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The core of Malevich’s ‘artistic expression’ in his Black Square is buried in parentheses a paragraph or two before the end: > Black Square was not simply a tw
by d1sxeyes 4y ago
The core of Malevich’s ‘artistic expression’ in his Black Square is buried in parentheses a paragraph or two before the end:
> Black Square was not simply a two-dimensional surface, parallel to a single wall and projecting outwards from it in one direction. Judging from the way it was displayed when first exhibited in 1915 — across the corner of the room (like a Russian icon) and as high up as possible — it was required to project from two walls and the ceiling, i.e. in three dimensions, embracing the room over which it presided as a cubic space.
Black Square’s artistic merit is precisely because it was intended to occupy the space in the room that an icon traditionally would, and implied the absence (or rejection) of God.
- IgorPartola 4y agoI didn’t know this, thank you! This just goes to show how much context is part of something being art!
- mcprwklzpq 4y agoExcept Malevich had written extensively about why he painted the Black Square and he never said it was to reject god. Malevich even wrote an essay "Бог не скинут: Искусство, церковь, фабрика" (God is not thrown down: Art, church, factory) in which he argued that god exists because it is impossible to prove otherwise. From this essay it is possible to conclude that Malevich in Black Square painted god as he imagined it. He wrote that since the seventh day of creation god rests and does nothing. That is why it appears as if god does not exists. Black Square depicts nothing.
- d1sxeyes 4y agoI may have overstepped with rejection. But in that essay he argues that there’s no such thing as God, God is just the embodiment of perfection in the universe, and man becomes God by attaining perfection, calls God fallible, refutes the concept of the trinity, says God is not omniscient, and ultimately concludes that God is not cast down because God is a creation of man as the answer to what is essentially a question of semantics, and so exists as the answer to an exercise in philosophy rather than in any real sense.