Black Square (also known as The Black Square or Malevich's Black Square) is an iconic 1915 painting by the Kyiv-born artist Kazimir Malevich. The first version was completed in 1915 and was described by the artist as his breakthrough work and the inception for the launch of his Suprematist art movement (1915–1919).[1] In his manifesto for the Suprematist movement, Malevich said the works were intended as "desperate struggle to free art from the ballast of the objective world" by focusing only on pure form.[2] He sought to paint works that could be understood by all, but at the same time would have an emotional impact comparable to religious works.
The 1915 painting was the turning point in his career and defines the aesthetic he was to follow for the remainder of his career; his other significant paintings include White on White (1918), Black Circle (c. 1924), and Black Cross (c. 1920–23). Malevich painted by four other versions of the Black Square, each differing in their pattern, texture and color. The original Black Square was debuted at The Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in 1915. The last is thought to have been painted during the late 1920s or early 1930s. The 1915 painting is often described as the "zero point of painting", given its groundbreaking, paradoxical monumental and reductive approach, which remains today a huge influence on minimalist art.[3][4][5]
Malevich painted the first Black Square in 1915.[7] He made four variants, of which the last is thought to have been painted during the late 1920s or early 1930s, despite the author's "1913" inscription on the reverse.[8][9][10] The painting is commonly known as Black Square, The Black Square or as Malevich's Black Square.
Forensic detail reveals how Black Square was painted over a more complex and colorful composition.[9]
Suprematism
Most art historians, curators, and critics refer to Black Square as foundation in the development of both modern and abstract art.[11] Malevich described the paintings as part of the Suprematism movement, which empahsised colour and shape. However, today that movement is today almost exclusively associated with Malevich and his apprentice El Lissitzky.[11][6] The movement did have a handful of supporters amongst the Russian avant-garde but was dwarfed by its sibling constructivism, whose manifesto better reflected the ideology of the early Soviet government.[citation needed]
The larger and more universal leap forward represented by the painting, however, is the break between representational painting and abstract painting—a complex transition with which Black Square has become identified and for which it has become one of the key shorthands, touchstones or symbols.[12]
Black and White (Suprematist Composition), 1915, Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Influence
The work is frequently invoked by critics, art historians, curators, and artists as the "zero point of painting",[3][4][5] referring to the painting's historical significance as a paraphrase of a number of comments Malevich made about it in letters to colleagues and dealers.
Malevich wrote that the painting was "from zero, in zero, that the true movement of being begins",[13]
and that he transformed himself "in the zero of form and emerged from nothing to creation, that is, to Suprematism, to the new realism in painting – to non-objective creation."[13] He said that the work was intended to evoke "the experience of pure non-objectivity in the white emptiness of a liberated nothing."[13]
Tone Roald and Johannes Lang wrote that Black Square "is an act of iconic rupture from a Russian-Orthodox Christian tradition, just as Ruben's The Death of Seneca, or Kiefer's Sulamith, can be understood as acts of iconic suture."[14]
Conservation
The painting's quality has degraded considerably since its creation.[15] According to The American art critic Peter Schjeldahl, "the painting looks terrible: crackled, scuffed, and discolored, as if it had spent the past eighty-eight years patching a broken window. In fact, it passed most of that time deep in the Soviet archives, classed among the lowliest of the state's treasures. Malevich, like other members of the Revolutionary-era Russian avant-garde, was thrown into oblivion under Stalin. The axe fell on him in 1930. Accused of 'formalism', he was interrogated and jailed for two months."[4]
Pencil inscription
In 2015, while viewing the Black Square with a microscope, art historians at the Tretyakov Gallery discovered a message faintly written in pencil on the white paint in the lower left corner of the composition.[16]
The first part of the phrase appears to say "Battle of negroes"; the second part is illegible, but may say "during the night".[16] It probably alludes to a 1893 comic strip by the French writer Alphonse Allais which has the caption: "Combat de Nègres dans une cave pendant la nuit" ("Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night").[17] Irina Vakar, the head researcher for the 2015 study, said that it was "highly unlikely" that Malevich added the phrase, and that it was probably added by someone mocking the Black Square.[16] Vakar notes that the pencil marks were made after the underlying paint had dried, meaning that they may date from long after Malevich completed the work.[16]
Other scholars have considered the possibility that Malevich himself added the inscription. In his book Arts incohérents, Discoveries and New Perspectives,[18] the French writer Johann Naldi explores the hypothesis that Kasimir Malevich was aware of the Combat de nègres pendant la nuit, and that Paul Bilhaud's monochrome (1882) may have influenced the Black Square. Recently, the art historian Andrew Spira considered the resonance with Paul Bilhaud's painting, but expressed doubts about Malevich's role in the inscription, questioning "whether he was even responsible for its writing."[19]