Malevich's Suprematism - The Higher Intuition

Author(s): Susan P. Compton

Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 118, No. 881 (Aug., 1976), pp. 576-583+585
Published by: Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
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 SUSAN P. COMPTON

Malevich's Suprematism - The Higher Intuition

IN 1919 Malevich wrote about his geometric abstract The poster for the 'First Evening' announced 'Futurists -

First in Russia - evening of rechetvortsev' which can be rough-

paintings: 'Suprematism was born in Moscow in I9I3'.1

He immediately added that the first works were presented ly translated 'evening of word-makers', creators of language,

at an exhibition of paintings in Petrograd. Suprematist rather than simply poets. When describing the opera

paintings had made their first public appearance at the Victory over the Sun, one of the Futurists, Benedikt Livshits,

spoke of the event as 'one night in the creation of the world'.8

'Zero Ten' exhibition held in Petrograd in December 1915.

But as, both in 1919 and later, Malevich insisted that

'Creators of language', 'creation of the world' were bold

Suprematism was born in Moscow in 1913, it should be assertions. In 1913 these poets and artists were not just

possible to find the sources of this radical development in identifying with a style called Futurism, they were intent on

art, in 1913 in Moscow.2 creating language, on creating a new world. It was the move

A hint is given in the 'Zero Ten' poster which described it away from a preoccupation with style in art, to the creation

as 'The last Futurist exhibition of painting'.3 In August of a new pictorial language with its own rules, which dis-

tinguished 'Suprematism' from previous Russian avant-garde

1913, the group of avant-garde writers and artists who had

previously called themselves 'Hylaea' accepted the name art. It has often been said that Russian Futurist poets learnt

'Futurists' when they included the word with 'Hylaea' as from painting; it is equally true to say that Russian painters

part of the title of a book with the characteristically Futurist (who were part of the striving of the avant-garde literary

title - The Croaked Moon (Dokhlaya Luna).4 Malevich had movement to produce a genuinely newly-created language)

appeared as a signatory to a manifesto of Futurist theatre in benefited enormously from the intense struggle carried on

August and his name was included on the poster of the by the whole group, especially in 1913, before any of the

'Futurists' First Evening' held in Moscow in October.5 The linguist theoreticians had begun to rationalize and formalize

highlight of the many Russian Futurist events in 1913 were the enterprise.9 Both Malevich and, shortly after him, Rosa-

two theatrical performances put on in St Petersburg in nova, were enabled to arrive at pure, geometric abstraction

December.6 Malevich designed the costumes and sets for through intimate contacts with the Futurist group. In retro-

one of these productions - the opera Victory over the Sun.

spect, it seems surprising that it took until the end of 1915

During the previous six months he had provided drawings for the 'new language of painting' to be born.

for lithographs as illustrations for a number of Futurist How far, then, could the Suprematism of Malevich and

poetry books, manifestoes and miscellanies.7 the abstract art of Rosanova be said to be related to the

linguistic experiments of the poets? Malevich's writing of

early 1916 clarified his position. In 'From Cubism and

Futurism to Suprematism. New Painterly Realism' Male-

1 K. MALEVICH: 'Non-Objective Creation and Suprematism' (Bespredmetnoye

vich insisted on the purely pictorial character of Suprema-

tvorchestvo i suprematizm) printed in the catalogue of the Tenth State

tism:

Exhibition, Moscow [1919]; translated into English, pp. 120-22, K. S. MALEVICH:

Essays on Art i915-I933, Vol.I, ed. by TROELS ANDERSON, London [1969].

'For the new artistic culture, things have vanished like smoke and
2 The sources of Suprematism would be found more easily in Petersburg in

1913: only by emphasising Malevich's links with the Hylaean Futurist group
art goes towards an end in itself, creation, it goes towards the

in Moscow (where he was living in 1913) can, I believe, this assertion be up-

domination of the forms of nature'.10

held. (Many of the ideas in this article are more fully developed in the thesis on

'Illustrations in Russian Futurist publications' which I am currently pre-

paring.) These ideas were totally familiar to the other Russian

3 An exhibition subtitled 'First Futurist exhibition of paintings' had been held

Futurists because from the publication of their first manifesto,

in St Petersburg in March 1915: it was called 'Tram V'. The catalogues of

A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,1" in December 1912 the

Malevich's contributions to these and other exhibitions are reproduced by

writers had insisted on the idea of the 'word as such (the self-
TROELS ANDERSON in his Malevich catalogue raisonni of the Berlin exhibition 1927,

including the collection in the Stedeljk Museum Amsterdam; with a general introduction

to his work, Amsterdam [1970], in which reproductions of most of the paintings

cited in this article will be found.

4 Futuristi Gileya Dokhlaya Luna, Osyen 1913 Moskva [published August 1913].

The title page carried the information: 'the miscellany of the only futurists of

the world! The poets of "Hylaea".'

NAKOV: 'Malevich as printmaker', The Print Collectors Newsletter, Vol.VII, No.i

5 The declaration was published in Za 7 dnei No.28 (122), pp.605-06. An [March-April 1976], pp.4-Io.

English translation is included by CHARLOTTE DOUGLAS in her article 'Birth of a 8 BENEDIKT LIVSHITS, op. cit., p. 181.

"Royal Infant": Malevich and "Victory over the Sun" ', pp.45-5i, Art in
9 Were this article to be concerned with sources other than those of 1913, a

America [March-April 1974]. The poster of the Futurists' First evening is repro- number of publications dating from 1914 would have to be included especially

duced on p.i159 of the French translation of BENEDIKT LIVSHITS: Polutoraglazy theoretical writings by V. Markov Matvei.

strelets (Leningrad) [1933], L'archer a un oil et demi, translated, prefaced and

10 K. MALEVICH: From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism - the New Realism in

annotated by EMMA SEBALD, VALENTINE and JEAN-CLAUDE MARCADi', Lausanne

Painting, English translation of Ot kubisma i futurizma k suprematismu. Novii

[19711]. zhivopisnii realizm, Moscow [1916], included pp.19-41 ; K. MALEVICH: Essays on

6 The poster is reproduced on p.35 of ANDREI B. NAKOV's Malevitch Ecrits, Paris Art 1915-33, Vol. I, op. cit. For a description of the publication see A. B. NAKOV:

[1I975]. Malevitch Ecrits, op. cit., p.206.

7 These publications are listed by TROELS ANDERSON, op. cit., p.151. One further 11 Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu, Moscow [December 1912] manifesto

lithograph Arithmetic has since been found in Vozropshchem (Let's grumble) St.
signed by D. Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, V. Mayakovsky and V. Khleb-

Petersburg [June 1913], and another, Universal landscape was published by nikov. English translation, p.45-46 V. MARKOV: Russian Futurism - A History,

A. B. NAKOV, op. cit., p.47. For a discussion of the lithographs see ANDREI B. London [1969].

577

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 LSK

r /*

37. Portrait of Matiushin, by Malevich. First exh. February 1914.

36. Cover design by Malevich. used on the publication of Victory over

Canvas, c o6 by 1075 cm. (Collection George Costakis,
the Sun.

Moscow).

...t. . . ... . .

rt Wuawn

38. Lubok, eighteenth-century woodcut.

39. Still Life, by Picasso published in Soirdes de Paris, No.I8.15, November 1913-

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 MALEVICH' S SUPREMATISM - THE HIGHER INTUITION

sufficient word)'. Malevich also stressed the importance of were photographic reproductions rather than lithographs,

getting rid of subject-matter in art: which Malevich had provided for other books. A comparison

can be made between one of the drawings reproduced in

'The most precious things in pictorial creation are colour and

The Three and the lithograph glued to the cover of Piglets

texture: they form the pictorial essence which the subject has
(Porosyata)18 which came out at about the same time as

always killed.' 12
The Three. Both drawing and lithograph are connected in

subject with a painting, which Malevich exhibited for the

The idea of getting rid of a subject was constantly discussed

first time in November 1913, called Face of a Peasant Girl.19

by poets in 1913; among others, by Kruchenykh, who

It was included in the section of the exhibition catalogue

asserted the freedom of the word, the raw material of

where the titles were bracketed together under the heading

literature, to stand by itself, no longer chained by slavery to

'Transrational realism' (zaumny realizm) a term borrowed

meaning, philosophy, psychology and reason.13 As a second

directly from the poets, Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov. In

example among many, Benedikt Livshits wrote that Futurist

The Three Kruchenykh wrote: 'we have provided a free

poetry was 'free from the sad necessity of expressing the

language, trans-sense and universal.'20 In some way in 1913

logical connection of ideas.'14

Malevich identified Face of a Peasant Girl with the trans-

In 1916 Malevich wrote:

rational language with which the poets were experimenting.

Another 'transrational' painting included in the same

'I have destroyed the ring of the horizon and escaped from the

exhibition was Completed Portrait of Ivan Kliun2l which was also

circle of things, from the horizon-ring which confines the artist

related to a lithograph by Malevich published in Piglets.

and the forms of nature."5

The word 'completed' has been added under the lithograph

which is called Portrait of a builder completed. An 'uncompleted'

Again this echoes Kruchenykh's suggestion that the 'emp-

or orthodox Portrait of Ivan Kliun was included in the cata-

tier' the poetic imagination, the more creative the result,

logue entries of an exhibition held a year before and a

the freer the poet to penetrate the mysteries beyond the

photograph was published in a review of the exhibition.22

rational world.16

A comparison of the two shows what a tremendous leap

Kruchenykh's 'mysteries beyond the rational world'

Malevich had made in his approach to a portrait head

should not be mistaken for a symbolist interpretation, where

between November 1912 and 1913. However, his attempt

the colours and textures which Malevich identified as the

to rival the poets' transrational language in Completed

most precious things in pictorial creation would be seen to

Portrait of Ivan Kliun was far away from Suprematism and

'stand for' another meaning. In some sense Malevich's

also very much more realistic than the heads which Vladimir

Suprematist colours and textures must be relatable to the

Burliuk had published as early as February 1913.

letters and sounds which Kruchenykh insisted, each have a

One of the heads (Fig.4o) (which were published in

relevance of their own:

photographic reproduction in A Trap for Judges HI (Sadok

Sudei 11)23 may be connected in its abstraction to a con-

'The word is broader than its meaning. Each letter, each sound

temporary essay by the painter Olga Rosanova, in which

has its relevance... Why not repudiate meaning and write with

she discussed a new basis which proved the 'self-sufficient'

word-ideas that are freely created? We do not need intermedi-

significance of the new art. In her article, which appeared in

aries - symbols, meaning...'

the third journal of the Union of Youth exhibiting society

(Soyuz molodezhi, No.3) in March 1913, Rosanova des-

Malevich would have been familiar with this quotation from

cribed a sequence in the creative process: First, intuitive

Kruchenykh's writings, for it appeared in an article, 'New

beginning; second, personal transformation of reality;

Ways with the Word' published in The Three (Troe) which

and third, abstract creation.24

came out in September 1913.17- Malevich was intimately

However, neither this article, the heads by Vladimir

connected with the production of The Three. He designed the

Burliuk, nor the heads which Rosanova herself contributed

cover and provided illustrations in memory of one of the

to the same publications as Malevich, contributed to Male-

three - Elena Guro, the poetess, who had died in May.

vich's stylistic development to 'transrational realism'. The

She was the wife of Matiushin, the artist and musician and

the publisher of the book. An inscription, printed on page i,

declares 'cover and drawings dedicated as a memorial to

18 A. KRUCHENYKH: Porosyata, St Petersburg [1913]. Since the book contains

Elena Guro by the artist K. S. Malevich.' These drawings

a reference by Kruchenykh to an article by A. Redko published in July, 'U

podnozhiya afrikanskogo idola' Russkoe Bogatstvo, No.7 [1913], Piglets is un-

likely to have been published before September.

19 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

12 K. MALEVICH, op. cit.

20 A. KRUCHENYKH: 'New Ways with the Word', see note 17 above.

13 see VAHAN D. BAROOSHIAN: Russian Cubo-futurism 9qro-r93o, A Study in Avant-

21 Russian Museum, Leningrad.

Gardism, The Hague [1i974], pp.82-91, 'Kruchenykh: theory and practice of

22 The painting, today lost, is reproduced by TROELS ANDERSON in Malevich

trans-sense 191I3-1928'.

Stedeljik Museum (op. cit.) as catalogue entry 31. He gives the title in brackets
14 BENEDIKT LIVSHrrs: 'Osvobozhdenie slova' (Liberation of the Word) article in

as The Orthodox following the drawing which is entitled Pravoslavny. The

The Croaked Moon (Dokhlaya Luna).

painting was reproduced in a review published in Ogonyok, No.i [1913] of the

15 K. MALEVICH, op. cit.

Union of Youth exhibition (4th December-ioth January I913) entitled

1 See note 13 above.

17 A. KRUCHENYKH: 'Novie puti slova' (New Ways with the Word) article in Portrait of Ivan Kliun which corresponds to catalogue entry 36. No painting

called The Orthodox was included in the exhibition.

Troe (The Three) St Petersburg Moscow (1913 September) [1914]. The date on

23 Sadok Sudei II (A Trap for Judges II) St Petersburg [February 1913].

the book is 191I4 but authorities date it September 1913. See V. MARKOV, Op. Cit.,

24 Soyuz Molodezhi No.3 Petersburg [March I913], pp.14-22; this quotation

and Russkaya Literatura kontsa XIX- nachala XX v 9go8-i917, Boris Aronovich

from p.14.
Moscow [1972].

578

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 MALEVICH' S SUPREMATISM - THE HIGHER INTUITION

Portrait of Ivan Kliun had been completed with reference to temporary Russian religious thinker, Uspensky, and his

French Cubist ideas rather than to any Russian source. An ideas on the Fourth Dimension.

illustration of a drawing of a head by Juan Gris, published

In the autumn of I9Q3, Malevich picked up the formal

in Gleizes and Metzinger's Du Cubisme had influenced influences which he found not only in the illustrations to

Malevich far more than Vladimir Burliuk or Rosanova.25

Gleizes and Metzinger's Du Cubisme but also in Cubist

A long analysis of Gleizes and Metzinger's Du Cubisme

pictures which were available in Moscow. In November,

had been published by Matiushin in March I9I3 in the

together with the other paintings already mentioned,

same journal as Rosanova's article on the three principles Malevich exhibited Musical Instrument/Lamp3l1 in a second

of creative process.26 Cubism was discussed frequently in

section of paintings, catalogued as 'Cubo-futurist realism'.

lectures given by the Russian Futurists during I9I3 - it The composition of this painting was closely modelled on a

was considered a particularly appropriate model for new still life by Picasso belonging to the Shchukin Collection in

art. But the approach of Matiushin was rather different. Moscow which Malevich certainly visited.32

He interspersed quotations from Du Cubisme with passages

The Picasso still life is unusual and Malevich seems to

from Tertium Organum, the latest book written by a Peters- have noticed in it a structure which links Cubism with the

burg mystical writer, Peter Uspensky.27 More especially, Fourth Dimension, shown by a diagram from a book from

Matiushin picked on references in Du Cubisme which he which Uspensky had quoted extensively in Tertium Organum.

could relate to the theory of the Fourth Dimension about

This was C. Howard Hinton's book The Fourth Dimension.33

which both he and Uspensky had previously written.28 The relevance of notions of the 'Fourth Dimension' are to

The 'Fourth Dimension' is a hypothetical construct which be found in The Three where Kruchenykh quoted from

interested a great many people in the first years of the Uspensky:

twentieth century, who felt that a fourth dimension must

exist alongside the world of three, just as the world of three 'At the present moment we have three units of psychic life, sen-

sation perception, conception (with idea) and there is beginning

dimensions contains the world of two. It has been shown that

to form a fourth unit 'higher intuition'.'

Cubists in Paris were familiar with Jouffret's Traitd ldmen-

taire de gdomitrie h quatre dimensions29 and Apollinaire wrote a

Kruchenykh added in capital letters: 'IN ART WE AN-

most interesting paragraph on the subject, which was

NOUNCE "THE WORD BROADER THAN SENSE." ',4

published in I912 in Soirees de Paris (a journal which was

Between March, when Matiushin had published his

read in Russia).

article linking Uspensky with Cubism and the September

Apollinaire wrote:

publication of The Three, Kruchenykh had evidently taken

a great interest in Uspensky's book and when, with Matiu-

'One can say that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is

shin and Malevich, he began to prepare the opera Victory

to the writer. Today the knowledgeable don't any longer confine

themselves to the three dimensions of Euclidean geometry. over the Sun the ideas were shared by all three friends.

Painters have been led quite naturally to pre-occupy themselves

The opening words and music of Victory over the Sun were

with these new measurements of space, which in the language of

included in The Three and the earliest costume design by

modern studios is described altogether and briefly by the term

Malevich, for the 'First Future-country strong man' was

'Fourth Dimension'... Young painters.., are getting further

stylistically related to the figure on the cover of the book.

and further from the old art of optical illusions and local pro-

But it was the set-designs which echoed ideas of the 'Higher

portions, in order to explain the greatness of metaphysical forms.

Intuition'. The same diagram from Hinton which underlies

This is why current art, if it isn't the direct emanation of parti-

Musical Instrument/Lamp can be read in one of the sets for the

cular religious beliefs, presents nonetheless, several character-

opera. Next to it Malevich drew a small diagram, identical

istics of great art, that is to say, of religious art.'30

to one which appeared in another treatise on the Fourth

Dimension, by Claude Bragdon which was published and

Following Apollinaire's example, Matiushin linked Gleizes

sent to Uspensky in i913 (Fig.A).35

and Metzinger's writings on Cubism with those of a con-

In Tertium Organum Uspensky identified the 'Higher

Intuition' or 'cosmic consciousness' with a state in which

people would realise that the world as they experience it in

25 GLEIZES and METZINGER: Du Cubisme, Paris [December 1912]. The book

appeared in two Russian translations in 1913; one by E. NIZEN published in St

three dimensions with logical thought is incomplete; as

Petersburg and another published in Moscow.

they achieved the Higher Intuition they would begin to

26 Soyuz molodezhi, No.3, op. cit., pp.25-34.

understand four-dimensional space, have a new concept of

27 PETER USPENSKY: Tertium Organum, St Petersburg [1911]. Page references are

from the English translation of the second edition (of which chapters XI and
time and a sensation of infinity.

XV were not included in the first) Tertium Organum - The third canon of thought A

All the known set-designs for Victory over the Sun conform

Key to the Enigmas of the World translated by Nicholas Bessarabov and Claude

Bragdon, paperback edition London [19731].

28 PETER USPENSKY: The Fourth Dimension, St Petersburg [x1909]. An unpublished

article by Matiushin entitled 'The Sense of the Fourth Dimension' dating from

1912-13 is in Matiushin's archive (in the possession of Alla Povelichina,

31 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Leningrad). For a discussion of 'Malevich and the Fourth Dimension' see my

32Picasso's Still life, Pushkin Museum, Moscow. It was illustrated in an article

article, pp.190-95, Studio International [April 1974] Vol.I87, No.965.

29 ESPRIT PASCAL JOUFFRET: Traiti illmentaire de glomitrie d quatre dimensions et on Shchukin's collection, published in Apollon [1914], No.1-2.

introduction 4 la ge'omitrie 4 'n' dimensions, Paris [1903], see LYNDA DALRYMPLE 3 C. HOWARD HINTON: The Fourth Dimension, New York and London [1904].

HENDERSON: 'The Fourth Dimension and non-Euclidian Geometry Reinter- 34 A. KRUCHENYKH: 'New ways with the word' (Novie puti slova), Troe, op. cit.

The quotation from Uspensky can be found on p.73 of Tertium Organum, op. cit.
preted', The Art Quarterly [Winter 1971], pp.410o-33.

80 GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE: 'La Peinture Nouvelle: Notes d'Art', p.90, Les 5 CLAUDE BRAGDON: A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension), New York

Soiries de Paris, No.3 [April 1912] (author's translation).

[1 913], plate 29.

579

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 MALEVICH' S SUPREMATISM - THE HIGHER INTUITION

to the underlying sets and costumes, Malevich was limited by the constraints

A I. ..B

structure of the of the human body of the actor, and of the stage space

diagram by Mal- available at the Luna Park theatre..40 Malevich seems to have

evich related to relied on the possibilities which stage lighting could add in

Bragdon's; Kru- creating new shapes and effects and a totally new, theatrical

FG
chenykh's words experience. In earlier paintings like Morning in the Village

and Matiushin's after Snowfall41 Malevich had already experimented with the

music both illus- way that volumes could be shaped and distorted by the effect

trate Uspensky's of bright light on colour and a costume like the one for 'The

idea that 'in art Careful Worker' illustrates the novel effects which Malevich

we have already achieved on the stage. The lower half consists of bands of

E H%
the first experi- black and white terminating in a single red shoe on the left

ments in a lang- leg; the rest of the costume is black and white with red

uage of the future. fingers and a red cap. Livshits described what happened on

Art anticipates a the stage:

psychic evolution

DC

and *divines its '... bodies were broken up by the beams of light, they alter-

A) C. Bragdon: diagram drawn from plate 29 A

nately lost arms, legs, head, because for Malevich they were only
Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension) future forms.'36

geometric bodies yielding not only to decomposition into ele-

This attempt to achieve a Higher Intuition appears in the

ments, but also to complete disintegration in the pictorial

totality of the opera: in Kruchenykh's 'word broader

space'.42

than sense' (transrational language); in Matiushin's use of

the quarter-tone scale for the music and in Malevich's

Some idea of how this was achieved can be gained from

use of a schema which was already in existence for trying to

studying the costume designs with the sets. (Even though

show the Fourth Dimension (see Fig.36).

there was neither time nor money to realise in detail what

The opera conveys a move away from logical under-

Malevich wanted, these are the only surviving documents

standing. Uspensky's Higher Intuition, the Fourth Form,

which can bring his intentions alive today.)43

was characteristic of the man who is beginning to pass out

On his drawing for 'Scene II' (for which the stage direc-

of the field of observation of positivism and logical under-

tions in the text stipulate 'green walls and floor') Malevich

standing, who is replacing his experience of the world in

has written beside the set design: 'Green and black, green

three dimensions by its experience in four.

till the funeral'. Livshits emphasised that the Luna Park

In Victory over the Sun Malevich was involved not with a

theatre had very modern lighting equipment in 1913 which

purely destructive attempt to create anti-art, but with a

meant it was one of the first theatres to have spot-lights

genuine attempt to create a new art language, which would

which could be controlled from a single source. The effects

lead to a new awareness of possibilities beyond the 'world of

described by Livshits could have been achieved only by the

the sun'. Khlebnikov's prologue began: 'People! Those who

most skilful use of coloured spot-lights. Since the walls and

are born but have not yet died. Hurry up into contempla-

floor were green, the green and black costume of the 'Ill-

tion.'37

intentioned one' would have largely disappeared into the

There is a great difference between wanting to create a

background, except for a part of his head, and his red hand.

new language, a new system, and achieving it. The range of

By playing a red light onto the stage the 'Squabbler' (who

the content of the opera extended the audience's experience

appeared in the same scene) would have had his single red

of space and time. The first scene introduced 'Nero and

leg intensified, his upper part would have become dark and

Caligula' (in one person) as well as a 'Traveller through

the green, 'Ill-intentioned One' would have become brown,

time.' But the problem remained, how to achieve a new art

except for his single, red hand and the black, geometric

form. In words and music Kruchenykh and Matiushin used

shapes on his costume which would have stood out. The

a tried formula: Kruchenykh, the 'chopped up words, half

possibilities of effects which could be achieved with coloured

words and their whimsical, intricate combination'38 in

lights are endless, but to make the most impact, very simple

order to reach the greatest significance. In the music,

sets, like the one on which Malevich wrote 'Square' (quad-

Matiushin took over the quarter-tone system from other

rat) which allowed a large, plain area against which the

composers - Reger and Schoenberg.39 But in designing the

characters could be seen clearly, would have been the most

36 USPENSKY, Op. cit., p.73. (This sentence immediately precedes the quotation
40 The Luna Park theatre had been Vera Komissarzhevskaya's theatre:

used by Kruchenkh, see footnote 34 above).

Meyerhold had directed plays there from 1go906-07; included in his On Theatre
" An English rendering of the text of Victory over the Sun (Pobeda nad Solntsem)

(0 Teatre), Petersburg [x9x3], were descriptions of his productions at this

was published in TDR/The Drama Review, Vol.x5, No.4 (T-52) [Autumn x97x1],

theatre. (Passages from this book in English translation are published in

pp. o107-24. The translation, by Ewa Bartos and Victoria Nes Kirby, is used in
Meyerhold on theatre, Edward Braun, London [x1969]).

the quotations from the text in this article. Unfortunately it is not possible to
41 Guggenheim Museum, New York.

render the intentional ambiguities of the Russian text in the English language.
42 LIVSHITs, op. cit., p.18.

38 A. KRWCHENKH, V. KHLEBNIKOV: The Word as Such (Slovo kak takovoe), St

3 In his article (see note 36) Matiushin describes how Malevich's ideas were

Petersburg [October 19131 (here Kruchenkh describes the users of 'chopped

not fully realised. Some of Malevich's designs for scenery and costumes

words' etc. as 'budetlyane rechetvortsy' not 'Futurist poets').

were kept by L. Zheverzheev, the secretary of the Union of Youth: his col-

39 Matiushin acknowledged these influences in his article published in the

lection was exhibited in December 1915, see: E. KOVTUN: The beginning of
First Journal of Russian Futurists (Futuristy: pervii zhurnal russkikh futuristov),

Suprematism, p.32-49, exhibition catalogue 'From Surface to Space Russia

No.x-2 Moscow [1914]. The article is quoted in full in English in TDR, op cit.,

z9r6-24' Galerie Gmurzynska Cologne [September-November 19741.

p.o101-o4.

580

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 MALEVICH S SUPREMATISM - THE HIGHER INTUITION

effective.** Lamp and the stage-set related to it. The portrait emphasises

Some of the very simple costumes, like the one for 'The another phrase from Kruchenykh's text:

Old Timer' with clear blue trousers, white shirt and a simple

black segment on his shoulder, today suggest Suprematist '.... liberated from the weight of earth's gravitation, we whim-

sically arrange our belongings as if a rich kingdom were moving.'49

forms; looking back to 1913, Livshits wrote in his memoirs:

Matiushin's musical extension of the normal western scale is

'In place of the square, in place of the circle to which Malevich,

already then, was seeking to reduce his painting, he found the indicated by the series of white notes which run across the

possibility of working with their volumetric correlatives, with the

form. As well as the whimsical arrangement of parts, the

cube and the sphere.' 45

portrait element of the painting is unique in Malevich's

Cubo-futurist work, in being arranged on a white ground -

The simplicity of forms and the reduction of colours must

the white ground which in Suprematism was to mean in-

not be over-emphasised, for some of the costumes, like some

finity - 'Sail forth! the white, free chasm, infinity is before

of the set designs, were very complicated: 'The New One'

us.'50

and the 'Enemy' were both very elaborate in colouring and

The Portrait of Matiushin suggests a totally new, irrational

forms. 46
way of looking at a figure, yet its white background refers

After the production the theme of the opera remained in

quite explicitly to a very old tradition of Russian painting -

Malevich's paintings, expressed in a very complex form in

the icon. On the left-hand margin of the painting, though

the Portrait of Matiushin (Fig.37) (first exhibited in February

now covered by a thin layer of white paint, is written:

I914) and more simply, in Englishman in Moscow which was

'Portret Matiushina' in the same tradition that painters of

not exhibited until March I9I5.'' A comparison of these

icons had used to denote the saints. Matiushin's portrait

two paintings shows a strange contrast of approach.

was a step towards Suprematism but it was still a 'Budet-

It seems certain that the Englishman in Moscow reflects a

lyanstvo' painting. That term for 'Futurism' derives from a

very obvious result of working with light on the theatre

word invented by the poet Khlebnikov and means 'Man of

stage. The curious effects of the green light striking parts of

the Future' rather than 'Futurist'. It was the word which

the figure and orange colour catching other parts may be

Kruchenykh, Matiushin and MNalevich had used when out-

related to the primary colours of stage lighting, which are

lining their plans for a Futurist theatre in July I9I13. After

red, blue and green (not the red, blue and yellow of pig-
Khlebnikov's death, a critic insisted 'Budetlyanstvo and

ments) and reflect effects which had been achieved on the

Futurism are two different things, Futurism rejects tradition,

stage. The words 'Partial eclipse' (chastichnoe zatmenie)

whereas Budetlyanstvo is a creation of new things, grown on

refer to the total eclipse in Victory over the Sun as well as

the magnificent traditions of Russian antiquity.'51

drawing attention to the partial obliteration of the figure by

The 'Tradition of Russian antiquity' in a more modern

the juxtaposition of all sorts of irrational objects which reflect

form was used by Malevich in a second painting also first

Futurist poetry by their double meanings.

exhibited in February 1914. The Portrait of a Guardsman52

In From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism Malevich rather

was a combination of ideas from French Cubism and

surprisingly described the r6le of Cubism in his development

traditional broadsheet (lubok) art (which Malevich had

towards Suprematism as the possibility of the most unex-

made use of in his peasant subjects of the year before). The

pected juxtaposition of objects and parts of objects, pushed

soldier's coat in the lubok (Fig.38) is arranged in a formal,

to the limits.

abstract way, which lent itself to sophisticated marriage

Not only does this clearly refer to Englishman in Moscow

with the very latest ideas from Picasso. Several relief

but, perhaps less obviously, to the Portrait of Matiushin where

sculptures by Picasso were illustrated in Soire'es de Paris in

it is illustrated by direct reference to Kruchenykh's text for

November I9I353 and one of them (Fig.39) has inspired

the opera - the drawer-front with a keyhole in it refers to the

Malevich's extension of the yellow plane in The Guardsman.

character, the 'Fat Man', who says:

In this painting, the germ of an idea appeared which proved

the most influential to Malevich during I914, when he

'yes everything here is not that simple, though at first glance it

produced a sequence of works in which parts were 'half-

appears to be a chest of drawers - and that's all! But then you

eclipsed' by a free-standing plane, the hallmark of French

roam and roam (He climbs up somewhere). '4

synthetic Cubism.

Each of the next paintings by Malevich had elements

If this invitation is followed on the Portrait, above the drawer

which related it to the previous one. Woman at the poster

the head element (which has recognizable forehead and hair)

column54 contained the planes of The Guardsman, Composition

is transfixed by a series of tipped horizontal diagonals which

refer back to the structure of the painting, Musical Instrument/

49 Ibid.

"44 I am indebted to Mr Malcolm Pride and Mr Robert Stanbury of the

50 K. MALEVICH, op. cit., (see note 1), p.I22.

Department of Theatre Design, Wimbledon School of Art, for their comments

51 'Khlebnikov-osnovatel' budetlyan .. .,' Kniga i Revolyusya, No.9-io [1922]

on the staging and lighting of the production.

p.25 (quoted in V. MARKOV, op. cit., p.28).

45 B. LIVSHITS, op. cit., p.181.

5 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

46 See SZYMON BOJKO: Malevich Stage-designer, pp.22-23, Project 5, Warsaw

3 Soirees de Paris, No. 18 [ 15th November 1913]. (There was a gap in publication

[1967].

of this journal: No.17 appeared in June 1913, No.i8 was in a new format and
47 Portrait of Matiushin, Collection G. Costakis, Moscow (Fig.37). Englishman in

included illustrations).
Moscow, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

48 See footnote 37 above. 54 Woman at the poster column, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

581

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 MALEVICH'S SUPREMATISM - THE HIGHER INTUITION

with Mona Lisa55 seems to have followed directly from English- Cubist-derived pictures which Malevich had been painting,

man in Moscow incorporating not only the words 'Partial since Wyndham Lewis did not use overlapping forms. His

eclipse' but also the real eclipse of parts of the painting by portrait is composed of elongated cubes and rectangles.

coloured planes of geometric shape which began to cover the Later, when Malevich was preparing drawings for a pro-

representation of allusion to real objects. As an allusion to a jected film about Suprematism, he used the same elements,

person, Malevich has used a photograph of the Mona Lisa also arranged on a diagonal. But Malevich emphasised only

which he crossed out - thus cancelling traditional fine art in one side of each of the diagonal, three-dimensional, elonga-

one of its most representative images. He crossed it twice, ted cubes, so that only two dimensions were suggested.

cancelling the representation of a person which had still Malevich repeatedly insisted that his Suprematist paintings

been important in Englishman in Moscow. grew from the Black Square.61

Malevich later described these paintings as a-logism of

Connections may be found in the interview with Ezra

form. They could be seen to prefigure Dada or Surrealism, Pound published in The Archer. Pound's phrases would have

both movements in art in which painters worked with literary had quite different connotations to those, who, like Malevich,

ideas. But none of these paintings amounted to a new were already grounded in Russian Futurism, and familiar

language. None did more than alter the structure of the with Uspensky's ideas on the Higher Intuition and The

existing language, albeit in a quite different way than con- Fourth Dimension. Pound is reported as saying 'For the

temporary French painting. Malevich's paintings still re- creation of new abstraction it is necessary to generate new

mained close to the ideas of Russian Futurist poets and trans- masses, to reveal out of them a new reality.'62 This idea was

rational language. They can be seen as parallel innovations close, both to Rosanova's three principles of creation and to

to those of Kamensky in Tango with Cows (Fig.4I) (Tango s Malevich's own, as expressed in the catalogue of the 'Zero

korovami) published in March 1914.56 Ten' exhibition, where he wrote that he had thought of real

Malevich did not take such an active r6le in Futurist figures as piles of shapeless pictorial masses, out of which has

publications and happenings during 1914, partly because

been created a painting which has nothing in common with

they diminished in number with the outbreak of the war, nature.

when Futurist events were no longer a draw for crowds as Malevich's Suprematist painting had nothing in common

they had been in 1913. There were exceptions. One was the with nature, but many of the same geometric forms that he

used had been used already by Wyndham Lewis: the same

'Tramway V' exhibition, held in Petrograd in March 1915,

where Malevich exhibited the series of 'eclipse' paintings.

geometric forms which

One of the key works in the exhibition was Englishman in

Apollinaire had descri-

Moscow which was reproduced in newspaper reviews of the

bed as the 'grammar

exhibition.57 Another exception was the publication of the

of painting'. But Ap-

miscellany The Archer (Strelet s) which brought together for

ollinaire had written

one of the last times, the Russian Futurist groups from

that young French

Moscow and Petrograd and linked them with older cele-

painters were not using

brities.58

Euclid's geometry, but

The Archer differed from previous publications because it

the geometry of the

contained an article on the English Vorticists, who were

Fourth Dimension:
called 'Angliiskie Futuristy'. The article consisted of an

each of the titles of

interview with Ezra Pound by Zinaida Vengerova59 and a

painting by Wyndham Lewis was reproduced in The Archer

the paintings which

among otherwise all-Russian illustrations. The Wyndham

Malevich included in

Lewis painting chosen for reproduction was Portrait of an

the 'Zero Ten' ex-

Englishwoman (Fig.42).60 Although Malevich was not a

hibition included the

contributor himself, Mayakovsky and David Burliuk were

phrase 'in the fourth

and with his own Englishman in Moscow reproduced in

dimension' or 'in the

contemporary newspaper reviews of the 'Tramway V'

second dimension'.

exhibition he must have had his attention drawn to this

It seems very prob-

Portrait of an Englishwoman.

able that the descrip-

In the reproduction on blue paper in The Archer, Wyndham

B) P. Uspensky: Tertium Organum 'diagram tion in The Archer of

Lewis's portrait looks very abstract. It is quite unlike the

reproduced from C. H. Hinton The Fourth

Pound

Dimension.

65 Composition with Mona Lisa, Russian Museum, Leningrad.

'seizing a pencil and a sheet of paper and drawing a funnel re-

56 Tango s korovami (Tango with cows), March 1914, Moscow. At least two de-

presenting a vortex and a mathematical layout showing the

signs of wall paper were used to print on-see The Print Collector's Newsletter

movement of a vortex in space'63

[March 1976] (New York) where Arthur Cohen has reproduced another

version from the one reproduced here (Fig.41).-

6r See Pougnv, Catalogue de l'Oeuvre: Annies d'avant garde, Russie-Berlin, 9g0o-

would have reminded Uspensky's readers of the single

1923 H. BERNINGER and J. A. CARTIER, Tubingen [1972].

68 Strelets (The Archer) [March 1915] Petrograd.

69 Zinaida Vengerova was the sister of a literary scholar and a scholar in her

e1 None of the existing versions of the Black Square is dateable before 1915.
own right. (See V. MARKOV, op. cit., p.280).

82 ZINAIDA VENGEROVA: 'Angliiskie futuristy', Strelets, p.94.

60 WYNDHAM LEWIS: Portrait of an Englishwoman (Fig.42) reproduced in Blast,

83 Ibid.

No. I, p.8 from where the Russian reproduction was probably taken.

582

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 8bi

StTOR

A A6Y A a*k mtwa4 ,ro * TYP"

.......

NCR.I

40. 'Sadok Sudei 2', by Vladimir Burliuk.

41. Cover of Tango s korovami, by Vasily Kamensky, published March 1914.

42. Portrait of an Englishwoman, by Wyndham Lewis, reproduced in 43. Drawing by Malevich, 9-5 by 8-5 cm.

Strelets, March 1915-.

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 MALEVICH S SUPREMATISM - THE HIGHER INTUITION

A was more than a blank page, it was the white of infinity, a

totally new kind of spatial reference.

CF
Uspensky had written:

'The example of many saints, who were not intellectual, but who

undoubtedly attained cosmic consciousness, shows that cosmic

consciousness may develop in purely emotional soil, i.e., in the

given case as a result of religious emotion. Cosmic consciousness

is also possible of attainment through the emotion attendant

upon creation - in painters, musicians and poets. Art in its highest

X..*B

manifestations is a path to cosmic consciousness (Higher In-

C) C. Bragdon: diagram drawn from plate 14 A Primer of Higher Space (The

tuition).'167

Fourth Dimension).

In December I915, when the exhibition 'Zero Ten' opened

diagram which he had reproduced from C. Howard Hin-

in Petrograd and Malevich's friends, Matiushin, Kruchenykh

ton's The Fourth Dimension (Fig.B). Pound's 'angles and lines

and Khlebnikov 68 saw his new creations for the first time,

which are created by our vortex in our chaos of life and

they would have understood very clearly what Malevich had

culture' echo the strange diagrams which Hinton and Brag-

achieved with his very original and complex new language

don had used to describe four dimensions in terms of the

of art, because they themselves had been crucially involved

known three. The article in The Archer may have acted as a

in its beginnings in 1913.

trigger to send Malevich back to preoccupations which had

concerned him at the time of the production of Victory over 67 p. USPENSKY, op. cit., p.301.
68 See V. MARKOV, op. cit., p.298.

the Sun and through them to create his new, non-objective

language. Connections between Bragdon's diagram (Fig.c)

and a 1915 drawing by Malevich (Fig.43) are self-ex-

planatory.

Shorter Notices

In May 1915, two months after the exhibition 'Tramway

V' and the publication of The Archer Malevich wrote from

Panels showing the 'Death of St Ephraim'

Moscow to Matiushin in Petrograd:

BY HUGH BRIGSTOCKE

'All the many things which I put into your opera Victory over the

Sun in 1913 gave me a lot of innovations except that nobody

IN the museum at Esztergom there is a fragmentary panel repre-

noticed them.'64
senting the Death of St Ephraim' (Fig.44) which is identical in

composition to the left-hand part of the well-known panel repre-

senting the Death of St Ephraim and scenes from the lives of hermits,
He told Matiushin that he was planning a publication with

which is now in the Uffizi2 (Fig.46); recently, in June 1974, a

his friends:

much larger section of the panel to which the Esztergom fragment

must almost certainly have originally belonged turned up at a

'In view of the fact that we intend to reduce everything to zero in

Christie's sale3 (Fig.45). This panel, hitherto unpublished, is

it, we have decided to call it Zero. We ourselves will then tran-

similar in style to the Esztergom fragment, and it is almost identi-

scend zero'.65

cal in composition to the equivalent part of the Uffizi picture.

From our knowledge of the composition of the Uffizi picture

The concept of Zero is central to Suprematism. The idea

(Fig.46), and from the two photographs reproduced here of the

connects once again with a Russian Futurist idea - the poet

Esztergom panel (Fig.44) and the Christie's panel (Fig.45), both

Gnedov had becn about to join up with the Futurists in

made to exactly the same scale, it can be seen that only a very

December 1914, but had been forced to go south suddenly

small missing fragment separates the left hand edge of the

on account of his health. He had just become famous

Christie's panel from the right hand edge of the Esztergom panel;

through a collection of poems which had appeared in a

apart from both this small missing piece which was undoubtedly

volume called Death to Art (Smert isskustva) of which the

sacrificed when the original picture was cut up, and another

most extreme was titled 'Poema kontza', the Poem of the even smaller piece evidently trimmed from the left edge of the

Esztergom panel, one can now reconstruct virtually the entire

End. Written down, the poem was simply the title on a blank

horizontal dimension of the dismembered picture. In the vertical

page; recitation consisted of Gnedov standing perfectly still

sense, however, the reconstruction remains incomplete and the

and silent and moving his hand from left to right and vice-

bottom edge of the original panel is still lost. Comparison with the

versa. The description of the recitation published in the

Uffizi version strongly indicates that the missing foreground area

introduction of Death to Art records: 'Poem of the End' was

would have represented the River Nile. It is not known when or

'Poem of Nothing', a zero, as it is drawn graphically.66

where the original picture was cut up. The Christie's panel can

Onto his own zero, his own blank canvas, Malevich

placed the Black Square which he described in another

1 Cf. M. BOSKOVITS in Antichith Viva 5 [1968], pp.6 f., Fig.4. However E. CALLMANN

in THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE [May 1957], p.150 described it as dating from

letter to Matiushin as 'the father of the cube and sphere'.

the first half of the fifteenth century.

But the white border which surrounded the black square,

2 Cf. U. PROCACCI in Rivista d'Arte XVII [1935], p.360, and R. LONGHI in Critica

d'Arte V [I940], pp.173 f. Before entering the Uffizi the picture was in the

64 Quoted by E. KOVTUN, op. cit., p.41. Hugford Collection, attributed to Starnina; cf. j. FLEMING in The Connoisseur

65 Ibid., p.44.

[1955], CXXXVI, p.206.

66 See V. MARKOV, op. cit., pp.79-80.

3 Christie's, 28th June i974 (47).

585

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