Perpetual Ripplets
Malevich

Yuko Otomo
February 2014

Part One

The square is not a subconscious form. It is the creation of “intuitive reason.”

The square is a living, regal infant.

Under Suprematism, I understand the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art.

– Malevich

I ended my last piece, On Ad Reinhardt, with a mention of one of his mentors, Malevich; and it was a natural thing to do. Now, I’m extending my thoughts on Malevich for a few reasons. As I was finishing the Reinhardt piece, I happened to run into two very disturbing articles relating to Malevich. One was about the design of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and the other was an article about his grave. Both stories are so equally cruel that they made me think of his fate as an artist once again, but in the harsh light of 21st century realities.

Which story of the two is more cruel than the other? I lose my voice here. But the story of the fate of his grave is so extremely heartbreaking that it tells the whole history of the abuse he got from the country he loved so much. It is a devastatingly “anti-poetic” tragedy. So, I’ll start with it first.

Malevich died in 1935, destroyed by poor health caused by his imprisonment for the oppositional stance he took in his creative acts that were contrary to the official line of Social Realism. His only wish was to be buried under an oak tree on the outskirts of Nemchinovka. He knew his victory and his defeat well then. He just wanted go back to the Russian soil under an oak tree (what a symbolically poetic Russian sentiment it is!). His body was put to rest in a Suprematist designed coffin; and a white cube tomb stone with a black square in the middle, designed by his friend and fellow artist Nikolai Suetin, was erected under an oak tree.

During World War II, in the cruel course of history, the monument was destroyed and lost. In 1988, the memorial sign was restored at the edge of the forest bordering the field by devotees. Then, soon again, this new site in a field near Moscow was destroyed and covered in concrete by a real estate developer to make way for luxury housing. Now, Russia is in the midst of a “new” political move officially promoting Malevich, along with Kandinsky, as pioneering artists of Modern Art. They are using their legacy to make up the country’s new image toward the West and the rest of the world. They’ve already created the official logo for the G-20 meeting in 2013 with a design “inspired” by their work.

Now, I’ll go to the second story of cruelty connected to this sudden shift in official government acknowledgment. Like the logos for the G-20 Meeting, the official posters of 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in this month of February were done ala Malevich, in his style, using his post-1926 Suprematist/Peasantry images as the main source of design. The press release says that “these colorful and inspirational posters will please both fans and guests.”

As for his grave, officials are in a panic, suddenly realizing what they have done to this historic artist’s legacy. Now, they are planning to erect a “new” monument commemorating the great artist in a site near the luxury housing complex,. They will use Malevich’s name and design (instead of his art and philosophy) as the sales pitch for the new development that says “In the designing of the façade, the creators of the housing complex were inspired by Malevich’s famous paintings. They have succeeded in conveying the brevity of his sharp lines with the freedom of space and combined them with dashes of colors that are pleasing to the eyes.”

Even after death, Malevich’s fate has been in the worst kind of ill intended hands. Now that the idealism of social change has turned into the dust of filth of Plutocracy and Oligarchy, how can the legacy of Malevich’s Suprematist principles be kept intact with his original spirit? As I stated in the writing on Reinhardt, where can a “pure artist” go when the whole world is eating “art” up with such a velocity of evil appetite for MONEY and POWER? How can we who understand and share the idealism of Malevich carry his philosophy into our century? What are our responsibilities? … Surely I am burdened by important questions to tackle with. But I do not feel lost in searching for the answers. Like Malevich said “The square is a living, regal infant.” Yes, it is an infant. It was born less than a century ago. And what is 100 years for the human psyche to learn the true spiritual content of what he meant?

Postscript:

It was 23 years ago, in 1991, that I wrote the piece on the Malevich exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. I would never then have imagined hearing about the fate of his grave or the manipulative shift in official attitude to take advantage of his art for new political purposes and gains. My heart sinks further. But at this moment, my determination to follow my destiny in search of “pure abstraction” has become firmer than ever. This is my way of making a humble effort toward honoring this pioneering spirit who suffered so much in giving us a new direction of creative thought process.

In Part 2, I post the translation of the unpublished original writing done in Japanese from 1991.

Postscript 2:

It is devastating to realize the violent physical and metaphysical oppression of freedom of expression being imposed on public and artists alike under so many different political conditions in our time. We who live and enjoy freedom of expression should never forget that so many still live under similar or worse conditions than Malevich was forced to suffer. That’s more so why our sense of being responsible artists should be sharpened to the maximum.

Part Two

Kazimir Malevich at the Metropolitan Museum, 1991

Things have disappeared like smoke; to gain the new artistic culture, art approached creation as an end in itself and domination over the forms of nature.

-Malevich, 1916

It is impossible to talk of Malevich without feeling unspeakable pain. For an artist, any suppression or oppression of artistic/creative ideas and their realization is like an oppression of his/her physical life itself — or even something worse and more devastating. It is much too painful to witness him crisscross the struggles forcefully laid upon him by the reality of the course his country took after the revolution while in the midst of the pursuit of pure abstraction in one of the purest forms possible via the idea of Suprematism.

* * *

Early work under the influence of French Impressionism; work merging Fauvism and Russian Folk art with the motifs of peasants and workers; decomposition of “images” spurred by the influence of Cubism; work done under the influence of Italian Futurism… Principle of Flickering … A slap in the face of public taste… “ZAUM”… transitional work moves on.

Pursuing the world of pure sense beyond the reality our cognitive ability can detect and cleaning out all the images that have visual linkages to recognized reality from the picture plane, in 1915, he writes: “Art is the ability to construct, not on the interrelation of form and color, and not on an aesthetic basis of beauty in composition, but on the basis of weight, speed and the direction of movement.” A revolution. And another political revolution overlaps his creative revolution a few years later in 1917.

“Happiness for all.” A theory and method of social revolution to make the goal possible. Form and color in a pure sense to liberate us from the reality our eyes see. Eternal freedom after the liberation… What Malevich aspired to was, in essence, something beyond what the October “political” Revolution aimed at. Yet, political revolutionaries, who pursued the practical happiness our eyes could see, couldn’t see his creative intentions. The leaders of the revolution could not understand what it really meant to be an avant-garde artist in a pursuit of “pure abstraction,” but they instinctively knew that it was useful to pull avant-garde artists into the fabric of the construction of a new society as progressive aesthetic thinkers. A new visual concept… New forms and colors… Posters to call for an ideal for the wellness of the public… Designs to serve all. The new creative energy poured into the new social movement: UNOVIS (Affirmation of the new art); the Institute of Artistic Culture… Suprematist principles got adapted into everyday objects for everyday life for everyone… Socialism and the common level aesthetic consciousness… Then, Social Realism took over…

By this time in 1926, although his creative principles had been adapted into the new social codes of the movement, he was being pressured further to end his involvement in it, not only because of self-doubts, but also because of forceful new pressures from policy makers. Pure Abstraction was severely condemned as a counter-revolutionary type of bourgeois art that could not express the social reality and its needs. The new direction of the society could not tolerate everything Malevich believed in: the total negation of “everything good and pure, love of life and love of nature.”

For any responsible artist, ideas, philosophy, logic and its execution are ultimate and pure spiritual acts that decide the purity of the content of an artist’s “being.” Forcing Social Realism, which champions figurative art with its nearsighted practical purposes and consciousness, on an artist who’s pursuing Suprematism, one of the most abstract thought processes, is like forcing an intolerable spiritual death sentence heavier than death itself. Nothing is more unbearable for an awakened artist than to lie to his/herself regarding one’s philosophy of art. Devastatingly, Malevich was forced to lie the biggest lie to himself in the flow of history. For Malevich, who called it “cowardice” to insert the physical narrative reality=nature into the picture plane or to have such a state of mind, nothing could be a more unacceptable mode of creative conduct than Social Realism.

His love for art, for his family and his will to survive, no matter what, in this devastating situation tore him apart. My heart is filled with a deep and heavy sympathy toward him that I cannot put into words. “Why didn’t he leave Russia?” “Why didn’t he give up painting?”… It is not too hard to throw such questions at one who was forced to walk in such forked ways. It was not easy throwing everything he loved and believed away just to quiet this pressuring dark cloud of unsolvable forced confusions… Anger resonating in the deepest depth of his existence… Agony… Here, art demands for an exit.

Sadness and pride that prevail in his new figurative work done after 1926 that consequently shows a peculiar world with a piecing sense of solitude that must have resulted from tasting the extreme end of an agony that had no place to go. “Prototype of Half Length figure” (1928-32), “Red House,” “Red Calvary,” “Girl with a Red Staff” (1930-31)… a group of works that show a strange sense of depth and remoteness follow. And then, early work re-worked with Suprematist principles… The almost eerie oddness of a group of portrait works (ironically rendered in a Renaissance style) of his late period is overwhelmingly powerful. Here, Suprematist principle breathes its spirituality eternally in the world where the government’s official power cannot get a hold onto it. Every color and form shouts its pure sense. The color black in the background; the color white of the collar; the direction of the pose… weight, speed and direction… the principles of his concept is clearly alive; or more alive than ever because of this unthinkably diligent resistance.

These portrait works that took the style of Realism on the surface ended up being the most unusual portrait work in the history of art. With his Suprematist symbol of an almost invisible tiny “Black Square” painted on the bottom corner of each canvas where no one, even the high officials of the political machine, could touch, his spiritual principle shouts beyond what the physical voice can yield to confront anyone who faces it. This resistance reminded me of something similar to the resistance and sense of victory beyond agony in the history of early Christians under their lethal oppression in 17th century Japan. My heartache deepens as I face these portrait works.

Although I came to see this Malevich show out of the pure curiosity toward his art, it was totally impossible to see it as a mere art exhibition to examine art in the narrow sense of the word without relating to the political and social reality of oppression, fear, struggle, victory and defeat he was forced to face. How is an artist supposed to exist in the flow of the history of art such as this? How does the sense of the collective whole work with the philosophy of the individual and vice versa? And how can the actualization of philosophical creative principles survive in the constantly changing flows of the society we live in? … All those questions bubbled up in me with no real answers to satisfy me. Or differently put, this inquiring side of the show ironically gave an extraordinarily deeper meaning to its own content. I’d really love to see the whole show again just to see the art in the purest sense (if something like that is possible) without relating to the political reality this show evokes some day before it closes.

Feb. 12, 1991

Postscript:

Unfortunately, I did not go back there for the pure encounter with his art. The show ended before I decided to do so.