusing only on pure form.[2] He sought to paint works that could be understood by all, but at the same time would have an emotional impact comparable to religious works.

The 1915 painting was the turning point in his career and defines the aesthetic he was to follow for the remainder of his career; his other significant paintings include White on White (1918), Black Circle (c. 1924), and Black Cross (c. 1920–23). Malevich painted by four other versions of the Black Square, each differing in their pattern, texture and color. The original Black Square was debuted at The Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in 1915. The last is thought to have been painted during the late 1920s or early 1930s. The 1915 painting is often described as the "zero point of painting", given its groundbreaking, paradoxical monumental and reductive approach, which remains today a huge influence on minimalist art.[3][4][5]

Background

A section of Suprematist works by Malevich exhibited at the 0,10 Exhibition, Petrograd, 1915

The Black Square first appeared as part of a design for a stage curtain in the 1913 Russian Futurist/Cubo-Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchyonykh, and Mikhail Matyushin, for whom he did the costume and stage designs.[6]

Malevich painted the first Black Square in 1915.[7] He made four variants, of which the last is thought to have been painted during the late 1920s or early 1930s, despite the author's "1913" inscription on the reverse.[8][9][10] The painting is commonly known as Black Square, The Black Square or as Malevich's Black Square.

The painting was first shown in 1915 at the The Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 at Marsovo Pole, Saint Petersburg (then Petrograd). Its hanging in the icon corner emphasised the collision between Modernism and the traditional orthodox culture.[11]

Forensic detail reveals how Black Square was painted over a more complex and colorful composition.[9]

Suprematism

Most art historians, curators, and critics refer to Black Square as foundation in the development of both modern and abstract art.[11] Malevich described the paintings as part of the Suprematism movement, which empahsised colour and shape. However, today that movement is today almost exclusively associated with Malevich and his apprentice El Lissitzky.[11][6] The movement did have a handful of supporters amongst the Russian avant-garde but was dwarfed by its sibling constructivism, whose manifesto better reflected the ideology of the early Soviet government.[citation needed]

The larger and more universal leap forward represented by the painting, however, is the break between representational painting and abstract painting—a complex transition with which Black Square has become identified and for which it has become one of the key shorthands, touchstones or symbols.[12]

Influence

Malevich, c. 1900

The work is frequently invoked by critics, art historians, curators, and artists as the "zero point of painting",[3][4][5] referring to the painting's historical significance as a paraphrase of a number of comments Malevich made about it in letters to colleagues and dealers.

Malevich wrote that the painting was "from zero, in zero, that the true movement of being begins",[13] and that he transformed himself "in the zero of form and emerged from nothing to creation, that is, to Suprematism, to the new realism in painting – to non-objective creation."[13] He said that the work was intended to evoke "the experience of pure non-objectivity in the white emptiness of a liberated nothing."[13]

Tone Roald and Johannes Lang wrote that Black Square "is an act of iconic rupture from a Russian-Orthodox Christian tradition, just as Ruben's The Death of Seneca, or Kiefer's Sulamith, can be understood as acts of iconic suture."[14]

Conservation

The painting's quality has degraded considerably since its creation.[15] According to The American art critic Peter Schjeldahl, "the painting looks terrible: crackled, scuffed, and discolored, as if it had spent the past eighty-eight years patching a broken window. In fact, it passed most of that time deep in the Soviet archives, classed among the lowliest of the state's treasures. Malevich, like other members of the Revolutionary-era Russian avant-garde, was thrown into oblivion under Stalin. The axe fell on him in 1930. Accused of "formalism", he was interrogated and jailed for two months."[4]

Pencil inscription

Paul Bilhaud (1854-1933), Combat de nègres pendant la nuit, Oil on Canvas, 1882.

In 2015, while viewing the Black Square with a microscope, art historians at the Tretyakov Gallery discovered a message faintly written in pencil on the white paint in the lower left corner of the composition.[16]

The first part of the phrase appears to say "Battle of negroes"; the second part is illegible, but may say "during the night."[16] It probably alludes to a 1893 comic strip by the French writer Alphonse Allais which has the caption: "Combat de Nègres dans une cave pendant la nuit" ("Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night").[17] Irina Vakar, the head researcher for the 2015 study, said that it was "highly unlikely" that Malevich added the phrase, and that it was probably added by someone mocking The Black Square."[16] Vakar notes that the pencil marks were made after the underlying paint had dried, meaning that they may date from long after Malevich completed the work.[16]

Other scholars have considered the possibility that Malevich himself added the inscription. In his book Arts incohérents, Discoveries and New Perspectives,[18] the French writert Johann Naldi explores the hypothesis that Kasimir Malevich was aware of the Combat de nègres pendant la nuit, and that Paul Bilhaud's monochrome (1882) may have influenced the Black Square. Recently, the art historian Andrew Spira considered the resonance with Paul Bilhaud's painting, but expressed doubts about Malevich's role in the inscription, questioning "whether he was even responsible for its writing."[19]

References

  1. ^ Jakovljevic (2004), p. 19
  2. ^ Blanshard (1949). p. 4
  3. ^ a b Mazzoni, Ira. "Everything and Nearly Nothing: Malevich and His Effects". DeutscheBank/Art. Archived from the original on 22 May 2016. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  4. ^ a b c Schjehldahl, Peter. "The Prophet: Malevich's Revolution". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 18 May 2015. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  5. ^ a b Schjehldahl, Peter. "The Shape of Things:After Kazimir Malevich". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 18 May 2015. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  6. ^ a b "Five ways to look at Malevich’s Black Square". Tate. Retrieved 1 March 2024
  7. ^ "John Milner, Suprematism, MoMA, Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, 2009". Archived from the original on 9 May 2015. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  8. ^ "Kasimir Malevich. Black Square, Hermitage Museum". Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  9. ^ a b Kudriavtseva, Catherine I. "The Making of Kazimir Malevich's Black Square". University of Southern California. Archived from the original on 10 March 2016. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  10. ^ Meinhardt, Johannes. "The Painting As Empty Space". Archived from the original on 11 June 2015. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  11. ^ a b c "Art Terms: Modernism". Tate. Retrieved 1 March 2024
  12. ^ Collings, Matthew. "The Rules of Abstraction". BBC. Archived from the original on 17 March 2015. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  13. ^ a b c Malevich, K. (2003). Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism. Guggenheim. ISBN 9780892072651. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  14. ^ Roald, Tone; Lang, Johannes (2013). Tone Roald, Johannes Lang, Art and Identity, Essays on the Aesthetic of Creation of the Mind,, 2013, p. 50. Rodopi. ISBN 9789401209045. Archived from the original on 15 January 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  15. ^ Philip Shaw. The Art of the Sublime – 'Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square' Archived 6 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Tate Research Publication, January 2013. Retrieved 6 July 2016.
  16. ^ a b c d Irina Vakar, “New Information Concerning the Black Square,” in Celebrating Suprematism (Brill, 2018), 23.
  17. ^ Dunne, Carey (13 November 2015). "Art Historians Find Racist Joke Hidden Under Malevich's "Black Square"". Hyperalleric.com. Hyperallergic Media Inc. Archived from the original on 3 March 2018. Retrieved 2 March 2018.
  18. ^ Johann, Naldi (April 2022). Arts incohérents, discoveries and new perspectives (Lienart ed.). Paris: Lienart. ISBN 978-2-35906-366-0.
  19. ^ Spira, Andrew. "[ttps://publicdomainreview.org/essay/black-squares-before-malevich Precedents of the Unprecedented, Black Squares Before Malevich]". =The Public Domain Review, 23 June 2022. Retrieved 4 March 2024

Sources

  • Blanshard, Frances Bradshaw. "Retreat from Likeness in the Theory of Painting". New York: Columbia University Press, 1949
  • Drutt, Matthew. Malevich, Black Square, 1915. New York: Guggenheim, 2003. ISBN 978-0-89207-265-1
  • Jakovljevic, Branislav. "Unframe Malevich!: Ineffability and Sublimity in Suprematism". Art Journal, volume 63, no. 3, Autumn 2004. JSTOR 4134488
  • Kovtun, E. F.; Douglas, Charlotte. "Kazimir Malevich". Art Journal, volume 41, no. 3, Autumn, 1981. JSTOR 776564
  • Meinhardt, Johannes. The Painting As Empty Space.
  • Shatskikh, Aleksandra. "Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism". Yale University Press, 2012
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