Suprematism Essay Research Paper By 1915 Kazimir

Suprematism Essay, Research Paper

By 1915, Kazimir Malevich had invented a new, abstract visual language that he called Suprematism. The name he gave to paintings consisting of one or more colored geometric shapes on a white field. Malevich wrote of visualizing a state of feeling, of creating through abstract painting a sense of bliss and wonder. Thus, his works often contain unanchored forms that are meant to evoke sensations of floating or flying, as if to make the viewer imagine being transported to another dimension. Malevich was a Constructivist who reduced art to primordial shape and often used transparency to convey his ideas. What he wanted was a non-objective representation, “The supremacy of pure feeling.” Malevich had initially been influenced by cubism and primitive art, which were both based on nature, but his own movement of Suprematism enabled him to construct images that had no reference at all to reality. Great solid diagonals of color in Suprematism are floating free, their uncompromising sides denying them any connection with the real world. This is a pure abstract painting, the artist’s main theme being the internal movements of the personality. The theme has no precise form, and Malevich had to search it out from within the visible expression of what he felt. Malevich described Suprematism at its moment of birth as a ‘purely pictorial art’. From his point of view it represented the highest manifestation of inherent value of art. It may be wrong to approach Suprematism as painting in the ordinary, traditional sense of the word. Despite its geometric simplicity — the source is of very contemporary appeal, because it reduces what is complex to its elementary form. Suprematism embodies a fundamentally different approach to the entire concept of artistic creativity. To discover what is involved one might start with the “Black Square”, the original statement of Suprematism. Black Square is Malevich s most significant Suprematist painting. In the minds of his contemporaries this painting acquired the force of a magical formula. Within the square of the canvas is a square depicted with the expressiveness of the new art. Malevich depicted only a square, perfect in expression and in relation to its sides. Two shapes, two squares, the smaller black one set within the larger white square. The black square stands for the total absence of color, for darkness, while the white concentrates’ light within which every color existing in the world is contained. The contrast of the black square on the white represents composition at its most economical. The construction itself is elementary. Yet it does provide a focused, perception of space. The sharp counterpoint of a black surface on white to produce the effect of spatial infinity opening into unfathomable darkness is, of course, radically different from the normal method of representing space pictorially, as in an interior or a landscape for instance, by varying the dimensions of objects or using light and color to indicate depth. In his uncompromisingly flat solution Malevich makes no use whatsoever of representational aids to convey space. Yet this experimental canvas is very deliberately ‘a-perspective’. The visual effect of distance between the two surfaces in the same plane is achieved by means of the difference introduced by the black and white, light and color tonal treatment. The black square stands out sharply against its evenly light-toned background, which is perceived by the spectator as infinite space devoid of any point of reference. In Malevich’s picture this effect acquires a sort of doubly extra spatial significance. The black square’s surface exists as discrete space on a the white, except that it appears to be infinitely remote because the eye registers only blackness. The white surface is not a background here, but an equivalent representational component. This equivalence proved to be of fundamental importance for the whole future formulation of Suprematism. There is astonishing integrity in this simple composition. A more concise statement of the most generalized conception of space built into a plane is difficult to imagine. Malevich’s picture provides a kind of formula for space by means of the new method of representing space on a two-dimensional surface. As for color, Malevich himself divided the development of Suprematism into three stages: black, colored and white. The two first stages in fact coincide. A number of colorful Suprematist compositions were displayed at the ‘0-l0′ exhibition side by side with Black Square, Black circle, and Black cross. The contrasts of primary colors — red, yellow, blue and green — with whites and blacks define the color range of Malevich’s Suprematist canvases. The role of color in these works is to locate spatial structures lying at various distances from each other, and to identify the movement of shapes towards or away from the spectator. Two areas situated in the same plane, but colored with differing degrees of intensity. They appear to be at a distance from each other. The distances are measured only by the intensity and the position of the strictly defined color-areas. Physically and psychologically the perception of space is primarily linked with movement. Red, yellow and black squares, rectangles, and circles are set out on a white background along horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, thus dividing space in definite directions and imparting to it an inne