i like squares

“When Black Square was first ex­hib­it­ed, the world was in chaos. It was the mid­dle of the First World War and there was con­tin­u­ing un­rest fol­low­ing the 1905 Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion that in 1917 would ex­plode into the Bol­she­vik up­ris­ing and Oc­to­ber Rev­o­lu­tion. The Black Square ar­rived at a time when Russ­ian art crowds, al­though used to see­ing cu­bist and fu­tur­ist works, would nev­er have seen a work like this. The artis­tic rev­o­lu­tion Male­vich was bring­ing about seems to re­flect the so­cial rev­o­lu­tion that was hap­pen­ing. Male­vich didn’t in­tend for the Black Square to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a real thing, but a sym­bol of a dawn­ing new age.”
—5 ways to look at Malevich’s Black Square

“Male­vich gave his ‘new art’ a name, supre­ma­tism, an­nounc­ing a few years lat­er that ‘To the Supre­ma­tist the vi­su­al phe­nom­e­na of the ob­jec­tive world are, in them­selves, mean­ing­less; the sig­nif­i­cant thing is feel­ing’ … True to these prin­ci­ples, Black Square is rad­i­cal­ly non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al. The slab of black paint that dom­i­nates the can­vas works as grand re­fusal, re­pu­di­at­ing na­ture in favour of ab­strac­tion. As such, the paint­ing may be read in terms of the Kant­ian the­o­ry of the sub­lime … Male­vich him­self re­gard­ed his min­i­mal­is­tic geo­met­ri­cal forms as the sec­u­lar equiv­a­lents of Russ­ian icons, a form of paint­ing which as­pires to present the di­vine as pure or un­medi­at­ed re­al­i­ty.”
—Philip Shaw
 

I think Kaz­imir Male­vich (23 Feb­ru­ary 1879–15 May 1935) is worth the praise he’s re­ceived. He has ac­tu­al­ly changed how I see art to­day.

Not only was the supre­ma­tism move­ment sup­posed to be the very last stage of art – its fi­nal evo­lu­tion – the orig­i­nal ex­hi­bi­tion it­self was icon­ic, lit­er­al­ly (seen up top). Putting a paint­ing in the “red cor­ner” re­served for re­li­gious icons was scan­dalous back then.

 

I think Malevich’s ideas are a great ex­am­ple of so­cial change.

Which is the whole point. Every­one knows what the im­age is, every­body can rec­og­nize a square, ba­sic shapes —

 

are they in mo­tion or not?

 

His point was to cre­ate a “uni­ver­sal” and equal­ly ac­ces­si­ble art for every­one with or with­out ed­u­ca­tion.

 

How it changed me: I be­came smarter.
 

 

—pur­ples­finx

Flom­mist Veroni­ka Veziro­va, a.k.a. Pur­ples­finx, is an il­lus­tra­tor and graph­ic de­sign­er based in Barcelona. In­spired by cul­ture of all kinds, she writes on top­ics that in­clude art his­to­ry, cre­ativ­i­ty and folk­lore. Her oth­er works in­clude man­ga and psy­che­del­ic po­et­ry. Copy­right © 2024 Veroni­ka Veziro­va.

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