Suprematism (Russian:супремати́зм) is an early 20th-century art movement focused on the fundamentals of geometry (circles, squares, rectangles), painted in a limited range of colors. The termsuprematism refers to anabstract art based upon "the supremacy of pure artistic feeling" rather than on thefigurative depiction of real-life subjects.[1]
To support the movement, Malevich established the journalSupremus (initially titledNul orNothing), which received contributions from artists and philosophers.[7] The publication, however, never took off and its first issue was never distributed due to theRussian Revolution.[7] The movement itself, however, was announced in Malevich's 1915Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10, in St. Petersburg, where he, and several others in his group, exhibited 36 works in a similar style.[8]
Kazimir Malevich developed the concept of Suprematism when he was already an established painter, having exhibited in theDonkey's Tail and theDer Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) exhibitions of 1912 withcubo-futurist works. The proliferation of new artistic forms in painting, poetry and theatre as well as a revival of interest in the traditionalfolk art of Russia provided a rich environment in which aModernist culture was born.
In "Suprematism" (Part II of his bookThe Non-Objective World, which was published 1927 in Munich asBauhaus Book No. 11), Malevich clearly stated the core concept of Suprematism:
Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.
He created a suprematist "grammar" based on fundamental geometric forms; in particular, the square and the circle. In the0.10 Exhibition in 1915, Malevich exhibited his early experiments in suprematist painting. The centerpiece of his show was theBlack Square, placed in what is called thered/beautiful corner in Russian Orthodox tradition; the place of the main icon in a house. "Black Square" was painted in 1915 and was presented as a breakthrough in his career and in art in general. Malevich also paintedWhite on White which was also heralded as a milestone.White on White marked a shift frompolychrome tomonochrome Suprematism.
Malevich's Suprematism is fundamentally opposed to the postrevolutionary positions ofConstructivism and materialism. Constructivism, with its cult of the object, is concerned with utilitarian strategies of adapting art to the principles of functional organization. Under Constructivism, the traditional easel painter is transformed into the artist-as-engineer in charge of organizing life in all of its aspects.
Suprematism, in sharp contrast to Constructivism, embodies a profoundly anti-materialist, anti-utilitarian philosophy. In "Suprematism" (Part II ofThe Non-Objective World), Malevich writes:
Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to have nothing further to do with the object, as such, and believes that it can exist, in and for itself, without "things" (that is, the "time-tested well-spring of life").
Jean-Claude Marcadé has observed that "Despite superficial similarities between Constructivism and Suprematism, the two movements are nevertheless antagonists and it is very important to distinguish between them." According to Marcadé, confusion has arisen because several artists—either directly associated with Suprematism such asEl Lissitzky or working under the suprematist influence as didRodchenko andLyubov Popova—later abandoned Suprematism for the culture of materials.
Suprematism does not embrace a humanist philosophy which places man at the center of the universe. Rather, Suprematism envisions man—the artist—as both originator and transmitter of what for Malevich is the world's only true reality—that of absolute non-objectivity.
...a blissful sense of liberating non-objectivity drew me forth into a "desert", where nothing is real except feeling...
— "Suprematism", Part II ofThe Non-Objective World
For Malevich, it is upon the foundations of absolute non-objectivity that the future of the universe will be built - a future in which appearances, objects, comfort, and convenience no longer dominate.
Malevich also credited the birth of Suprematism toVictory Over the Sun,Kruchenykh'sFuturist opera production for which he designed the sets and costumes in 1913. The aim of the artists involved was to break with the usual theater of the past and to use a "clear, pure, logical Russian language". Malevich put this to practice by creating costumes from simple materials and thereby took advantage of geometric shapes. Flashing headlights illuminated the figures in such a way that alternating hands, legs or heads disappeared into the darkness. The stage curtain was a black square. One of the drawings for the backcloth shows a black square divided diagonally into a black and a white triangle. Because of the simplicity of these basic forms they were able to signify a new beginning.
Another important influence on Malevich were the ideas of the Russian mystic, philosopher, and disciple ofGeorges Gurdjieff,P. D. Ouspensky, who wrote of "a fourth dimension or aFourth Way beyond the three to which our ordinary senses have access".[9]
Some of the titles to paintings in 1915 express the concept of anon-Euclidean geometry which imagined forms in movement, or through time; titles such as:Two dimensional painted masses in the state of movement. These give some indications towards an understanding of theSuprematic compositions produced between 1915 and 1918.
TheSupremus group, which in addition to Malevich includedAleksandra Ekster,Olga Rozanova,Nadezhda Udaltsova,Ivan Kliun,Lyubov Popova,Lazar Khidekel,Nikolai Suetin,Ilya Chashnik,Nina Genke-Meller,Ivan Puni andKsenia Boguslavskaya, met from 1915 onwards to discuss the philosophy of Suprematism and its development into other areas of intellectual life. The products of these discussions were to be documented in a monthly publication calledSupremus, titled to reflect the art movement it championed, that would include painting, music, decorative art, and literature. Malevich conceived of the journal as the contextual foundation in which he could base his art, and originally planned to call the journalNul. In a letter to a colleague, he explained:
We are planning to put out a journal and have begun to discuss the how and what of it. Since in it we intend to reduce everything to zero, we have decided to call itNul. Afterward we ourselves will go beyond zero.
Malevich conceived of the journal as a space for experimentation that would test his theory of nonobjective art. The group of artists wrote several articles for the initial publication, including the essays "The Mouth of the Earth and the Artist" (Malevich), "On the Old and the New in Music" (Matiushin), "Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism" (Rozanova), "Architecture as a Slap in the Face to Ferroconcrete" (Malevich), and "The Declaration of the Word as Such" (Kruchenykh). However, despite a year spent planning and writing articles for the journal, the first issue ofSupremus was never published.[10]
The most important artist who took the art form and ideas developed by Malevich and popularized them abroad was the painterEl Lissitzky. Lissitzky worked intensively with Suprematism particularly in the years 1919 to 1923. He was deeply impressed by Malevich's Suprematist works as he saw it as the theoretical and visual equivalent of the social upheavals taking place in Russia at the time. Suprematism, with its radicalism, was to him the creative equivalent of an entirely new form of society. Lissitzky transferred Malevich's approach to hisProun constructions, which he himself described as "the station where one changes from painting to architecture". The Proun designs, however, were also an artistic break from Suprematism; theBlack Square by Malevich was the end point of a rigorous thought process that required new structural design work to follow. Lissitzky saw this new beginning in his Proun constructions, where the term "Proun" (ProUnovis) symbolized its Suprematist origins.
Lissitzky exhibited in Berlin in 1923 at the Hanover and Dresden showrooms of Non-Objective Art. During this trip to the West, El Lissitzky was in close contact with Theo van Doesburg, forming a bridge between Suprematism andDe Stijl and theBauhaus.
Lazar Khidekel (1904–1986), Suprematist artist and visionary architect, was the only Suprematist architect who emerged from the Malevich circle. Khidekel started his study in architecture in Vitebsk art school under El Lissitzky in 1919–20. He was instrumental in the transition from planar Suprematism to volumetric Suprematism, creating axonometric projections (The Aero-club: Horizontal architecton, 1922–23), making three-dimensional models, such as the architectons, designing objects (model of an "Ashtray", 1922–23), and producing the first Suprematist architectural project (The Workers' Club, 1926). In the mid-1920s, he began his journey into the realm ofvisionary architecture. Directly inspired by Suprematism and its notion of an organic form-creation continuum, he explored new philosophical, scientific and technological futuristic approaches, and proposed innovative solutions for the creation of new urban environments, where people would live in harmony with nature and would be protected from man-made and natural disasters (his still topical proposal for flood protection – the City on the Water, 1925).
Nikolai Suetin used Suprematist motifs on works at theImperial Porcelain Factory, Saint Petersburg where Malevich and Chashnik were also employed, and Malevich designed a Suprematist teapot. The Suprematists also made architectural models in the 1920s, which offered a different conception of socialist buildings to those developed inConstructivist architecture.
Malevich's architectural projects were known after 1922Arkhitektoniki. Designs emphasized theright angle, with similarities toDe Stijl andLe Corbusier, and were justified with an ideological connection to communist governance and equality for all. Another part of theformalism was low regard for triangles which were "dismissed asancient,pagan, orChristian".[11]
The first Suprematist architectural project was created by Lazar Khidekel in 1926. In the mid-1920s to 1932 Lazar Khidekel also created a series of futuristic projects such as Aero-City, Garden-City, and City Over Water.
In the 21st century, architectZaha Hadid had 'a particular interest [in] the Russian avant-garde, and the movement known as Constructivism,' and 'as part of their work on the Russian avant-garde, Hadid's unit studied Suprematism, the abstract movement founded by the painter Kazimir Malevich.'.[12]
This development in artistic expression came about when Russia was in a revolutionary state, ideas were in ferment, and the old order was being swept away. As the new order became established, andStalinism took hold from 1924 on, the state began limiting the freedom of artists. From the late 1920s theRussian avant-garde experienced direct and harsh criticism from the authorities and in 1934 the doctrine ofSocialist Realism became official policy, and prohibited abstraction and divergence of artistic expression. Malevich nevertheless retained his main conception. In hisself-portrait of 1933 he represented himself in a traditional way—the only way permitted by Stalinist cultural policy—but signed the picture with a tiny black-over-white square.
^Potter, Polyxeni and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2013).Art in Science: Selections from EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-931571-0.
^abGourianova, Nina; Гурьянова, Н. А. (2012).The aesthetics of anarchy: art and ideology in the early Ukrainian avant-garde. Berkeley: University of California Press.ISBN978-0-520-26876-0.OCLC748941743.
^Hodge, Susie (2019).I know an artist : the inspiring connections between the world's greatest artists. Sarah Papworth. London.ISBN978-1-78131-844-7.OCLC1090652528.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Boersma, Linda S. (1994).0,10 : the last futurist exhibition of painting. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.ISBN90-6450-135-1.OCLC33984058.
^Seabrook, John (21 December 2009)."The Abstractionist".New Yorker. Retrieved21 February 2016.
Sources
Kasimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World. English translation by Howard Dearstyne from the German translation of 1927 by A. von Riesen from Malevich's original Russian manuscript, Paul Theobald and Company, Chicago, 1959.
Camilla Gray,The Russian Experiment in Art, Thames and Hudson, 1976.
Jean-Claude Marcadé, "Malevich, Painting and Writing: On the Development of a Suprematist Philosophy",Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism, Guggenheim Museum, April 17, 2012 [Kindle Edition]
Jean-Claude Marcadé, "Some Remarks on Suprematism"; and Emmanuel Martineau, "A Philosophy of the 'Suprema' ", from the exhibition catalogueSuprematisme, Galerie Jean Chauvelin, Paris, 1977
Miroslav Lamac and Juri Padrta, "The Idea of Suprematism", from the exhibition catalogue,Kasimir Malewitsch zum 100. Geburtstag,Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1978
Lazar Khidekel and Suprematism. Regina Khidekel, Charlotte Douglas, Magdolena Dabrowsky, Alla Rosenfeld, Tatiand Goriatcheva,Constantin Boym. Prestel Publishing, 2014.
S. O. Khan-Magomedov. Lazar Khidekel (Creators of Russian Classical Avant-garde series), M., 2008
Alla Efimova. Surviving Suprematism: Lazar Khidekel. Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley CA, 2004.
S.O. Khan-Magomedov. Pioneers of the Soviet Design. Galart, Moscow, 1995.
Selim Khan-Magomedov, Regina Khidekel. Lazar Markovich Khidekel. Suprematism and Architecture. Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York, 1995.
Alexandra Schatskikh. Unovis: Epicenter of a New World. The Great Utopia. The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde 1915–1932.- Solomon Guggenheim Museum, 1992, State Tretiakov Gallery, State Russian Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt.
Mark Khidekel. Suprematism and Architectural Projects of Lazar Khidekel.Architectural Design 59, # 7–8, 1989
Mark Khidekel.Suprematism in Architecture. L’Arca, Italy, # 27, 1989
Selim O. Chan-Magomedow. Pioniere der sowjetischen Architectur, VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, 1983.
Larissa A. Zhadova.Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art 1910–1930, Thames and Hudson, London, 1982.
Larissa A. Zhadowa. Suche und Experiment. Russische und sowjetische Kunst 1910 bis 1930, VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, 1978
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