Suprematist art a lie?
Suprematism was a current that started in Russia in 1913 founded by Kazimir Malevich, depicting compositions or constellations of basic geometric forms such as squares, circles, lines etc. But the point of this post is not to explain the current, you can wiki it or grab a book (haha). The main course is this:
The most expensive piece of Russian art ever created and sold was the Suprematist composition by Malevich, it was sold for 60 million dollars. And the question at hand is why? Why does it value that much?
They say that suprematism renounces any tangent with reality and refers or depicts “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling”.
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.
And I was wondering what is this so called pure artistic feeling? Where does this vision of dynamic-static geometry come from? Isn`t everything we do a reaction to an exterior factor? When did anyone do something for absolutely no reason without expecting any reaction from it? I think what they were saying is that they were not depicting an object, they were creating the object, they were objectifying the abstract. So all the compositions were their attempts of resolving graphically their spiritual conditions, which means that when they said that they produced art devoid of the concept of the object, not serving religion, politics or anything, it was a lie. They were depicting the object just as any other artist would do it, by interpreting it through their own spectrum of understanding by using constellations of basic geometric shapes. Basically what I`m saying is that they were painting in regard with their spiritual and emotional condition they were in at that particular moment, but if you ask them why they felt that way, well its obviously because of the object they dismissed so much, because of politics, religion, or waking up on the wrong side of the bed for that matter. Thus in reality there is not such a big difference between suprematist art and any other art form. Or is it?
…a blissful sense of liberating non-objectivity drew me forth into a “desert”, where nothing is real except feeling… (“Suprematism”, Part II of The Non-Objective World)
Another iconic painting was Malevich`s Black square and red square. The creative process was over-imposing a canvas to a painting of the virgin Mary and Jesus Christ as a child, and drew the squares where their faces would be. After this exercise Malevich resolved the composition. What does “resolved” mean?? What happened was that he moved the red square under the black square, and rotated it slightly. Was that the pure artistic feeling or was it a lie? Besides the fact that the painting was a recreation of an object in a different manner, what further artistic or intellectual ambition has that “resolving” of the composition bestowed upon it? I personally have no answer to it, but some people hold his art in extremely high regard, and I want to know if it is anything else besides the fact that he came up with it first. And comparing Black square and red square to the painting it was based on would be like comparing Saturn devouring his son by Goya with the one by Rubens, same image, same object, depicted by different artists in different manners, from different artistic currents.
As a final point, wasn`t art supposed to transmit feelings as well, wasn`t the point of it to be observed and emotionally relevant? White on white was a breakthrough from polychrome to monochrome suprematism? But looking at it, it doesn`t really evoke any emotional response, so why was it created? Why was an object that had the sole role of existing be created, was it just some sort of personal, emotional, visual diary? Just grab a piece of canvas and depict the way you are feeling right at that moment through basic geometry kind of thing? Well then why would his feelings be more relevant than any other person’s feelings? With a months of exercise and compositional routine, we`d have a Malevich at every crossroad, depicting his feelings through shapes.
I was going to write a lot more, but I don`t want to make this post daunting to read, what I truly want to start an aesthetical debate on why are those paintings valued so much, further more I`m not dismissing them or trying to undermine their value, I`m trying to communicate and understand. Was the suprematist doctrine a sincere and truthfully impactful artistic current, or was it a lie to “resolve” aesthetically pleasing compositions?
P.S. Malevich died poor.
AGiurgea 