Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism

Aleksandra Shatskikh

Published by Yale University Press 2012

Black Square

Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism

Aleksandra Shatskikh
Translated by: Marian Schwartz

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300162295

Overview
Contents

About this book

Kazimir Malevich’s painting Black Square is one of the twentieth century's emblematic paintings, the visual manifestation of a new period in world artistic culture at its inception. None of Malevich’s contemporary revolutionaries created a manifesto, an emblem, as capacious and in its own way unique as this work; it became both the quintessence of the Russian avant-gardist's own art—which he called Suprematism—and a milestone on the highway of world art. Writing about this single painting, Aleksandra Shatskikh sheds new light on Malevich, the Suprematist movement, and the Russian avant-garde.

Malevich devoted his entire life to explicating Black Square's meanings. This process engendered a great legacy: the original abstract movement in painting and its theoretical grounding; philosophical treatises; architectural models; new art pedagogy; innovative approaches to theater, music, and poetry; and the creation of a new visual environment through the introduction of decorative applied designs. All of this together spoke to the tremendous potential for innovative shape and thought formation concentrated in Black Square.

To this day, many circumstances and events of the origins of Suprematism have remained obscure and have sprouted arbitrary interpretations and fictions. Close study of archival materials and testimonies of contemporaries synchronous to the events described has allowed this author to establish the true genesis of Suprematism and its principal painting.

Author / Editor information

Aleksandra Shatskikh is an art historian and a world authority on the Russian avant-garde.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Prologue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
From the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
List of Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xvii
1. The Birth of Black Square
Fevralism, Forerunner of Suprematism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
The Rise of Suprematism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
2. On the Threshold of “0.10”, 54
Suprematism in Fall 1915 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
N. M. Davydova and Suprematism’s Public Affirmation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Russian and English Geo Metric Nonobjectivity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
The First Verbovka Exhibition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
The “Amazons” and Suprematism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
3. From “0.10” to “Store”
“0.10”: The Last Futurist Exhibition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
Vladimir Tatlin’s “Store” Exhibition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
“I The Apostle of New Concepts in Art . . . ,” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
4. The Supremus Society
1916: Under the Sign of Supremus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	136
The Supremus Society in the First Half of 1917 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
Supremus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	172
Kazimir Malevich and Nikolai Roslavets Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	190
Aleksei Kruchenykh in Supremus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
“Azef-Judas-Khlebnikov” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	230
The Supremus Society’s Finale Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	240
5. The End of Painting
Malevich’s Color-Painting in Late 1917 and the First Half of 1918 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
“There Can be No Question of Painting in Suprematism,” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	266
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	272
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275
Select Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	317
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321

Language: English
Publisher: Yale University Press
Pages
- Main content: 240
Illustrations
- Other: 30 b-w

eBook

Published: November 27, 2012
ISBN: 9780300162295