Non-Objective Art and Suprematism – Malevich
The plane which formed a square was the progenitor of Suprematism, the new colour realism, as non-objective art.
Suprematism arose in Moscow in 1913 and the first works which appeared at an exhibition of painting in Petrograd aroused indignation among ‘papers that were then in good standing’ and critics, as well as among professionals – the leading painters.
In referring to non-objectivity, I merely wished to make it plain that Suprematism is not concerned with things, objects, etc., and more: non-objectivity in general has nothing to do with it. Suprematism is a definite system in accordance tfith which colour has developed throughout the long course of its culture.
Painting arose from the mixing of colours and – at moments when aesthetic warmth brought about a flowering – turned colour into a chaotic mix, so that jt was objects as such which served as the pictorial framework for the great painters. I found that the closer one came to the culture of painting, the more the frameworks (i.e. objects) lost their systematic nature and broke up, thus establishing a different order governed by painting.
It became clear to me that new frameworks of pure colour must be created, based on what colour demanded and also that colour, in its turn, must pass out of the pictorial mix into an independent unity, a structure in which it would be at once individual in a collective environment and individually independent.
The system is constructed in time and space, independently of any aesthetic considerations of beauty, experience or mood, but rather as a philosophical colour system, the realization of new trends in my thinking – as a matter of knowledge.
At the present moment man’s path lies across space. Suprematism is the semaphore of light in its infinite abyss.
The blue colour of the sky has been overcome by the Suprematist system, it has Jieen broken through and has entered into while, which is the true actual representation of infinity and therefore freed from the colour background of the sky.
A hard, cold system, unsmilingly set in motion by philosophical thought. Indeed, its real power may already be in motion within this system.
All the daubings produced by utilitarian intentions are insignificant and limited in scope. Their point is merely a matter of application and the past, and it arises from recognition and deduction by philosophical thought at the level at which we see the cosy nooks that cater for commonplace taste, or create anew one.
In one of its phases, Suprematism has a purely philosophical impetus, cognitive by means of colour: in another, it is a form capable of application by making available a new style of Suprematist decoration.
But it may manifest itself in objects as a transformation or embodiment of space within them, thereby removing their singularity from the mind.
It has become clear as a result of Suprematist philosophical colour thinking that the will is able to develop an artistic system when the object has been annulled in the artist’s mind as a pictorial framework and a vehicle, and that, as long as objects remain a framework and a vehicle, his will must go on gyrating within a compositional circle and among objective forms.
Everything that we see arose from the colour mass transformed into plane and volume. Every machine, house, person and table, all are pictorial volume Systems intended for particular purposes.
The artist too must transform the colour masses and create an artistic system, he must not paint little pictures of fragrant roses since all this would be dead representation pointing back to life.
And even if his construction is non-objective, but is based on the inter-relation of colours, his will cannot but be confined between the walls of aesthetic planes, instead of achieving philosophical penetration.
I am only free when my will, basing itself critically and philosophically on that which exists, is able to formulate a basis for new phenomena.
I have ripped through the blue lampshade of the constraints of colour. I have come out into the white. Follow me, comrade aviators. Swim into the abyss. I have set up the semaphores of Suprematism.
I have overcome the lining of the coloured sky, torn it down and into the bag thus formed, put colour, tying it up with a knot. Swim in the white free abyss, infinity is before you.
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