I went to see the Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935 at the Royal Academy, which has rekindled my love of Suprematism. One of the problems with living overseas is that all my beloved art books are back home including this now out of print book on Russian art: Between Heaven and Hell.
I have two copies, both now gathering dust in the garage back in Sydney and I wanting very much to re-read.
If anyone was to ask me which works are pivotal to me, I would include this one. When I was young, Malevich’s “Black Square” held an iconic place in the corner of my mind and heart. It was an epic painting, a masterpiece to me. Each time I looked at it, it grew grander in my minds eye. After adoring this work having only experienced it from slides and books, when I first saw it in the flesh at the Guggenheim, the frail cracks that fractured through the darkness of the paint sent a similar splinter of disappointment through me. The black was flat lacking the depth I had thought would be there. What was mysterious and ethereal was now part of reality and subject to time and decay.
As a painter, you can always sense the other artist’s hand in the work. Although not a perfect square, it was finely and cautiously painted by Malevich, you could almost hear him holding his breath as he painted the edges of the square. It must have been like when our ancient ancestors made careful paintings of gods on the walls of their cave. Seeing Malevich’s delicate approach to the painting, I felt I had misunderstood his painting all this time. That he was not painting the sublime but merely, a symbol. It seemed very human. To want to describe a certain experience but being restricted, almost stifled by one’s inability. The only means was to paint something, draw a mark that pointed elsewhere.
