One hundred years ago, these two words found a meaning that haunted a great many people.
The painting "Black Square" for any foreign art lover is the most famous Russian work of art, a symbol of an idea that is ahead of time for a long time even in the fast-moving XX century.
Cataclysm artist
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich lived a life that was least like the fate of a clever quack from art, which set a goal to get rich on the sale of abstruse theories, a symbol of which is seen by many "experts" in Malevich's Black Square painting. He was born in 1879 in Kiev, in a large family managing a production at a sugar factory. The desire for drawing was from childhood, but low income did not allow to receive a systematic art education, forced to start working life early as a draftsman.
In Kursk, where the Malevich family moved, he organized a group of art lovers and began to prepare for admission to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he unsuccessfully tried to enter in 1905 - he lacked a formal education. Although Kazimir was already a family man, he moved to Moscow, studied at the private school of a graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts F.I. Rerberg and was actively involved in the activities of art associations, sometimes the most radical ones, such as Jack of Diamonds, Donkey's Tail , The Blue Horseman, etc.
Search time
New time has abolished old values. The meaning of the pictorial function of pictorial art was lost; photography and the birth of cinema took time to document time, forcing artists to experiment with form. Social and economic revolutions made habitual topics irrelevant, actively influencing the search for new content of paintings.
Malevich lived in the midst of artistic life, was influenced by the most advanced trends: he painted impressionistic landscapes, participated in the shocking actions of futurists (for example, walked along the Kuznetsk bridge with wooden spoons in his buttonholes), painted paintings in the Cubist style, developed his own style - “abstruse realism ”, designed editions of the most avant-garde poets such as A. Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov. Together with Mayakovsky released Today's Lubok, which reflected the events of the outbreak of the First World War.
“Victory over the Sun”
Back in 1913, events occurred that largely determined the creative fate of Malevich. The First All-Russian Congress of Futurists took place in St. Petersburg, in which three people took part: the inventor of the new language, Zaumi, Alexei Kruchenykh, supporter of musical dissonance Mikhail Matyushin and an active opponent of figurative painting Kazimir Malevich. The result of the inspired work was two performances of the opera Victory over the Sun, which went down in the history of avant-garde art. It is from here that Malevich's painting “The Black Square” comes from - a similar motif appeared in the form of a backdrop in the scenery for the first act of the opera.
The main theme of the opera was the birth of a new, machine future, which can arise only with the complete destruction of the old world. This theme was embodied by unprofessional actors in fantastic costumes based on Malevich’s sketches, pronouncing an obscure but expressive “zaum” moving among amazing scenery with sharp atonal sounds extracted from an upset piano. Performances ended in scandal, i.e. the goal was achieved.
Exhibition "0.10"
Contemporaries noted Malevich’s ability to unite artists around him, to generate unifying ideas. But even for his like-minded people, the exposition of 39 paintings prepared for the exhibition, which opened on December 19, 1915 in the gallery of N. Dobychina on the Champ de Mars in Petrograd, was a complete surprise. The name “Zero, ten” meant zero subject forms in the paintings and ten exhibitors (although there were 14). It was on her that the picture “Black Square” first appeared, - the photo captured her in the “red corner”, where the icons were usually located.
The artist himself hung the paintings the night before the opening, painted posters and signatures, prepared the manifesto “From Cubism to Suprematism. New picturesque realism. " Thus, he became the head of a new artistic movement, whose symbol was the painting "Black Square". The exhibition was designated as “The Last Futuristic”, but with the definition of it as a transition to Suprematism, as Malevich suggested, his associates did not agree, the artist proclaimed too radical ideas.
Suprematism
The name comes from the Latin supremus - the highest - and the Polish supremacja - superiority, supremacy. In the theoretical developments of the new style, Malevich spoke of the dominance of non-objectivity as the determining quality of true fine art. Freed from figurativeness, painting becomes an act of pure creation, similar to the divine, and the painting "Black Square" in this sense has the quality of a first-cell, the primary element of a new world.
Malevich deduces another meaning of the term from the most important meaning for the new reality being created of the main tools that he uses - colors, lines, simple geometric shapes. The very first Suprematist motifs, including the “Black Square” painting by Kazimir Malevich, were particularly expressive, based on concise color compositions that were not distorted by a linear and airy perspective, imitation of volume, etc. In the future, the development of basic principles took the form of influence on various genres - compositions from figures of people became suprematist, even three-dimensional elements appeared - “architectons”, which became an expression of Malevich’s views on the
architecture of the future.The basis of the new world created by the artist had one main expression - “Black Square”. The meaning of the picture was determined by the value of the atom, from which not the display of the existing world is built, but a new, different reality, and the versatility of this world gave ambiguity to the “Black Square”. What is she doing?
The Apotheosis of Pointlessness
Proclaiming the independence of truly pure art from the function of documenting the surrounding reality, the artist inevitably comes to the loss of any figurativeness, or to the search for the initial form, which cannot be divided into its constituent elements. Such is the primary element that Malevich found - the "Black Square". The meaning of the picture is that the impression made by it does not depend on the semantic content, on associations with the object world, on specific references and allusions. The task set by the master is not easy, it requires the participation of the viewer, the strain of his mental strength, the presence of some luggage. And more often than not, it does not give clear answers, but designates only a new way to get impressions from being, and isn't that the goal of art?
Color is the basis of new painting
The master designated the full name of his most famous painting as follows: "Black suprematist square on a white background." Every word was important for the artist and philosopher, because the primacy of color, its primacy lies at the heart of Suprematism. You can find a description of the painting “Black Square” by Malevich, where the color of the paint applied to the canvas seems to be a complex mixture of various shades, among which there is no clearly black, and the white frame is called the flicker of light cream shades.
It seems that this made sense to the master when he took further steps - in the famous series “white on white”, when the expressiveness of the painting is based on the finest color relationships between the planes. The painting "Black Square" is a declaration of the dominant color, the most significant, significant, contrasting. Although the understanding of black as a result of mixing all the primary colors (warm and cold, spectral and complementary) strengthens the significance of this declaration.
Energy and light
Not for nothing that the first mention of the black square is found in Malevich in his work on the design of the futuristic opera “Victory over the Sun”. The description of the painting “Black Square”, the explanation of the white background on which the opaque dense figure is placed, like light beating from an impending curtain, is found both by the artist and the audience, and is especially organic in the context of the events taking place in the opera.
It is amazing how Malevich managed to predict the picturesque directions that became relevant after half a century. Ed Reinhardt, Saul Levitt, no doubt, followed the path indicated by Black Square. In Mark Rothko, the energy of color and vibration of a laconic form takes on cosmic proportions, and the means of expressing this energy are almost literally similar to the Suprematist ones.
It is not known how fundamental the man-made form was to Malevich, the slight non-parallelism of the sides of the square, the ripple of the background and the flickering of black, but something makes you peer into this picture and with every minute the mystical radiation from it becomes more noticeable.
Crisis of ideas, the end of art?
The appropriation of prophetic qualities to an artistic genius is trite, but in the case of Malevich, the gift of foresight is obvious. The apocalyptic motifs Malevich endowed with The Black Square were also obvious to contemporaries. He saw the meaning of the picture in a dead end, where art and especially painting, the development of social thought led.
The familiar function of fine art was declared obsolete, and the square was seen as a logical result of the creative search for formalists. It is not in vain that there is a legend that when he saw the “Black Square”, Picasso cooled off to Cubism - there is nowhere to move on ... The war that had already begun and did not add optimism to the foreboding of future revolutionary upheavals.
Nevertheless, from the summit of the past tense, in the slogans proclaimed by Malevich, a call is heard to look for new ways, and the denial of the old methods of displaying a changing world does not seem dominant. This was confirmed by the further creativity of the master and his students, the vitality of his ideas.
Point of reference
Malevich’s canvas still haunts the dense commentators, who are excited by the artist’s surname and the amount paid for the original picture - “critics” with infant virgin intelligence. They are sure of the zero significance of such art. A black hole that absorbs the bright matter of true artistic values is also seen by highly educated guardians of spiritual traditions and moral standards.
Meanwhile, the name of Malevich is known to every future artist, designer or architect around the world, Suprematism influenced the most famous contemporary masters. For example, the author of ultramodern forms in buildings and the human environment - Zaha Hadid - emphasizes the influence of the ideas of the Russian artist on her entire work.
What you need to write a picture "Black Square"
You can live your whole life without thinking about a well-fed comfortable life, look at the world differently than others. argue with friends and enemies, educate students, try to convince the state authorities that they are right and end up in poverty and exile, die from a painful illness at a not yet old age and turn their own funeral into an action of avant-garde art.
But why complicate it? Canvas, a little paint and a minimum of painting skills - a masterpiece of world significance is ready. And even better - a computer graphics editor and a high-quality printer - that’s smoother, more accurate, more beautiful ... And most importantly - do not make unnecessary mental efforts, because everything is so simple ...