Kasimir Malevich, "Suprematism"
Under Suprematism I understand the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.
The so called "materialization" of a feeling in the conscious mind really means a materialization of the reflection of that feeling through the medium of some realistic conception. Such a realistic conception is without value in Suprematist art .... And not only in Suprematist art but in art generally, because the enduring, true value of a work of art (to whatever school it may belong) resides solely in the feeling expressed.
Academic naturalism, the naturalism of the Impressionists, Cezanneism, Cubism, etc all these, in a way, are nothing more than dialectic methods which, as such, in no sense determine the true value of an art work.
An objective representation, having objectivity as its aim, is something which, as such, has nothing to do with art, and yet the use of objective forms in an art work does not preclude the possibility of its being of high artistic value.
Hence, to the Suprematist, the appropriate means of representation is always the one which gives fullest possible expression to feeling as such and which ignores the familiar appearance of objects.
Objectivity, in itself, is meaningless to him; the concepts of the conscious mind are worthless.
Feeling is the determining factor ... and thus art arrives at non objective representation at Suprematism.
It reaches a "desert" in which nothing can be perceived but feeling.
Everything which determined the objective ideal structure of life and of "art' ideas, concepts, and images all this the artist has cast aside in order to heed pure feeling.
The art of the past which stood, at least ostensibly, in the service of religion and the state, will take on new life in the pure (unapplied) art of Suprematism, which will build up a new world the world of feeling ....
when, in the year T913, in my desperate attempt to free art from the ballast of objectivity, I took refuge in the square form and exhibited a picture which consisted of nothing more than a black square on a white field, the critics and, along with them, the public sighed, "Everything which we loved is lost. We are in a desert .... Before us is nothing but a black square on a white background!"
"Withering" words were sought to drive off the symbol of the "desert" so that one might behold on the "dead square" the beloved likeness of "reality" ("true objectivity" and a spiritual feeling).
The square seemed incomprehensible and dangerous to the critics and the public ... and this, of course, was to be expected.
The ascent to the heights of nonobjective art is arduous and painful ... but it is nevertheless rewarding. The familiar recedes ever further and further into the background .... The contours of the objective world fade more and more and so it goes, step by step, until finally the world "everything we loved and by which we have lived" becomes lost to sight.
No more "likenesses of reality," no idealistic images nothing but a desert!
But this desert is filled with the spirit of nonobjective sensation which pervades everything.
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