Vita SUSAK

Independant researcher

Memoriart33-45 Association, Bern (CH)

vita.susak@gmail.com

This article does not contain a new attempt at explaining Black Square, nor does it offer unambiguous answers to the questions that constitute its title. It is an observation on the use of works of art and the names of their creators by national and state institutions in their own cultural-historical narratives. The example of Malevich, the avant-gardist, who attached no importance to national issues in art demonstrates the paradoxical, ambivalent connection between the national and the international. The greater the international significance, the greater the desire to “claim” the name for one’s own national culture. No one is going to fight for an artist engrossed in ethnic subjects. But for a master who turned the entire art world on its head, the competition continues.

The name of Kazimir Malevich (1879, Kyiv–1935, Leningrad) has been “widely known” for hardly more than half a century. After his death, the creator of Suprematism was “officially” forgotten in the Soviet Union and “for the next fifty years he was a non-person” (Douglas 2007, ii). The West saw Malevich’s works at exhibitions in Warsaw and Berlin in 1927, and once again at the famous show Cubism and Abstract Art organised by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936 (Barr 1936, 215–216, nos. 147–160). The director of MoMA visited Europe and saw Malevich’s works at the Hannover Landesmuseum (formerly Provinzialmuseum) in 1935. Barr bought two paintings by Malevich for 200 dollars, transporting them wrapped around his umbrella through the Netherlands to the US (Andersen 1970). Already in the mid-1930s, this prominent American art historian understood the significance of Malevich’s legacy:

In the history of abstract art, Malevich is a figure of fundamental importance. As a pioneer, a theorist, and an artist he influenced not only a large following in Russia but also, through Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy, the course of abstract art in Central Europe (Barr 1936, 126).

Then the silence lasted almost until the end of the 1950s.

In 1957, the exhibition Predecessors of Abstract Art in Poland [Précurseurs de l’art abstrait en Pologne] was held at Galerie Denise René in Paris, where works by Malevich and four Polish abstractionists were displayed (Précurseurs 1957). Malevich’s paintings were not being exhibited in Paris for the first time (three of his Cubist compositions were shown at the Salon des Indépendants in 1914), but it was the first time he had been placed in the context of Polish avant-garde (Turowski 2002, 220–223; Luba 2017, 60–74). The decisive push in the (re) discovery of Suprematism was the purchase of Malevich’s works and archives by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1958. This was the part of the artist’s oeuvre that he entrusted to the architect Hugo Häring, who helped Malevich appear at the Berlin exhibition in 1927 and kept the collection during World War II. By the next year, 1959, Malevich exhibitions were being held in Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Franz Meyer, the director of the Kunsthalle and Marc Chagall’s son-in-law, curated a solo Malevich show in Bern (Meyer 1959). Apparently, Chagall accepted it, forgiving Malevich the Vitebsk incident, when he had invited Malevich to teach at the Vitebsk Art School in 1919, and later as a result of their differing views, was forced to resign his post and move to Moscow in 1920 (Lampe 2018). Six months later, a Malevich exhibition was held in London at the Whitechapel Gallery. Camilla Gray wrote the preface to the catalogue. She made a few errors on some biographical facts, but she was absolutely aware of Malevich’s value. Gray compared him to Kandinsky and Mondrian, and put him at precisely the same level as “historic pioneers whose ideas extended the field of painting” (Gray 1959, 10–11). At that time, she was just 23 years old, did not have a special art education, and had only begun to collect material for her famous book The Great Experiment: Russian Art, 1863–1922 (London 1962). In 1964, the young director of the Kunsthalle in Bern and future curator of the landmark shows Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969) and Happening and Fluxus (1970), Harald Szeemann, exhibited Malevich together with Duchamp, accentuating the fact that Suprematism and ready-mades were the two key discoveries of twentieth- century art (Szeemann 1964). Malevich’s legacy began to be actively “in use” by Western artists.

The 1970s publication of four volumes of the artist’s texts in English by Troels Andersen (Malevich 1968–1978) and their French translation by Jean- Claude Marcadé (Malévitch 1974–1994) made available his heritage for Western researchers. At this time Black Square (1915) was still “sleeping,” hidden in the store rooms of the Tretyakov Gallery. It was shown for the first time in the West at the exhibition Paris-Moscow in 1979; this was the second Black Square done by Malevich in 1929 (Paris-Moscow 1979, 155).

Active exploration of Malevich in the Soviet Union started after the exhibition Moscow-Paris (1981), on the wave of perestroika and general interest in the Russian avant-garde. The avant-garde pushed socialist realism into the background, as was literally shown in Malevich Country, 1985 (oil on canvas, 137.2 × 177.8 cm

private collection, Moscow) by Russian-American artist Aleksandr Kosolapov.

He overlaid the canonical socialist realist image Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, 1938 by Aleksandr Gerasimov with the inscription “Malevich,” written in red English block letters. In another composition, Malevich-Marlboro, 1997 (acrylic on canvas, 122 × 108 cm, Moscow Museum of Modern Art), Kosolapov “conclusively transformed the real Malevich into a universal sign of symbolic exchange, a trademark” (Karasik 2007, 335). The name “Malevich”, similar to “Marlboro”, expensive cigarettes that went on sale in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, became a “status symbol,” a peculiar password that meant “I am familiar with the new free life, with the avant-garde in art as well” (See Figure 1). The Russian specialist and publisher of Malevich’s texts Aleksandra Shatskikh aptly noticed that “around the centenary of Malevich’s birth (1979), a whole ‘Malevich industry’ was launched” (Shatskikh 2007, 317). Even today, a vulgarised, simplified perception and serious philosophic reflections trail behind this name in two long trains.

In 2007, in the Hamburg Kunsthalle, there was an exhibition Das Schwarze Quadrat. Hommage an Malewitsch that displayed works by Malevich’s students and colleagues, such as El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and by the top figures of the post-war abstract art —Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Günter Uecker, Richard Serra, Samuel Beckett, Bruce Nauman, the Irwin group and others (Gaßner 2007).

Founded in 1983, the Slovenian group Irwin carried out a performance in Moscow in 1992, The Black Square on the Red Square, as a sign of respect to the forefather of Suprematism. It was a square of black cloth, 22 meters on each side that covered the main square of the Russian capital. In the Soviet Union, and later in Russia, Malevich provoked artistic reflections from non-conformists and conceptualists. As early as 1982, Il’ya Kabakov wrote an ironic text Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future, published in the underground journal A-YA. “A great, epoch-making picture” appeared in his imagination:

1913. Europe. A high mountain. Not even a mountain, but a kind of plateau. A small knot of grim people is standing at the very edge of the plateau, where it falls away like a sliced-off piece of cheese. Before them, right at their feet, where the land, going downhill, breaks off, a sea of mist is spread out. How are they to go forward and to where? Behind the group of leaders stands frightened, huddled humanity, at a respectful distance in order not to interfere with the conference. What will be the leadership’s decision? Silence. A great historical moment.

If one draws close, trembling all over, to the small, elevated meeting, there, among the other great helmsmen, one sees Malevich. Calm. Self-controlled. Fully prepared for the immense responsibility that has fallen to his lot…. To sum up:

But only a few will be taken — the best. Those whom the headmaster chooses — he

knows whom (Kabakov 2017 [1982], 190).

In 1988, a documentary The Black Square was filmed on the basis of Olga Sviblova’s script, in which the artists Il’ya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Anatoliy Zverev, Vadim Sidur, and Vladimir Yakovlev speak about Malevich’s influence on their work. In 2007, the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg organised the exhibition Adventures of the Black Square that collected some of the most interesting variations on the theme made by Russian artists (Карасик, Горячева 2007). Discussions are still ongoing, caused by the publication of Boris Groys’s book Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin (Groys 1988), in which he showed how avant-garde ideas were used to shape totalitarian art in the USSR.

There are several paradoxes within Malevich, just as with the avant-garde in general. Avant-gardists promoted the inherent worth, the self-sufficient value of art. At the same time, they produced a great number of texts, theories, and manifestos explaining what was supposed to be self-sufficient. They were not interested in issues of national identity. Malevich’s aesthetic radicalism inspired many Western abstractionists who, like Malevich (who called himself “earthian” [землянит]) found that the issue of national identity (in art) was not offundamental importance. But over time researchers have successfully subdivided the main trends onto “national shelves”: French Cubism, German Expressionism, Italian Futurism. In the context of humanity divided into national states, the achievements and individuals internationally renowned in science, economics, and art become very important. This is a property of collective psychology —the need for “imagined communities” to be proud of their representatives. They are like trump cards in the national “decks.”

Kazimir Malevich was born into a Polish family in Kyiv and created his Black Square in Moscow. These are the basic facts that allow three contemporary states, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, to consider him their “own” artist. There is certainly also the period of his stay in Vitebsk, which left traces in the artistic life of Belarus and had an impact on the Jewish students of UNOVIS (Turowski 2010). Art historians and philosophers actively research Malevich, usually arguing that he belongs to the culture they themselves represent.

It was in Moscow and Saint Petersburg that Malevich developed his own theory of Suprematism. There, he also painted his key paintings and wrote major theoretical works in Russian. He undoubtedly remains a central figure of the Russian avant-garde. The Blue Noses group from Novosibirsk (founded in 1999)

put him ahead of Chagall and Kandinsky in their Russian March, History of Russia from Rurik to Putin [Русский Марш (История России от Рюрика до Путина)], 2011 (photoprint, 170 × 120 cm, Tsukanov Family Foundation, London) (See Figure 2).

However, Malevich came from an ethnically Polish family, of which his name Kazimierz is sufficient proof. In 1922, his student Władislaw Strzemiński, in the article “Notes on Russian Art” [O sztuce rosyjskiej – Notatki] wrote: “Malevich is not the first preeminent Pole in Russian art (e.g. Orłowski, Vrubel)1” (Strzemiński 2002, 275).

In 1927, after Malevich’s sojourn in Warsaw, the Polish poet and art critic Tadeusz Peiper added:

Polish artists are overcome with melancholy at the thought that the Pole Malevich is not here working at their side. After all, our artistic life is not exactly rich with artists of his calibre; his collaboration could give new impetus to Polish art and could provide valuable support. We miss Malevich… The sadness that our countryman comes to us only as a guest stifles our voices! Malevich should not just visit us! Malevich should not just visit us! (Peiper 2002, 664).

Much later, in the mid-1970s, Helena Syrkus shared her memories about Malevich’s visit to the Polish capital:

A sturdy, broad-shouldered figure, thick dark bangs brushed off his forehead. His face looked so similar to me to late portraits of Mickiewicz that when we needed to find Malevich in the crowd of travellers arriving at the platform at the main railway station in Warsaw, I approached him without hesitation, even though I had no idea what he looked like (Syrkus 1976, 149).

Eventually, a book would be published in 2002 by Polish-French art historian Andrzej Turowski, Malewich in Warsaw [Malewicz w Warszawie], which included a detailed Polish genealogy of the Malewicz family. In 2004 at a conference in New York, the Ukrainian-American professor Myroslava Mudrak presented an essay in response, “Malevich and his Ukrainian Contemporaries,” where she noted that “a volume comparable to Turowski’s, but dedicated to a closer documentation of Malevich’s activities in Ukraine, has yet to be written” (Mudrak 2007, 82). The most important work in “Ukrainising” Malevich has been done by Kyiv scholar Dmytro Horbachov. Thanks to his publications Peasant Malevich [Малевич мужицький] (1993), Malevich’s Kyiv Triangle [Киевский треугольник Малевича] (2000), and “We Were Both Ukrainians”: Malevich

1 Aleksander Orłowski, 1777–1832 —a Polish artist who worked from 1802 on in Russia, where he became a pioneer of lithography; Mikhail Vrubel (Wróbel), 1856–1910, a well-known representative of the Russian Modern style, whose paternal grandfather was a Pole.

and Ukraine [“Він та я були українці.” Малевич та Україна] (2006), academic discourse has received a considerable number of archives documents, letters, and memoirs from relatives and students confirming Malevich’s multiple connections and contacts with Ukraine (Горбачов 2006). The title We Were Both Ukrainiansis a quotation from the artist’s autobiography in which he described his walks for summer sketches with artist Lev Kvachevskiy in Kursk in 1897–1898 (Горбачов 2006, 26). In his memoirs, Malevich also emphasized that his artistic vision of the world was shaped under the influence of the Ukrainian village. The French specialist Jean-Claude Marcadé actively underlines the significance of Ukrainian landscapes and folk art on the artist’s journey to Suprematism. The parallels provided the basis for the design of a Ukrainian version of Marcadé’s book on Malevich published by Rodovid Press in Kyiv (Маркаде 2013). In this edition, Malevich’s original works are reproduced in combination and comparison with the geometrical ornaments of Ukrainian folk art, the strong and pure colours of folk carpets and embroideries. The discovery of drafts of lectures Malevich gave at the Kyiv Art Institute in 1928–1930 and their recent publication have also enriched what is known of the artist’s Kyiv period (Filevska 2017).

Malevich and his provocative Black Square have gone far beyond art history to become iconic in each of these three countries. There have been some successful initiatives here. In 2008, Jerzy Onuch, then the director of the Polish Institute in Kyiv, initiated the biannual Malevich Award to acknowledge young Ukrainian artists (under 40). As the Polish Institute’s site says, “The Malevich Award is an opportunity to call to mind the contributions of Poles associated with Ukraine in the formation of world cultural heritage.” The winner is selected by an international jury. The artist receives a monetary award and the opportunity for a residence in the Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. Previous recipients include the truly interesting Stas Volyazlovs’kiy, Zhanna Kadyrova, and Mykyta Kadan.

There are also cases of competition. In 2016, Natalia Zabolotna, then the director of the Mystets’kyy Arsenal, initiated the request of the Ukrainian government to change the name of Boryspil International Airport in Kyiv to Kazimir Malevich International Airport. According to her reasoning, “Taking his name for the largest national gateway for tourists would be a spectacular (and effective!) cultural re-appropriation that could help foreign visitors associate Ukraine with the artistic avant-garde that changed the entire cultural trajectory of the present” (Заболотна 2017) (See Figure 3). Other candidates —Hetman Ivan Mazepa and aircraft designers Igor’ Sikorskiy and Oleh Antonov— were also suggested. Eventually, online voters selected Ivan Mazepa, yet the airport

management decided to stick with the old name of Boryspil.

At the same time, in Moscow, the Federal Agency for Tourism ran an all- Russian competition for the “tourist brand of Russia.” The goal was to develop symbols “consisting of recognisable images and associations that come from the word ‘Russia.’” From over a thousand proposals, the jury selected ten brand concepts which it submitted to online voting. In November 2017, a Suprematist map of Russia won (Tourist Brand of Russia 2018) (See Figure 4). What is most striking is not the yellow circle of Kaliningrad, or the blue one of Lake Baikal, but rather a small quadrangle with the caption “Crimea.” Zabolotna sadly and indignantly stated that “Russians used our idea a year and a half later” and that “Ukraine has again lost part of its globally significant cultural heritage to Russia” (Заболотна 2017).

The language of Suprematism —rhythmically arranged geometric shapes of bright, saturated colours— is used in contemporary cultural politics, whether on a poster for a concert of chamber music Villa Musica at Potocki Palace in Lviv (September 20, 2018), in a TV advertisement for a jazz festival in Katowice (November 21–25, 2018) (See Figure 5), or in the announcement for L’ automne du Gl be, a cultural program at the Russian Society of Art Lovers Gl be in Paris (November 4–26, 2018). In late November 2018, in Moscow, in the new Tretyakov gallery on Krymskiy Val (precisely where the first version of Black Square was exhibited), a closed premiere of an opera by Il’ya Demutskiy, For the Black Square [Для Чёрного квадрата], was presented. In 2018 in Ukraine, the first screening of a documentary by Dmytro Dzhulay, Malevich: Ukrainian Square [Малевич. Український квадрат], took place; the same year another documentary, Malevich: Born in Ukraine [Малевич: народжений в Україні], was shot by Fresh Production Group (creative producer Tetyana Filevska). A Malevich biography by Ihor Kolyada was published in the series, Famous Ukrainians (Коляда 2018). At the private School of the Free and Mindful in Lviv, pupils are awarded funny money with Malevich’s portrait on it, similar to the portraits of artists on Swiss banknotes (Cf. Figure 6). Malevich is accompanied by Andy Warhol, whose mother had Ukrainian roots, but not by the customary poets Taras Shevchenko or Ivan Franko. The circle of established people-symbols is broadened to include new heroes. The school is pointing the children toward contemporary international role models.

Malevich’s works are often used to illustrate publications about the Holodomor, or terror famine of 1932–1933. The artist was aware of the tragic events in Ukraine, and they are reflected in his drawings and in his later “camouflage”

works. His compositions have been chosen for the covers of two publications from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (Graziosi, Hajda and Hryn 2014; Flier and Graziosi 2017).

Malevich is employed in a very broad range: from the tragic to the entertaining. In Lviv, there is a night club called Malevich reformatted from the former Soviet Myr (Peace) cinema (Cf. Figure 7). Entire exhibition projects are dedicated to Malevich. At the Kyiv Museum of Folk Art, Yuriy Solomko exhibited porcelain boots that were soldier-like and Suprematist at the same time. His implication was that Malevich developed the basis for Suprematism during World War I. According to Solomko, the boots are crushing past “Baroque epochs” and “transforming them into the mud under the sole of history” (Спецпроект Юрiя Соломка 2018). One would not dare suggest what prevails in the latter —kitsch, freeloading on the name, or creative metaphor. However, there are also some exquisite aesthetic projects in the area of fashion design, such as the “dress pictures” Kyiv couturier Fedir Vozianov made on the basis of Malevich’s universal symbols. They were shown in October 2018 in Paris as part of the project Le Guide Parisien de l’Avant- garde Ukrainienne.

I could offer many more examples, but one should think about why the founder of Suprematism is so popular in each of these cultural environments. There is another artist who belongs to three narratives. Henryk Siemiradzki (1842–1903) was born near Kharkiv into a Polish family. Upon finishing the Saint Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, he made a brilliant career for himself as an academist painter. He has large paintings exhibited in the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg and the National Museum in Kraków; his famous curtain adorns the stage of the Lviv National Opera house (See Figure 8). The debate around Siemiradzki’s identity is ongoing, from comments in newspapers to discussions at conferences. To be honest, Siemiradzki is stronger than Malevich as master of drawing and multi- figure compositions, but few people actually know Siemiradzki outside Poland, Russia, or Ukraine. The work of this academist is valued by the conservative part of society in these countries. Malevich is known all over the world. Malevich was a thinker. The courage and radicalism of his ideas have become symbols of mobility, innovation, and exceptionality. Using his visual language immediately implies one is an advocate for a modern and dynamic society.

It must be admitted that the use of the formal language of Suprematism has become international, and for many it has nothing to do with “national” desires for Malevich’s “return” to the Russian, Ukrainian or Polish context, especially for artists and designers from other countries. These issues remain significant in the

sphere of cultural policy, ideology, and (re)construction of art history in each of

these three Slavic countries.

In the second half of the twentieth century, abstract visual language unseated realistic images due to its universal nature. It could be used to speak about the future, the past, and the timeless —about the laws of the universe, and mass tragedies and catastrophes experienced by humanity. Pure forms and colours become signs and symbols not only as images on surfaces (paintings, posters, big screens). They are incorporated with their three-dimensional configurations into urban spaces. The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin includes 2711 grey concrete slabs, or stelae, of different heights that embody the huge scale of violence. The National September 11 Memorial presents two black pools on the former site of the Twin Towers, reminiscent of Malevich’s black quadrangle. The monument to the 96 victims of the Smolensk air crash in Warsaw is a 6-meter long stone triangle which ends in a staircase referring to an airstair (See Figure 9).

One of the reasons Malevich is so popular is his deceptive comprehensibility. Ingenious and deep in his theories, he is also laconic and simple (compared to Siemiradzki, for instance) in his visual implementation. Simplicity is genius but there is another side to it. Who would not be able to paint the Black Square? Million-dollar prices at auctions encourage counterfeits, resulting in some huge scandals. One of the most recent took place in 2017 when the exhibition Russian Modernism opened at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent. It displayed some pieces from the collection of Igor and Olga Toporovskiy. The most surprising pieces were Malevich “artefacts” —a decorated spinning wheel and Suprematist chest that had never been known to any specialists. An open letter from experts forced the closure of the exhibition (Шкуренок 2018). The museum director Catherine de Zegher was suspended from her position. I am not sure the real author will ever be identified, but he or she should be given credit for being bold. He or she must have been captivated by the mystifications of Malevich and furthered the cause.

Malevich never got a chance to try his hand at cinema, but he truly realised its capacity. In a short text from 1929, “Painterly Laws in the Problems of Cinema,” he analysed films by Sergei Eisenstein and Dzyga Vertov. In Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera [Человек с киноаппаратом], Malevich found “a tremendous number of elements (frames) of a specifically Cubo-Futurist nature,” “motion itself, dynamics itself,” “its tendency to de-objectify the city centre” (Malevich 2002 [1929], 155, 158–159). He even wrote a screenplay for a Suprematist film, but it was not until 2018 that an attempt to bring his ideas to life was made by the authors of the documentary Malevich: Born in Ukraine.

Lampe, Angela (dir.), 2018. Chagall, Lissitzky, Malévitch, l’avant-garde russe à Vitebsk,

1918–1922. Exhibition Catalogue. Paris: Centre Pompidou.

Luba, Iwona. 2017. Awangarda w CBWA. Wystawy Katarzyny Kobro i Władysława Strzemińskiego, Henryka Stażewskiego, Marii Ewy Łunkiewicz-Rogoyskiej w 1956–1969, 60–74. Warszawa: Zachęta.

Malevich, Kazimir. 1968–1978. Essays on art. Vol.1–4, edited by Troels Andersen. Copenhagen: Borgen Verlag.

Malévitch, Kazimir. 1974–1994. Écrits Vol.1–4, edited by Jean-Claude Marcadé. Lausanne: L’ Âge d’Homme.

Malevich, Kazimir. 2002 [1929]. “Painterly Laws in the Problems of Cinema,” transl. Cathy Young [Originally published as “Zhivopisnie zakony v problemakh kino,” Kino i Kultura, 1929, n° 7–8]. In Malevich and Film, edited by Margarita Tupitsyn, 147–159. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Marcadé, Jean-Claude. 1990. Malévitch. Paris : Casterman.
Meyer, Franz. 1959. Kasimir Malevich (1878–1935). Kleinere Werkgruppen von Pougny,

Lissitzky und Mansourov. Exhibition Catalogue. Bern: Kunsthalle.
Mudrak, Myroslava. 2007. “Malevich and His Ukrainian Contemporaries.” In Rethinking

Malevich, edited by Douglas Ch. and Loder Ch., 82–120. London: Pindar Press.

Peiper, Tadeusz. 2002 [1927]. “Malevich in Poland,” transl. Steven Lindberg [Originally published as “Malewicz w Polsce,” Zwrotnica, 1927, n° 11]. In Between Worlds. A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910–1930, edited by Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, 664. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.

Przyboś, Julian, and Jean Cassou (eds). 1957. Précurseurs de l’art abstrait en Pologne: Malewicz, Kobro, Strzeminski, Berlewi, Stazewski. Exhibition catalogue, Paris: Galerie Denise Paré.

Shatskikh, Aleksandra. 2007. “Aspects of Kazimir Malevich’s Literary Legacy: a Summary.” In Rethinking Malevich, edited by Douglas Ch. and Loder Ch., 317–327. London: Pindar Press.

Strzemiński, Władislaw. 2002 [1922]. “Notes on Russian Art,” transl. Wanda Kemp-Welch [Originally published as Strzeminski “O sztuce rosyjskiej – Notatki,” Zwrotnica, 1922, n° 3]. In Between Worlds. A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910–1930, edited by Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, 272–280. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.

Syrkus, Helena. 1976. “Kazimierz Malewicz.” In Rocznik historii sztuki, t. XI, 147–158. Warszawa: PAN.

Szeemann, Harald. 1964. “Zur Ausstellung.” In Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malewitsch, Josef Albers, Tom Doyle Exhibition. Kunsthalle: Bern.

“Tourist brand of Russia – in the style of Suprematism.” 2018. Art Investment Russia. https:// artinvestment.ru/en/news/ artnews/20181207_Suprematic_brand_of_Russia.html.

Turowski, Andrzej. 2002. Malewicz w Warszawie: Rekonstrukcje i symulacje, Kraków: Towarzystwo Autorów i Wydawców Prac Naukowych “University.”

Turowski, Andrzej. 2010. “Żydowski Malewich.” In Polak, Żyd, Artysta. Tożsamość a Awangarda, edited by Jaroslaw Suchan, 80–94. Łodz: Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi

500 Anos De Arte Russa/ 500 Years of Russian Art,

São Paulo, 2002

Russian Icons and the Russian Avant-garde, Two Major Facets of Universal Art

Jean-Claude Marcadé

“The invisible world of divine glory is not the only one to have found its expression in Russian icons. Two planes of being, two worlds dwell there in a dynamic, living way. On one side, the eternal peace of the hereafter, and on the other side, a world that seeks God but has not yet found Him, a chaotic, sinful, suffering existence that nevertheless aspires to the peace of God. As a parallel to these two worlds, the icon reflects and opposes two Russias. One is already anchored in eternal peace, and resounds ineffably to the cherubim’s hymn, “Let us now lay down all the cares of this world’. The other presses against the temple, aspires to it and expects intercession and help. It is around the temple that this Russia builds its secular and ephemeral edifice.”

Eugène Trubetzkoy, Trois études sur l’icône (1916)[1][i]

“The art of icon painting made me understand the emotional nature of peasant art. I had loved it before, but had not elucidated its scope. My eyes were opened by the study of icons […]. Icon painters, with great technical skill, transmitted an entire content in an anti-anatomical truth, without any aerial and linear perspective. They used colour and background within a purely emotional perception of the theme.”

Malevich, Autobiographie (1933)[2]

Russian plastic arts were long the poor relation of art history, owing to a deeply ingrained notion that Russia undoubtedly produced an impressive body of literature, and original music and ballet, but that it was not a country of painters. Despite a huge exhibition of Russian art organised by Diaghilev at the Autumn Salon in Paris, in 1906, despite the Slavic element in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes which strongly influenced an entire period, despite Louis Réau’s book L’Art russe des origines à Pierre le Grand, published in 1921[3], this opinion was upheld by many people who saw no seat of learning other than European studios, believed that Western training was essential to become an artist, and occulted Russia’s history.[4] Until the day in the 1960s when art historians (Camilla Gray, Troels Andersen, Valentine Marcadé) revealed the extent of Russian pictorial art movement in the first quarter of the twentieth century, showing Russia to be an artistic centre that was just as original and universal as it was during the flowering of icon painting from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century.

Icons played a key role in the liturgical, theological and intellectual life of Russia, in the same way as music did.[5] It is well known that Eastern Orthodoxy, in Rus before the fourteenth century, then in Muscovy and the Russian Empire, gave a special place to the liturgy, developing and amplifying it until it not only provided religious and mystic nourishment, but became the impetus for philosophical thought, and the wellspring of spiritual and aesthetic beauty. The sumptuousness of the Russian Orthodox liturgy leaves few of our contemporaries unmoved. Remember that Kandinsky, that quintessential twentieth-century modernist, said that he had experienced the synthesis of the arts, the phenomenon that in the late nineteenth century was known as Gesamtkunstwerk  or synaesthesia, in the izbas of the Volgda region and in the “churches of Moscow, particularly in the Assumption Cathedral and at St Basil the Blessed”: “In these extraordinary izbas, I discovered for the first time the miracle which I later included in my work. That is where I learned to walk right into the picture myself, not just give it a sidelong glance, but live in it. I clearly remember that I stopped on the threshold before this startling sight. The table, the benches, the enormous great stove, the cupboards, the dressers, everything was painted with rich, colourful decorations. On the wall there were lubki [popular Russian woodcuts]: a symbolic representation of a gallant knight, a battle or a song rendered in colour.

The Beautiful Red Corner [where the icons are kept] was covered with painted and printed icons, and in front of them a night-light glowed red as if it knew something in its heart and had its own inner life, a proud and humble star, whispering mysteriously to itself. When at last I stepped into the room, the painting encircled me and I walked right into it. Ever since, that feeling has lived unconsciously within me, although I have had the same experience in Moscovite churches and particularly in the Assumption Cathedral and in St Basil the Blessed.”[6]

The last two Moscovite churches were not a random choice, for they are both still lined with frescoes or murals, and the wall of the iconostasis is covered with icons, and therefore with paintings. The liturgy and various services were celebrated in these prestigious parts of the Kremlin. Anyone who attends the liturgy of St John Chrysostom in the Russian orthodox rite is inevitably struck by its resemblance to total theatre. The procession of priests, acolytes and deacons moves in obedience to a changeless symbolism from either side of the iconostasis, around the altar, passing at times through one of the side doors of the iconostasis, going from the church to the sanctuary and vice versa, spilling out into the area set aside for the congregation. These movements are accompanied by the marvellous, familiar music that has been played for centuries. Then there is ample use of incense, especially in front of the icons or the faithful who are, in a way, archetypal icons since “God made man in his image at the time of creation.”[7] Lastly, the congregation moves, too, since there are no seats in the centre of a traditional orthodox church: the faithful move towards the various icons, put candles before them, kiss them, cross themselves but not in unison, bend over to touch the ground with their right hands to seek forgiveness and as a sign of submission to God’s will, and prostrate themselves in some parts of the liturgy. Although the gestures made by the celebrants follow a changeless pattern, the movements of the faithful are more random. Thus, group and individual movements are reconciled.

Christian Rus was plunged into Byzantine theological culture from the outset, and therefore was deeply involved in the intense iconographic culture which followed the “triumph of Orthodoxy”, meaning the triumph of the veneration of icons over Iconoclasm, after the seventh ecumenical council, at Nicaea, in 787 (the Early Church’s last ecumenical council). The Rus’ first iconographic masters were Greek and their art had a profound influence on iconography in Rus from the eleventh to the thirteenth century. Gradually, specifically Slavic features began to appear in the conventional Byzantine models. The Tartar invasion and the capture of Kiev in 1240 hastened the city’s decline as a great artistic centre.[8] Henceforth, the Vladimir and Rostov schools developed in the East, whereas Novgorod, “after the sack of Kiev, became the representative of Byzantine art in Rus; that is why the Novgorod school is venerated as the oldest Russian school.”[9] The Moscovite state witnessed a flowering of icon painting in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The political climate was conducive to such a development, with the loosening of the Tartar yoke, the “reunification of the lands of Rus” and the extraordinary religious revival, under the influence of Hesychasm, led by Saint Sergius of Radonezh in the late fourteenth century.

Saint Sergius of Radonezh was of incalculable importance for Russia. He set in motion “the moral, then political, renaissance of the Russian people.”[10] From this time on, the close link between the fervent life of the monasteries and civil society became a key fact in understanding Russian life and its political, intellectual and artistic manifestations up until the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The spiritual thinking of Dostoyevsky, among others, stems from this. The great theologian, thinker, art theorist and scholar Father Pavel Florenskij said: “The notion of morality, the idea of the State, painting, architecture, literature, Russian education and science, all these great lines of thought converge on our saint [Sergius of Radonezh]. In his person, the Russian people became aware of itself, of its place in history and culture and of its cultural task. It is only then that it earned the right to independence.”[11]

In the orthodox world, the fourteenth century was the time of the controversy between the Hesychasts, partisans of uninterrupted prayer (the Jesus prayer) which led to communion with the Holy Spirit and a vision of the uncreated light that once appeared on Mount Tabor, and the humanists, who upheld the rationalist principle.[12] The triumph of Heyschasm, from St Sergius of Radonezh onwards, had major repercussions for Russia, notably the fact that it did not experience a phenomenon similar to the Western Renaissance. The Heyschast thread is apparent throughout Russian icon painting, dominated by the quest for divine harmony, gentleness, tenderness, and the search for the essential stripped of all psychologism, anecdotal detail and the noise and bustle of time.

The Trinity is another image which dominates Russian iconographic spirituality after St Sergius. The laura founded by the “first teacher of the Russian popular mind” (in the words of the historian Ključevskij) was dedicated to the Trinity and remained the heart of Russia for centuries. Similarly, the most famous icon, one of the highest achievements of all Russian art, is the Trinity of the Old Testament by St Andrei Rublev. Tradition holds that it was painted to the glory of the saintly founder of the monastery in the first half of the fifteenth century, some time after his dormition (1392). It stayed near his tomb for over five hundred years until it was taken to the Tretyakov Gallery in 1929, where it is still admired, and even venerated, by visitors.

Mahmud Zibawi, one of the specialists in icons among the new generation, neatly defined the specific nature of Russian iconography: “Now the ‘Third Rome’,[13] Russia carries art towards the quietness of the heyschia. The abstract wins over the concrete. All dramatisation is swallowed up. Men are ‘earthly angels’. Light, tranquillity, joy, peace and love abound. ‘The new, non composite world’ replaces the fallen world. The image reveals “God’s dwelling place among men.” (Apoc. 21:3).[14]

Unlike the Western religious painting, an icon is not an individual creation, even if each icon painter adds his personal touch, and makes his own choice in the treatment of the subjects and colours from among the canonical archetypal models. An icon can be created only with an ecclesiastical consensus, within the prophetic movement and spiritual experience of the church community.

The apparent uniformity of icons is constantly belied by various traits in the work of icon painters who closely follow the canons in the composition of the subjects, and the handling of colour. Then, as Bruno Duborgel explains: “Depending on whether it is intended for a church or for private use, depending on the material and the style, depending on the religious practices associated with it, etc…, the ‘same’ image (thematically speaking) represents faces and lifestyles that are differentiated by myriad details.”[15] Although, at first glance, icons may seem repetitive and monotonous, close scrutiny soon dissipates this impression. Admittedly, it is unthinkable to invent new iconographic archetypes, based on the individual imagination of a particular artist rather than on the assent of the entire church community. Yet, what diversity we see in isolated figurative elements, apart from the attributes that are obligatory for recognising the icon, and in the subtle colour variations permitted by the symbolism! Often the painter adds a scene from everyday life, inserting it in the mystical world of the main subject. Or else, there is a pronounced taste for ornamentation, floral in particular. Although it started to spread in the seventeenth century, in the work of painters such as Simon Uchakov, the trend towards elaborate decoration and miniaturisation flourished with the Stroganov school.

Russian scholars who have studied Russian icons have pointed out that it represents a cosmos in itself, an order that is inscribed within the cosmos of the temple, which is the earthly prefiguration of a transfigured cosmos. Here there is obviously no place for naturalistic, “living” gestures. The hieratic character and apparent immobility of the icon transports us into another dimension that has nothing to do with everyday life; it is a dimension midway between the human and the divine, between the hereunder and the transcendent. The best Russian icons have managed to bring out the divine nature of humanity, the fusion of the divine and the human, the crest between the invisible and the visible, the hidden and the apparent. The barrier that separates these two worlds inside the church is the iconostasis: “The iconostasis is the border between the visible world and the invisible world […] The iconostasis is the manifestation of saints and angels: firstly the Mother of God and Christ Incarnate – witnesses proclaiming the reality of the world beyond flesh,” writes Father Pavel Florenskij.[16]

The specifically Russian use of the iconostasis developed and was consolidated between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The double Royal Doors in the centre give the celebrant access to the altar; they are covered with icons representing the Annunciation, at the top, and the four Evangelists, while the door posts are covered with a procession of the local saintly bishops and deacons.

The side doors of the iconostasis, one leading to the prothesis (the table on which the Eucharist is prepared) and the other where the liturgical vestments are kept, are traditionally decorated with icons of the archdeacons St Stephen and St Lawrence.

The Eucharist is represented above the Royal Doors (two full-length figures of Christ, giving the bread and wine to the apostles).

The rows of icons above the doors in a Russian iconostasis have been added over the centuries. From Byzantium, there remains the changeless first row with a Deisis in the centre, that is the Mother of God and St John the Precursor (the Baptist) imploring Christ, usually shown as Christ in Majesty; in the fourteenth century, icons of the archangels Michael and Gabriel and those of Peter and Paul were shown on either side of these three central figures.

The row above the Deisis was added in the fourteenth century: the Twelve Great Feasts representing scenes in the life of Christ and Mary.

At the end of the fifteenth century, another row was added above the feasts, the row of the Prophets, from Moses to Christ, arranged around the central icon of the Mother of God of the Sign [Znamenie] (Mary has her hands together in prayer and enfolds Christ Emmanuel in her breast).

Lastly, in the sixteenth century, a row of Patriarchs completed the screen. It presents Old Testament figures from Adam to Moses and usually has a representation of the Trinity in the centre, in the form of the three angelic Travellers who appeared to Abraham. That is the overall pattern, but variations have been introduced at different times and in response to local traditions.

Icon painting in general, and Russian icons in particular, follow the archetypal models set out in the painters’ manuals only in their essential conformity to ecclesiastical canons. A comparison of the works of three famous icon painters of the heyday of Russion icon painting – Theophanes the Greek (late fourteenth century), St Andrei Rublev (early fifteenth century) and Master Denis (Dionisij) (late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) show that their styles are as marked as styles in the history of Western painting. Egon Sendler analyses the differences between the various schools in the treatment of the background: “Green predominates at Pskov; in Novgorod, we find red backgrounds (St Elijah and St George). In Moscow, from the sixteenth century on, backgrounds become quite dark, even brown. In the work of the Stroganov school, there are often dark olive green tones. These colours correspond to the style of icon painting.”[17]

The recognition of Russian icons, as distinct in spirit and style from all the Eastern and Byzantine branches, began in Russia itself in the second half of the nineteenth century and was fully accepted in the twentieth century. The writer Leskov did much to make icons known “as the beginning of Russian painting.”[18] His short story The Sealed Angel (1873) which Bernard Berenson ranked alongside Balzac’s Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu as one of the few literary masterpieces to have treated art in a pertinent way, contains technical details on the art of icon painting and an aesthetic appreciation of icons, based on an analysis of their characteristics. This fostered a return to the roots of this liturgical art, that had been disfigured since the end of the seventeenth century by the “European manner”, that is by Western painting with its search for mimetic sensuality and its overriding concern for “scientific” perspective. Leskov set his story in the milieu of the Old Believers, because they had maintained the purity of the ancient tradition of icon painting until the seventeenth century, when Italian influences coincided with its slow decline into decadence.

The leader of the Old Believer schism (raskol), the archpriest Avvakum (1620-1682), who was opposed to the Moscovite patriarch Nikon and was burnt at the stake by the official church, raged: “God has allowed sinful icon painting to proliferate in Russia […] Emmanuel the Saviour is portrayed with a puffy face, scarlet mouth, curly hair, thick muscles and arms, and the overall look of a German except that they have not stuck a sword in his belt […] Good painters in olden times painted the saints differently: they fined down the face and hands and everything that has to do with the senses, and showed them emaciated by fasting and labour and countless afflictions. Whereas now, you have changed the face of the saints, you paint them as you are yourselves.[19]

Avvakum could well have been thinking of his contemporary, Semen Ushakov, whose icons sometimes had a softer, more carnal and realistic look than earlier works. Ushakov’s icons are closer to Western easel paintings, even though he still used the conventional architectonic structure. He remains the great religious painter of the second half of the seventeenth century, without having all the virtues of a traditional icon painter.

The severity that the vehement archpriest Avvakum demanded of holy images is only one of the aspects of icon painting. A very rich spectrum of iconic expression developed in Russia, ranging from the outward austerity of the monks, whose bodies bore witness to the struggle against evil impulses, to the finesse of the angels’ bodies in Rublev’s work, and included the portrayal of a “national Russian character”, simultaneously physical and spiritual, in many icons of Christ. Andrei Tarkovskij shows this clearly in this film Andrei Rublev, a grandiose fresco which traces the very incarnate and highly spiritual itinerary of the Russian character in the fifteenth century. Contamination by profane painting robbed icon painting of its true meaning, which is theological and philosophical as much as aesthetic.

In our century, the scholar Father Pavel Florenskij has strongly accentuated the opposition between icon painting, such as it is perpetrated in Orthodox countries, and the development of profane and religious painting in Catholic countries (dominated by oil painting) and Protestant countries (dominated by engraving). He sees in the techniques themselves an indication of their “ontological” divergence; on the one side, the panel of living wood, the surface of which was worked for days and months before outlines were drawn and colours applied, with egg yolk and water, then highlights of white lead, gold dust, etc.; and on the other side, oil paints, canvas or paper. Father Florenskij stated: “Iconography is the metaphysics of concrete existence. Although oil painting is better suited for reproducing the sensory data of the world and engraving captures its rational schema, icons bring out the metaphysical essence of what they represent. Although the pictorial and graphic techniques developed in response to cultural needs and appear to be a résumé of the period, the technique used for icons is a response to the need to express the metaphysics of the world. What is portrayed on the icon is in no way fortuitous, either empirically or metaphysically.”[20]

In another short story by Leskov, At the Confines of the World (1875), one of the characters says that, contrary to Western religious art, there is an absence of sensuality in the Russian Orthodox representation of the face of Christ, which “has an expression but no passion […].His features are scarcely suggested but the impression we have is complete. Admittedly, he looks rather like a peasant, but despite that, veneration is due to him.” The bishop, who is defending icons before a group of educated but more or less sceptical listeners, adds, “How did our old masters achieve such charm in this representation? The secret died with them and their despised art. It is clearly impossible to want a simpler form of art; the features are scarcely shown but the impression is complete. He looks a little rough, I know, and you would not invite him into a winter garden to listen to the canaries, but there is no great harm in that.”

Leskov and Dostoyevsky also refuted the new interpretations of Christ in the committed realistic painting of the “Ambulants”. The Ambulants’ religious painting (Repin, Nikolaj Gay, Victor Vasnecov…) has little to do with the tradition of Russion icon painting.

On the other hand, all the innovative Russian artists of the first quarter of the twentieth century (Natalia Goncharova, Larionov, Malevich, Tatlin, Filonov) were influenced by icons. Icons played a primordial role in the aesthetic revolution led by the “Russian avant-garde” in the 1910 and 1920s. It made these painters realise what a formal treasure it represented. Moreover, it drew easel painting towards the icon, that is, towards an independent space with its own construction and rhythm.

Natalya Goncharova caused a scandal at the “Donkey’s Tail” exhibition in Moscow in 1912 with a panel representing The Four Evangelists (Russian Museum, St Petersburg), resembling the icons in the apostolic row on the iconostasis. The censorship committee refused to accept that works on a sacred subject (there was also a work entitled God in the exhibition) could be shown in an exhibition with such a facetious and provocative name. But Natalya Goncharova’s works were not icons; they were paintings on a religious theme. The same applies to another painting by Goncharova, The Ancient of Days, or to her sets for the ballet Liturgy designed (but never made) for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1915. The artist also painted “real” icons, but it must be admitted that few painters in this field have achieved the spiritual perfection of ancient icon painting. In areas where there is no confusion between icon painting and easel painting, icons give decisive clues for understanding easel painting. Goncharova included figurative elements derived from the icon – almond-shaped eyes, a mystic squint, symbolic colours – in a series of paintings on work in the fields, and rustic activities. Larionov gave his Venus Katsape (Nijni-Novgorod Museum) the eyes of an icon. In the work of all the artists in all the currents of the Russian school in the twentieth century, the human face was influenced by iconic faces: portraits are frontal, eyes gaze on another reality, with mystical intensity (sdvig), traversing the visible world without focusing on it, and the overall impression is hieratic and meditative: for example, Self Portrait by Lentulov, Portrait of the Futurist Poet, Vasily Kamiensky by David Bourliuk (1917), Head of an Usbek Boy (1921) or Portrait of Anna Akhmatova (1922) by Petrov-Vodkine (all in the Russian Museum, St Petersburg). Jawlensky was deeply influenced by Russian Byzantine aesthetics in the representation of human faces. He gave them mystic nuances through the use of a sumptuous, refined palette, and achieved a balance between the strong emotional power of the colours and expressive ascesis, which bordered on abstraction in the last meditations of the 1930s.

Jawlensky and Malevich, each with his own pictorial schema and iconological view, took the human face as a metonymic paradigm of the Face of the World throughout their work.

The hieratic aspect of the work of Larionov, Natalya Goncharova, Tatlin and Malevic is derived from the icon as much as from lubok, archaic art, or from the Nabis. A single gesture sums up in the image the myriad gestures repeated over years, or even centuries, in our everyday life or work. Filonov, in his Promethean project of recreating the entire world on the surface of the painting, borrows formal and thematic procedures from icon painting. Thus in the Formula of the Proletariat from Petrograd (early 1920s) in the Russian Museum, he uses the combination of an unusual number of parts of the body (as in the icons of The Mother of God with Three Hands or The Holy Trinity in the shape of three eyes), hieratic poses, and the representation of two feet separately or faces only (as in icons with a metal overlay or riza).

Tatlin was trained in the technique of icon painting and integrated this skill into his paintings from 1911 to 1913: an impression of eternity in faces and poses, coloured light emanating from within the forms, as in The Sailor in the Russian Museum, and the flesh tones of the Nudes painted in 1913. The levkas, a mixture of chalk and animal glue which forms the first luminescent white background on the icon panel, was used in Tatlin’s relief constructions in 1914-15. In the Nudes (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and the Russian Museum, St Petersburg), the contours, especially the curves, are treated with the straight line found in Picasso and Braque’s early cubist work, with the same aim of constructing the picture in an architectural way. In Tatlin’s work, an extra impetus comes from Michelangelo’s imposing Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel, with a leaning towards sculptural forms in the Nude in the Russian Museum. In these paintings, he seems to be already preparing for the synthesis of painting, sculpture and architecture that he achieved the following year, in 1914, by creating the genre of Painted Reliefs, Relief Constructions and Corner Reliefs.

We should not lose sight of the fact that Tatlin started his career as an icon painter. Admittedly, the female nude is hardly a subject for ecclesiastical icons, one of the main principles of which is the elimination of all sensualism, and even sensuality. The nudes of the icons representing St Mary the Egyptian or mad devotees (jurodivye) (such as St Basil the Blessed) are completely asexual (we find the same asexual nudes in Filonov’s work). The sex of Tatlin’s Nude in the Russian Museum is show in a blatantly realistic manner (Gabo’s sculpture Torso later used the same procedure). Yet, these works could not be called erotic, in the way that some European works are, such as the female nudes of Cranach the Elder, Goya or even Manet in which the flesh trembles with the loving touch of the artist’s brush.

Perhaps Father Pavel Florenskij was right to say that oil painting, by its consistency, solidity and carnal nature, its oily, gleaming strokes, is linked to the Catholic culture focused on “phenomenological sensibility”[21] that emerged from the Renaissance. “Although oil painting is better suited to reproducing the sensorial data of the world, and engraving, its rational schema, icons, by contrast, bring out the metaphysical essence of what they represent.”[22]

Nikolaï Punin, in another context, remarked that icon painting “used colour as a pictorial material, as the result of colouring pigments […] Icon painters never understood colour as relationships in the chromatic range, as values. Hence the magnificent traditions of a powerful, healthy art, traditions which have been preserved until quite recently in icon painting schools and decorative workshops.”[23]

The background of Tatlin’s two Nudes is utterly “iconic”. The coloured background on which the outline of the subject is drawn is called the sankir[24] in the technical language of Russian icon painting. Its composition varied according to the period and the school. “Modern sankir,” writes Pavel Florenskij, “is made from burnt Sienna, light ochre, a small amount of Dutch soot, etc.”[25]This layer, which is applied once the wood has been prepared with glue and chalk (levkas), brings out all the beauty of the model through the contour line (opis’) which is coloured to remove all trace of drawing. The artist thus obtains a fusion of the model and the “ontological background” which led Punin to say, with slight exaggeration, that “the influence of the Russian icon on Tatlin is undoubtedly greater than the influence of Cézanne or Picasso.”[26]

In Tatlin’s Nudes, the flesh is carried into a dimension that is other than that of the senses, a purely pictural dimension. The dominant reddish ochre colour is a quintessence of all flesh colour, not an imitation of any one in particular. To quote Punin again: “For Tatlin, colouring means above all studying the pigment; colouring particularly means working the surface picturally. The colour is given objectively, it is a reality and it is an element; the relationship between the colours does not depend on the spatial relationships that exist in reality. Red is red, whatever the amount of light between it and the eye; the ochre on the plank of a palisade and the ochre on the tip of the brush do not differ qualitatively, any difference between them lies only in their chemical composition and the way they are laid down.”[27] Likewise, there is no face in Tatlin’s two Nudes. There is, therefore, no personalisation, no reference to an ephemeral living state. Although we cannot help thinking of the “non-erotic” nudes painted by Picasso and Braque after the Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907-1909), we can also see the conceptual influence of Neo-Primitivism in which nudes (those of Larionov, for instance), even if sexual, have a function other than erotic and are, in any case, beyond eroticism.

The distinctive feature of Tatlin’s iconographic system, which runs throughout his work, is what David Bourliouk, in 1912, called “Roundism.”[28] Roundism opposes rounded surfaces to units formed by straight lines. It is a trait found in Leger, and even in Malevich in 1911-1912. But in Tatlin’s work it is dominant and conditions all the artist’s output up to and including the Monument to the Third International in 1920 and his Letalin in the early 1930s.

This procedure, which consists in putting a full length figure across the entire canvas, dominating, by its stature, all the other figurative elements which are represented in a smaller size, obviously comes from the structure of the “biographical” icons which show a saint surrounded by compartments (klejma) that recount episodes in this life (see, for example, in diametrically opposed styles: Boris Koustodiev’s famous Portrait of Chaliapine and many of Malevich’s post-Suprematist paintings).

The “inverted perspective” taught by icon painting was of capital importance for innovative Russian artists in the twentieth century in their refusal to be bounded only by the “scientific perspective” inherited from the Renaissance.

At the end of the 1920s, Malevich drew on the archetypes of “Christ Acheiropoietus” (Christ the Saviour?) and “Christ Pantocrator” (Christ in Majesty) to create his own icon-paintings. He did not imitate any particular icon. He constructed an image from the elements of icon painting, elements that he thought out afresh and made his own for the needs of his painting. Several of Malevich’s post-Suprematist faces suggest icons, and yet they have no precise model in icon painting as a whole.

The link between icons and the Russian avant-garde was revealed in a stunning, even “exoteric” way during the “Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0 to 10” in Petrograd, at the very end of 1915. Malevich installed his “Suprematism of Painting” like the “beautiful red corner” of Russian orthodox houses, with The Quadrangle (later commonly known as “Black Square on a White Field”) as the central icon, which he called “the icon of our time”. This did not mean that it was an orthodox icon that is an object of liturgical worship, as understood by the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (Nicaea II), a tradition kept intact in the Eastern Church, because an ecclesiastical icon has no meaning without the fusion of the human and the divine in the incarnation of Christ. From this orthodox point of view, Malevich’s icon, which shows only the deus absconditus, is incomplete and smacks of monophysitism[29]

For Malevich, the Suprematist icon had to create a new pictural relationship, going beyond the orthodox icon and easel painting, by developing a new site. It was the expression of an essential image, rid of all figurative clutter, which could be opposed to the imago, the effigy. Its uniqueness was thus restored. Malevich was not only influenced by the formal aspect of icons; he had a brilliant intuition of the philosophical and theological principle of the icon, namely that the real presence is not in the symbolic image represented, but in the relationship between this image and the absent model: “The invisibility of the image is the source of the visibility of the icon.”[30]The Quadrangle oscillates between iconoclasm and iconicity, between the effacement of carnal reality and the manifestation of the only authentic world, the non-objective world (bespredmetnost’). We see a “Hesychast” leaning here, for example, in the Suprematism of Malevich whose great work is called The Non-objective World or Eternal Repose [Mir kak bespredmetnost’ ili večnyj pokoj], which brings to his canvases the silence, minimalist ascesis and harmony of the absence of object.

Through the holy image, the icon painter accomplishes an act which enters into the liturgical life of the Church. The easel painter makes visible the invisible being of the world. A similar aim but a different approach.

Note the extent to which Russian avant-garde art, reputed to be materialistic, was obsessed by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Two events are worth mentioning: in 1912, a discussion in St Petersburg and the publication in German of Kandinsky’s book Concerning the Spiritual in Art,[31]; and in 1922 – the publication in Vitebsk of Malevich’s treatise God is not Dethroned. Art. The Church. The Factory. [Bog ne skinut. Iskusstvo. Cerkov’. Fabrika].

Kandinsky-Malevich: two figureheads of universal art, two pillars of the avant-garde, two founders of Abstraction, who inaugurated and concluded, to put it succinctly, the adventure of the most radical modernity, a modernity which, let us not forget, put a definitive end to over four centuries of ever-recurring codes. Kandinsky and Malevich, who inaugurated and concluded this period by a demonstration of the “spiritual in art, and in painting in particular” and by the statement that “God is not dethroned.”

Although Kandinsky was the first to formulate, in German and Russian, the principle of the independence of artistic creation and the shaping of artistic material, like all Russian artists in the avant-garde, he categorically refused the temptation of art for art’s sake. Art for its own sake appears only in periods when the “soul has been abandoned and stifled by materialistic ideas and unbelief.”[32] In a note added during the revolution to his autobiography Stages [Stupeni], Kandinsky similarly said that such an attitude, that is attached only to the exterior of things, is “atheistic” (bezboânoe).[33]

In 1910, in his article “Form and Content” published in the catalogue of the “Second Salon” of Izdebski in Odessa, Kandinsky proclaimed the advent of the “Era of High Spirituality” (Epoxa Velikoj Duxovnosti) founded on the “Principle of Inner Necessity” (Princip Vnutrennej Neobxodimosti).[34] Art “serves the spiritual”,[35] that is, “serves the divine”.[36] The creative act is a “total mystery”;[37]  the artist is not a frivolous creator, “his work is difficult and often becomes a cross to bear.”[38]

In the 1918 edition of his memoirs, published in German in 1913, by Rückblicke, he adds anti formalist and anti materialist remarks such as: “Now I know that ‘perfection’ is only apparent and ephemeral, and that there cannot be perfect form without perfect content: the mind determines matter, not the contrary […] The great Broom of History which will sweep the inner mind clean of the rubbish of outward appearance will appear, here too, as the impartial final judge.”[39]

It is precisely the relationship between an inner and an outer sphere which was part of the core of Marxist-Leninism, vulgarised through all the media that were possible at the time. Alongside repetitive slogans such as “Workers of the world unite!” and, less often, “Religion is the opium of the people”, we find the famous Marxist truism: “Das gesellschaftliche Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein” [The social being determines the conscious being] which sounded like a proverb in the Russian translation: “Bytie opredeljaet soznanie” [Being determines consciousness]. What Kandinsky says is exactly the opposite: he makes an absolute claim for the primacy of the mind.

In 1922, in his treatise God is not Dethroned, Malevich took a similar stance in relation to the Marxist axiom; certainly the concept of being, (bytie) is more complex in the thinking of the founder of Suprematism, since what is, is nothing, that is, from another point of view, the lack of object, bespredmetnost’. But he concludes that “this ‘nothing’, as being, does not determine my consciousness.”[40] So Malevich, too, took the opposite stance from the Marxist formula. He repeated this position in his article “The Tumbler”, in 1923[41] The tumbler, (in Russian: van’ka-vstan’ka) is a pot-bellied figurine from the far east, sitting cross-legged on a weighted half-sphere which brings it back to an upright position whenever it is pushed. The tumbler is God – constantly rejected, regularly dethroned, and yet always rocking back to an upright position, and never dethroned. The article “The Tumbler” is a highly ironic response to the attacks of the orthodox Marxist Issakov who had rather heavy-handedly denounced any religious deviation in avant-garde art, and had included in that category “the cock-and-bull story of God is not Dethroned“.

This diatribe was later followed by a commentary by the Marxist theorist of Constructivist-Productivist art, Boris Arvatov, who, among other compliments, called Malevich a “degenerate”!

In any case, Malevich retorted in his article “The Tumbler” by presenting the problem of the image in a very acute way. At its negative pole, the image feeds on false representations, those of God or anthropomorphic gods: “All you Socialist revolutionaries are, without exception, in love with antique styles, just as women are in love with the hams of young Apollos. Look at the monuments to the proletariat: no sign of any proletarian, just Apollo wearing Minerva’s helmet.”

Taking up the Marxist formula that Issakov had thrown at him, Malevich remarked ironically: “Does consciousness determine existence or existence, consciousness? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does existence exist outside consciousness or consciousness outside existence? what you think, Comrade Issakov?”

So, at this stage, Malevich claimed, despite what Issakov and those who fought against “God in art” might think, that “God” is not dethroned, because he takes the shape of the idols and is everywhere to be seen in the form of the revolutionary substitutes on which art feeds – so many fake icons.

But nor is God dethroned in his apophatic site which is that of “eternal repose.”[42] It is from this impregnable site that every real image springs, that is to say, the true icon.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The discussion that has arisen in post-Soviet Russia focuses on the way to present and look at icons today. Starting from the obvious fact that an icon is not a work of art like any other, that it takes on its full meaning only in the ecclesiastical symphony-cum-polyphony, a number of Orthodox believers would like to see the most venerated images restored to the churches from which they were forcibly removed. Today, the remarkable Vladimir Mother of God icon [Vladimirskaja Boâ’ja Mater’] is located in the church alongside the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and people go into the museum to pray before the Trinity of the Old Testament by Andrei Rublev. The Monk Gregory, an icon painter who died in France in 1969, stated that the presence of icons in the profane world has a sense: “In that way, the icons that are prayed to (molennye), whose purpose is to serve prayer, accomplish their saving action in the world, and can leave the church and dwell in a museum or in an art collection or join in exhibitions. Such conditions, apparently incongruous, are not fortuitous or absurd.”[43]

In fact, throughout the twentieth century, Russian icons have been a catalyst for the utopian and prophetic movement towards the metamorphosis and transfiguration of painting, and of life itself, into what Bruno Duborgel calls “the iconophile obsession with approaching an experience of the non-figurable,”[44] in reaction to “iconoclasm by an excess of naturalistic images.” In a handsome recent work, Bruno Duborgel sets up a dialogue between icons and Malevich’s art, and more broadly with easel painting in general, seeking to show a “homology which at once preserves the distance between them, guarantees their differences and reveals that they nevertheless regard one another, and even interact at this elevated level,”[45] proving their full contemporaneity.

[1] Eugene Trubetzkoy, Trois études sur l’icône, Paris, Ymca-Press, 1986, p. 57-58

[2] K. Malévitch, “Autobiographie”, in: Actes du Colloque International tenu au Centre Georges Pompidou, Lausanne, L’Âge d’Homme, 1979, p. 164

[3] Louis Réau wrote: “Russian art is interesting much less for what it borrowed than for what it adapted or created. It must not be viewed from the outside, but studied in itself as an independent organism, subjected to the laws of evolution, constantly modified by the action of its social and historical milieu and finally modelling itself on that milieu.”  L’Art russe des origines à Pierre le Grand, Paris, Henri Laurens, 1921, p. 5

[4] The Russian artists who worked in Paris have helped maintain this idea of a lack of original painting in their native country. In the second half of the twentieth century, it was said that Russian icons were just a branch of the Byzantine tree, with only slight differences. I remember a paper given by the famous Soviet art historian Mikhaïl Alpatov, during a seminar run by Pierre Francastel at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, in which, referring to the problem of Byzantine art and Russian art in icon painting, he stated that anyone who did not see in them two modes of expression that were identical yet dissimilar made him think of someone who did not distinguish Bach from Mozart…

As late as 1956, André Salmon wrote: “It must be said that Russia has never had other plastic artists other than the craftsmen who painted icons, assiduously following the Byzantine tradition, and the marvellous painters of store signs, the baker with his golden loaves, the caterer with his dishes of cacha, his bottle of vodka and his napkin folded into an archimandrite’s hat, in a place where there was no napkin at all; and the printers of popular images inspired by national folklore, instinctive little masterpieces. And the only one who ever managed to use them for major art, all at once or turn about, was the innocent and crafty Chagal [sic], who was a Jew.

At twenty, in St Petersburg, when an early exile left me in ignorance of almost all French painting since Courbet, I did not need to be an expert to be astonished by the Russians’ total lack of pictural brilliance” André Salmon, Souvenirs sans fin. Deuxième époque (1908-1920), Paris, Gallimard, 1956, p. 228

[5]  See Maxime Kovalevsky, “Chant liturgique – icône sonore”, in: F. Boespflug, N. Lossky, Nicée II 787-1987. Douze siècles d’images religieuses, Paris, Cerf, 1987, p. 393-396

[6] V.V. Kandinsky, Stupeni [Stages], Moscow, 1918, p.27 (republished by Boris Sokolov, in: V.V. Kandinsky, Izdannye trudy po teorii iskusstva [Selected Writings on the Theory of Art], Moscow, “Gileja”, 2001, p. 279

[7] Moine Grégoire (G.I. Krug), Carnets d’un peintre d’icônes, Lausanne, L’Âge d’Homme, 1994, p. 37

[8] Cf. Valentine Marcadé, Art d’Ukraine, Lausanne, L’Âge d’Homme, 1990, p. 25-36

[9] Fedor Buslaev, O russkoj ikone [On Russian Icons] [1866], Moscow, 1997, p. 5

[10] V.O. Ključevskij, “Blagodetel’nyj vospitatel’ russkogo narodnogo duxa” [The gracious teacher of the Russian popular mind] [1892], in: Prepodobnyj Sergij Radonežskij , Berlin, 1922, p. 40

[11] Father Paul Florensky, La perspective inversée, suivi de l’Iconostase, Lausanne, L’Âge d’Homme, 1992, p. 33

[12] In Greek, hesychia means “repose”. About 1340, there was a clash between St Gregory Palamas, who developed a theory of divine light, which cannot be perceived in its essence, but only through the uncreated energy which is an emanation of it (the divine light on Mount Tabor), and Barlaam the Calabrian, who particularly condemned the practice of mystical prayer, (the Jesus prayer) among the monks of Mount Athos and fought for a more rational concept of the faith. See Jean Meyendorff, Saint Grégoire Palamas et la mystique orthodoxe, Paris, 1976

[13] Under the grand prince of Moscow Vasily III, about 1515, Philotheus, a monk from Pskov, developed the thesis of “Moscow – Third Rome“, since the “Second Rome“, that is, Constantinople, no longer existed as such after its capture by the Turks in 1453.

[14] Mahmud Zibawi, L’icône. Sens et histoire, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1993, p. 15

[15]  Bruno Duborgel, L’icône, art et pensée de l’invisible, Saint-Etienne, 1991, p. 37

[16]  Father Paul Florensky, op.cit., p. 140

[17] Egon Sendler S.J., L’icône, image de l’invisible, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1981, p. 204

[18] N. Leskov “Blagorazumnyj razbojnik (ikonografičeskaja fantazija)” [The Good Thief – An Iconographic Fantasy], Xudožestvennyj Žurnal, March 1883

[19] Cited by Eugene Trubetzkoy, op.cit., p. 24-25. For more about Avvakum and his period, see Pierre Pascal’s classic work, Avvakoum et les débuts du raskol, Paris-La Haye, Mouton et C°, 1963

[20] Father Paul Florensky, op.cit., p. 175

[21] Father Paul Florensky, op.cit., p. 167 ff.

[22] Ibidem, p. 175

[23]  N. Punin, Tatlin (Protiv kubizma) [Tatlin-Against Cubism], St Petersburg, 1921

[24] See Father Paul Florensky, op.cit., p. 193sq.

[25]  Ibidem, p. 194

[26] N. Punin, “Obzor tečenij v iskusstve Peterburga” [Panorama of Artistic Trends in St Petersburg], Russkoe iskusstvo, 1923, N°1; see, too: N. Khardjiev, “Appunti”, Paragone(Arte), May 1965, vol. 16, N° 183

[27] N. Punin, op.cit., ibidem

[28] D. Burljuk, “Kubizm” [Cubisme], in Poščečina obščestvennomu vkusu [A Smack in the Face for Public Taste], Moscow, 1913

[29]  On ecclesiastical icons, see: Leonid Ouspensky, Vladimir Lossky, Der Sinn der Ikonen, Berne, 1952 [published in English as The Meaning of Icons, Olton 1952, then in Boston,1969, and lastly in a version revised by Léonide Ouspensky, in New York, 1982, 1983 and 1989]; L. Ouspensky, La Théologie de l’icône dans l’Ěglise Orthodoxe, Paris, 1982 [Russian edition, Moscow,1989]; F.Boespflug, N. Lossky, Nicée II (787-1987). Douze siècles d’images religieuses, Paris, 1987; Nicéphore, Discours contre les iconoclastes, Paris, 1989 (translation and presentation by Marie-José Mondzain-Baudinet); Ephrem Yon, Philippe Sers, Les Saintes Icônes. Une nouvelle interprétation, Paris, 1990; Mahmoud Zibawi, L’icône. Sens et histoire, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1993; Mahmoud Zibawi, Orients chrétiens, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1995; Maria Antonietta Crippa, Mahmoud Zibawi, L’art paléochrétien, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1998

[30] Marie José Mondzain-Baudinet, Preface to Nicéphore, Discours contre les iconoclastes, op.cit., p. 25; See too: Marie José Monzain, L’image naturelle, Paris, Le Nouveau Commerce, 1995, and Image, icône, économie. Les sources byzantines de l’imaginaire contemporain, Paris, Seuil, 1996

[31] The basic version of Kandinsky’s founding text was written in German in 1909 under the title of Über das Geistige in der Kunst; Kandinsky wrote a Russian version in 1910  O duxovnom v iskusstve (not published until 1914 in Petrograd); the following versions, in German (1912) and Russia (1913, unpublished), contain additions.

[32] V.V. Kandinskij, “O duxovnom v iskusstve (Živopis’)”, in: Trudy vserossijskogo  s“ezda xudožnnikov v Petrograde, Petrograd, 1914, p. 71; this text has just been republished for the first time, by N. Podzemskaya, in: V.V. Kandinskij, Izbrannye trudy po teorii iskusstva, t.I, Moscow, “Gileja”, 2001

[33] V.V. Kandinskij, Stupeni, Moscow, 1918, p. 36; this text has just been republished in Moscow, by B. Sokolov, in volume I of the publication mentioned in the note above.

[34] V.V. Kandinskij, “Soderžanie i forma”, in: 1910-1911. Salon 2. Meždunarodnaja xudožestvennaja vystavka, Odessa, 1910, p. 16; this text has also been republished in Moscow in volume I mentioned above.

[35] V.V. Kandinskij, “O duxovnom v iskusstve”, op.cit., p. 48

[36]  Ibidem, p. 49

[37]  Ibidem, p. 70

[38]  Ibidem, p. 48, 72

[39] V.V. Kandinskij, Stupeni, op.cit., p. 36

[40]  See the pertinent comment on this sentence by Emmanuel Martineau, in the preface to K. Malevich, Écrits II. Le Miroir suprématiste, Lausanne, L’Âge d’Homme, 1993, p. 13-15

[41] K. Malevich, “Van’ka-Vstan ‘ka”, Žizn’ iskusstva, 1923, N° 14

[42] See: Jiri Padrta, “Le monde en tant que sans-objet ou le repos éternel. Essai sur la précarité d’un projet humaniste”, in: Malévitch. Cahier I, L’Age d’Homme, Lausanne, 1983, p. 133 ff., and Emmanuel Martineau, op.cit., p. 10-11

[43] Moine Grégoire (G.I. Krug), Carnets d’un peintre d’icônes, Lausanne, L’Âge d’Homme, 1994, p. 44; in Russian: Inok Grigorij Krug, Mysli ob ikone, Paris, Ymca-Press, 1978, p. 22

[44] Bruno Duborgel, Malévitch. La question de l’icône, Université de Saint-Etienne, 1997, p. 35

[45] Ibidem, p. 9

43 Moine Grégoire (G.I. Krug), Carnets d’un peintre d’icônes, Lausanne , L’Âge d’Homme, 1994, p. 44 ; en russe : Inok Grigorij Krug, Mysli ob ikone, Paris, Ymca-Press, 1978, p. 22

44 Bruno Duborgel, Malévitch. La question de l’icône, Université de Saint-Etienne, 1997, p. 35

45 Ibidem, p. 9

Fundación Proa (Buenos Aires), novembre 2016

La aventura pictórica y filosófica de Kasimir Malévich

Jean-Claude Marcadé

Kasimir Malévich nació en Kiev, Ucrania, en el seno de una familia mitad polaca mitad ucraniana, y fue bautizado en la iglesia católica de la ciudad[1]. El artista destacó en sus escritos autobiográficos la influencia indeleble que la naturaleza ucraniana[2] había ejercido sobre él. El arte naif que empleaban los campesinos para decorar las khaty (casas populares de Ucrania), los pyssanky (huevos pintados) y los iconos, considerados «la forma superior del arte campesino», constituyó su primera academia «silvestre»[3].

Entre 1896 y 1905 el pintor en ciernes reside en Kursk, Rusia, donde, con un grupo de artistas aficionados, dedica sus ratos de ocio a una serie de estudios que, según sus propias palabras, evolucionan desde el realismo inspirado en el pintor de género ucraniano Mykola Pymonenko (1862-1912) y sobre todo en Repin (1844-1930), el artista más importante del movimiento realista comprometido de los Ambulantes, hacia el impresionismo. Este período de formación, que se prolongará hasta 1910, nos es prácticamente desconocido. Sólo sabemos que a partir de 1905 Malévich se instala definitivamente en Moscú, donde se inicia profesionalmente en la técnica pictórica en el taller de Fiodor Roehrberg, pintor originario de Kiev. Se entrega entonces al impresionismo y pinta directamente de la naturaleza (como Larionov en aquellos años[4]): «Me gustaba mucho la naturaleza en primavera, en abril y a principios de mayo. Ya no estudiaba y trabajaba en un manzanar, cerca de una casita que había alquilado por doce rublos al mes. Este jardín era mi verdadero taller»[5]. Malévich es contundente: el impresionismo le enseñó que «lo esencial no era pintar fenómenos u objetos al detalle, sino que residía en una factura (o una textura) pictórica pura, y en la única relación de toda mi energía con los fenómenos, con la cualidad pictórica que poseían. Toda mi obra se asemejaba a la de un tejedor que elabora una tela con una textura sorprendentemente pura»[6].

Malévich permanecerá fiel a esta base impresionista a lo largo de toda su carrera, incluso en los estilos en principio más alejados, surgidos de las lecciones del arte geométrico de Cézanne entre 1912 y 1914 (gusto por los degradados, por las luminiscencias en contraste con zonas sombreadas), incluso cuando aborde el suprematismo, donde la textura blanca de los fondos está animada por los surcos ondulados que traza el pincel en su vaivén.

Uno de los escasos ejemplos de arte impresionista de esta época inicial, que Malévich se llevó consigo a Berlín, es La mujer del periódico (hoy en el Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam[7]), pintado hacia 1905-1906 cuando frecuentaba el taller de Roehrberg, su primera verdadera escuela de aprendizaje. Tenía veintiséis años. El periódico que el personaje femenino tiene sobre sus rodillas lleva escrito en cirílico el título «Kursk» (que corresponde sin duda a las primeras letras del periódico Kurskiyé Gubernskiyé Viédomosti [Noticias del Gobierno de Kursk]). El pintor contó que la ciudad de Kursk, adonde había llegado en 1896 procedente de Kiev para trabajar en una compañía ferroviaria, ocupaba un «lugar destacado» en su biografía[8]. Pinta como aficionado fuera de las horas de trabajo, crea un círculo artístico en el que se integran compatriotas ucranianos como los pintores Loboda o Kvachevski («Ambos éramos ucranianos»[9]). No queda rastro alguno de esta época en la que afirmaba hallarse bajo la influencia del realismo de los Ambulantes Chichkin y Repin. En 1906 le influye sobre todo Monet, cuya obra pudo contemplar en la Colección Shchukin en Moscú (en un texto sobrecogedor relata la impresión que le produjeron las dos Catedrales de Rouen [mañana y atardecer]). Para él, Monet «hace crecer la pintura que se alza sobre los muros de la catedral. No eran las luces y las sombras su principal objetivo, sino la pintura que se encontraba en la sombra y en la luz»[10]. Si esta influencia es particularmente sorprendente en La iglesia de la Colección Costakis (Museo de Arte Moderno de Tesalónica[11]) o en los dos Paisajes del Museo Estatal Ruso de San Petersburgo[12], en La mujer del periódico de Amsterdam ésta se conjuga en connivencia con la poética de Bonnard. Los toques impresionistas juegan con las unidades coloreadas del mantel blanco, de la blusa y la falda rosa y malva del personaje y del objeto que pende del árbol con amplias pinceladas que dan lugar a relaciones cromáticas audaces («los súbitos estallidos de un color franco» en Bonnard): «Algo a lo que llamábamos luz se ha convertido en algo tan estanco como cualquier material»[13].

A estos años de tanteo (1905-1909) pertenece una serie de dibujos y gouaches, muy parecidos a bocetos de taller (retratos, paisajes, viñetas decorativas), que oscilan entre el realismo, la caricatura, el primitivismo, el simbolismo y el Art Nouveau. Hasta 1910-1911 Malévich se nutre de una inspiración simbolista, tomando prestados los temas literarios y las formas estilizadas comunes a los artistas de Mir Iskusstva (El Mundo del Arte) de San Petersburgo o de la Rosa Azul de Moscú. Expone en varias ocasiones (1907, 1908, 1909) en la Asociación de Artistas de Moscú, donde coincide con figuras de vanguardia como Kandinsky, Larionov, Burliuk o Morgunov.

Sabemos que tras su participación en el Primer Salón de Moscú, en 1911[14], no volvió a exhibir en vida sus obras de estilo simbolista o «moderno» (en Rusia se denomina «estilo moderno» a lo que en otros lugares se conoce como Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, Secessionstil o Modern Style [N. T.: modernismo en España]). Por aquel entonces, las había agrupado en tres ciclos: «Serie de los amarillos», «Serie de los blancos» y «Serie de los rojos». Léase, tres variantes estilísticas del simbolismo ruso entre 1900 y 1910: un estilo que mezclaba la estética nabi con las de Carrière, Whistler, Vrubel y Borisov-Musatov[15]; un estilo francamente «moderno», surgido sobre todo del movimiento peterburgués del Mundo del Arte, y un estilo primitivista-fauvista.

La primera exhibición documentada de obras simbolistas del artista tuvo lugar en la XVIª Exposición de la Asociación de Artistas de Moscú, en 1908. Se trata de las aguadas El triunfo del cielo y La oración (ambas en el Museo Estatal Ruso), caracterizadas por la tendencia a la monocromía amarilla. Si por su espíritu místico-esotérico se las puede relacionar con las obras de los pintores de la Rosa Azul que destacan en la escena artística moscovita entre 1904 y 1907, la elección del fondo amarillo-oro constituye un desafío a este movimiento y expresa la voluntad de distanciarse de él. Por otra parte, no se trata de una elección inocente, como se descubre en el Primer Salón de Moscú, en 1911, en el que el artista polaco-ucraniano-ruso pone punto final a su aventura simbolista, de la que ya se ha alejado con sus envíos al primer Valet de Carreau de 1910-1911 en Moscú y a la Unión de la Juventud de San Petersburgo en los meses de abril y mayo de 1911, en los que ya despunta un poderoso estilo primitivista fauvista. Es en el Primer Salón de Moscú donde expone las series amarillas, blancas y rojas antes mencionadas.

Lo realmente importante aquí es el «movimiento del color», que tiene su origen en el impresionismo, pero que se amolda a estructuras estilísticas distintas en cada una de las tres series. En la «Serie de los amarillos», nos hallamos ante el estilo simbolista original, predominante en los pintores de la Rosa Azul. En la «Serie de los blancos», nos las vemos con el Art Nouveau que domina en el Mundo del Arte. Finalmente, en la «Serie de los rojos», encontramos un estilo primitivista fauvista en el que está presente una iconografía de tipo simbolista.

La «Serie de los amarillos» es un buen ejemplo de estilo simbolista. El elemento vegetal se halla omnipresente en todas las obras que la integran. Ya no nos encontramos ante una naturaleza de tipo impresionista (la reproducción directa), sino ante un paisaje imaginario, una síntesis simbólica de una vegetación universal, de un crecimiento universal cuyo ritmo coloreado y formal revela la pintura; la tradición de los nabis se replantea a la luz de la estética del Extremo Oriente. Por otro lado, este color amarillo dominante que explica por qué Malévich no fue aceptado en la Rosa Azul, este color que tiene una fuerte consonancia budista, es también un analogon (equivalente) pictórico de la luz solar, pero de la luz de un sol interior que irradia todo el espacio, que surge de todas partes, sin generar claroscuros, sin proyectar sombras. El amarillo se diluye en dorados, en enrojecimientos. Se trata de un espacio icónico, pero no en el sentido de un icono ortodoxo litúrgico, sino más bien en el de un lienzo al cual le habría sido otorgado el estatuto de imagen esencial, no mimética, de la realidad sensible, que alcanzara el corazón de la realidad mundana, puesto que se alimentaría de las raíces de las apariencias. Conjugar elementos plásticos o conceptuales provenientes de iconos y del arte del Extremo Oriente constituye una síntesis profundamente original con respecto a la tradición francesa, y en particular con la síntesis cristiano-budista lograda por Odilon Redon. Los Cristos de Redon tienen el rostro pensativo, recuerdan al de Buda (suponen un precedente de las magníficas Santas Faces de Cristo de Jawlensky). Se ha destacado a menudo este elemento extremo oriental, sobre todo japonizante, en las obras de Redon, y es una de las filiaciones que habría que buscar en la «Serie de los amarillos» de Malévich. Igualmente, la envoltura floral, los personajes inmersos en una vegetación matizada y lujuriante, forma parte de la herencia de Redon, cuya deuda con Rodolfo Bresdin es bien conocida (Théodore de Banville señaló el carácter cósmico del paso de la planta al mundo animal en la obra de Bresdin: «La transición entre la vida vegetal y la animal se nos escapa al igual que ocurre entre la vida animal y la divina».

Hay que puntualizar que Malévich procedía de una cultura pictórica marcada, entre los siglos xix y xx, por Vrubel. En las obras de Vrubel, los personajes despuntan, emanan de parterres floridos. Malévich lleva el panteísmo, ya muy presente en Redon o en Vrubel, a su máxima intensidad. Esta fusión de seres y del florecimiento del mundo se manifiesta particularmente en Estudio para un fresco, que representa un «bosque sagrado»[16] y que debió de ser una de las tres obras expuestas en 1911 en la «Serie de amarillos» con el título de «Santos». En mi opinión, las otras dos obras a las que podría aplicarse esta denominación son El triunfo del cielo[17] y Autorretrato[18].

El «bosque sagrado» está en la línea de Redon en lo que respecta al estilo, y en la de los nabis, sobre todo de Maurice Denis, en lo relativo al espíritu. Esta aguada representa una patética escena semejante a la de los discípulos de Cristo en los «descendimientos». El cuerpo inerte emerge de la floración y su cabeza se pierde entre los troncos esbeltos de árboles no reales, «simbólicos». Recordemos lo que Mariana Werefkin (Marianna Vladimirovna Veriovkina) escribió a principios de la década de 1910: «El objeto “árbol” no existe, pero la palabra “árbol” sí existe y a ella va unido el concepto de algo que no existe […]. Hay un árbol, y otro, y otro, pero el árbol en sí no existe. Existe empero la palabra “árbol”, y es el símbolo de todo lo que se asemeja a un árbol»[19].

El triunfo del cielo es un ejemplo paradigmático del panteísmo pictórico de Malévich, en general próximo al de los simbolistas rusos. Una divinidad —Buda y Cristo a la vez— forma un árbol-cosmos; la divinidad que abarca el cosmos transfigurado es sustituida en la iconografía plástica ucraniana por el tema del Árbol de la Vida como elemento central del cuadro (por ejemplo en Árbol y dríadas, de la antigua Colección N. Manoukian) y por la Virgen de la Misericordiaque acoge a la humanidad bajo su manto, un tema también presente en los iconos ucranianos. Se observa también el sincretismo de la sinaxis (reunión) de los santos en los iconos ortodoxos con el tema de los mil budas, por ejemplo en el arte de Extremo Oriente, caracterizado por el ritmo de los nimbos. En cuanto al Autorretrato, muestra al personaje emergiendo de ramificaciones arborescentes y de la sinaxis de los «elegidos». Veremos que en la «Serie de los rojos» serán las escenas eróticas las que rondarán al pintor. Recolección de fruta, en la antigua Colección Khardjiev, parece un «bosque sagrado». Exhibida en la XVIIª Exposición de la Asociación de Artistas de Moscú, en 1909-1910, su iconografía nos permite descubrir una tendencia filosófico-esotérica en la línea de los nabis, sobre todo de Maurice Denis, quien, precisamente en 1909 se había trasladado a Moscú para instalar los paneles decorativos de La historia de Psique en el palacete del mecenas y coleccionista Morozov; la realización pictórica de la obra, por el contrario, revela un trazo primitivista, una monocromía y una poética floral en la línea de Redon. La oración está mucho más imbuida del «estilo moderno», en particular las ondas del pelo de la figura, que actúan como una metonimia de la cabeza sumida en la meditación; pero la tendencia a la monocromía, el espíritu panteísta de la unión del hombre inmerso en la naturaleza se nutren del mismo simbolismo que las demás obras de la “Serie de los amarillos”.

En la «Serie de los blancos», por el contrario, nos hallamos ante una estética más próxima al movimiento peterburgués del Mundo del Arte, como, por ejemplo, en Bodas y Sociedad pornográfica con sombreros de copa (Museo Ludwig de Colonia), Descanso. Sociedad con sombreros de copa (Museo Estatal Ruso), Ciudad pequeña (Museo Nacional Radishchev de Saratov) o Sociedad en un parque[20] (antigua Colección Khardjiev). El estilo de la «Serie de los blancos» recuerda a la estética gráfica «secesionista» del Mundo del Arte. Los temas, tratados con ironía y sarcasmo, proceden de la vida contemporánea e incluyen situaciones triviales (el hombre que orina en Descanso. Sociedad con sombreros de copa), próximas a las del «arte de izquierdas» ruso que empezaba a mostrarse por aquellas fechas en exposiciones como «Stephanos-Vienok-La Guirlande», de 1907-1908.

El Árbol preside el centro de la acuarela inacabada Sociedad pornográfica con sombrero de copa; se yergue a la orilla del «río de la vida» (el «paso del agua» como en el Jardín de las delicias del Bosco), tal como lo describe el último capítulo del Apocalipsis. El misticismo de Malévich se inscribe en la atmósfera general de la Rusia de la época, en la que imperan las ansias religiosas, teosóficas, antroposóficas, esotéricas, incluso ocultistas.

Obras cargadas de simbolismo, pero que apuntan claramente hacia el primitivismo fauvista, conforman la «Serie de los rojos». Entre los amarillos y los rojos, una obra de transición, Epitaphios, en la Galería Tretiakov. Se trata de un Santo Sudario, en eslavo Plachtchanitsa, una tabla pintada que representa el cuerpo de Cristo, que se expone y es venerada en la Iglesia ortodoxa el Viernes Santo. Malévich transforma el tema tradicional en una imagen más bien próxima a modelos budistas, si bien la iconografía se inspira directamente en los trabajos de Vrubel para la iglesia de San Cirilo de Alejandría, en Kiev, en los años 1880. Una vez más destaca la floración universal que envuelve el cuerpo.

El rojo domina el gouache Árboles y dríadas. Nos hallamos en este caso ante una síntesis de la tradición griega, la tradición bíblica del Árbol de la Vida y la del «árbol de las iluminaciones» característica de Extremo Oriente. El misterio del cosmos se manifiesta en la unión de los principios masculino (el árbol-falo) y femenino (la matriz en el centro del árbol). Al igual que en el arte budista, lo sagrado es al mismo tiempo místico y está impregnado de erotismo catártico. El contraste entre el rojo y el verde es típico del arte tibetano antiguo.

El Autorretrato de la Galería Tretiakov está impregnado del mundo nabi. Mientras que el mundo de la santidad rondaba el Autorretrato de la «Serie de los amarillos», aquí el artista aparece rodeado por un enjambre de mujeres desnudas, en diversas posturas. Su mirada, como ocurre casi siempre en sus retratos, no se dirige hacia ningún lugar concreto; aquejado por un leve estrabismo, el artista mira hacia el interior.

Así pues, Malévich pagó su tributo al simbolismo más puro durante tres o cuatro años; y no se trata de un «error de juventud», pese a que el fundador del suprematismo será un enconado detractor del simbolismo ilusionista y descriptivo. Toda la obra de Malévich bebe de las fuentes si no del simbolismo (entre 1907 y 1911) cuando menos de lo simbólico, entendido como revelación de la pura sensación del mundo a través de los colores en su quintaesencia en el sin-objeto suprematista e incluso en el retorno post-suprematista a la figura.

A partir de 1910 la obra de Malévich experimenta un cambio. El artista participa en la primera exposición en Moscú del Valet de Carreau (Sota de Diamantes), un círculo de pintores divididos entre el cezannismo de Piotr Konchalovski, Ilia Machkov o Aristark Lentulov, y el neoprimitivismo de Mijail Larionov y de Natalia Goncharova, que pretendía recuperar las fuentes del arte popular nacional[21]. Malévich trabaja por aquel entonces en grandes gouaches que denotan la influencia de Goncharova, pero también la de Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso y Braque (había tenido la oportunidad de contemplar obras de los pintores vanguardistas franceses en los salones del Toisón de Oro, en Moscú, en 1908 y 1909, y en las colecciones de los marchantes moscovitas Iván Morozov y Serguei Shchukin[22]).

El conjunto, que incluye los dos Autorretratos del Museo Estatal Ruso y de la Galería Tretiakov, y el ciclo del Stedelijk Museum de Amsterdam —Bañista, Los enceradores de suelos, El pedicuro (en los baños), Hombre llevando un saco, Jardinero, En el bulevar—, es único por su ejecución y su gama de colores. Guy Habasque fue uno de los primeros críticos que valoró estos gouaches en su justa medida y demostró que, a partir de este momento, el artista se había liberado de todas sus dudas anteriores: «El tema ahora es sólo un pretexto, un punto de partida, el soporte de una composición ante todo plástica. Utiliza el color de manera totalmente instintiva y con una fuerza brutal e incluso casi agresiva. Los colores dominantes son cálidos, al parecer con una preferencia por el rojo, por los tonos intensos y saturados. El dibujo, voluntariamente esquemático y muy marcado, sigue siendo realista, pero adopta un rol esencialmente rítmico. No hay líneas rectas, en efecto, sino amplias curvas que se oponen asimétricamente y recorren el cuadro en toda su extensión»[23].

No insistiré en las filiaciones «cezannianas», «matissianas» y «picassianas», transformadas por la estructura primitivista de las que ya he hablado en otras ocasiones.[24] Como es sabido, el neoprimitivismo ruso se dio a conocer en el III Salón de del Toisón de Oro en Moscú, en 1909[25], siendo Larionov y Goncharova sus principales artífices. El neoprimitivismo suponía el renacimiento de la frescura naif, el dinamismo y el vigoroso esquematismo de los grabados populares rusos (lubok), de los rótulos, de los moldes de pastelería, de los juguetes, etc. La desintelectualización de la pintura se conjugaba con una desintelectualización de los temas. En 1911-1912, Malevitch sigue la estela de Larionov y sobre todo de Goncharova, de la que toma prestados los amplios contornos y los colores lisos a lo Gauguin, la rudeza de las líneas y el hieratismo bizantino, en particular en el dibujo de los ojos. Los había seguido en su escisión de los «cezannianos» rusos del Valet de Carreau en 1911 y participará enteramente en la aventura del neoprimitivismo. Con el grupo de Larionov expone sus gouaches en la Unión de la Juventud de San Petersburgo, en abril de 1911, y en el Oslinyi Khvost (Rabo del Asno) en Moscú, en marzo de 1912[26].

Si bien Larionov fue el detonante, no sólo en el caso de Malévich sino en todos los innovadores rusos de los años 1910, parece que fue Goncharova quien más influyó en el autor de Portadora de cubos (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) para encontrar su propio camino. Nikolai Khardjiev transcribe: «Natalia Goncharova y yo trabajábamos sobre todo en el ámbito de la vida social. Cada una de nuestras obras tenía un contenido: nuestros personajes, pese a estar representados a la manera primitivista, respondían a un ámbito social. Ahí radicaba nuestro desacuerdo de principios con el Valet de Carreau, cuya línea se remontaba a Cézanne»[27].

Las obras de Malévich eran tan originales y tan diferentes de las de los demás neoprimitivistas rusos, y esta diferencia se incrementó tanto a medida que la producción del artista se enriquecía con nuevas propuestas plásticas, que la ruptura con el grupo de Larionov se produjo al año siguiente, en 1913. En una recopilación de textos editada por este último Varsanofii Parkine (seudónimo del poeta Valentin Parnakh) escribe: «K. Malévich cubre una pared con amplias acuarelas de colores chillones, embadurnados, de figuras insípidas, carentes de expresión, con este estilo polaco sin valor tan abundante en las obras de Vrubel».[28]

En realidad, los charcos coloreados que «embadurnan» las superficies pintadas constituyen lo pictórico como tal: las «manchas de color se mueven» y «crecen infinitamente»[29] formando «avalanchas de tonos» surgidos de la mente en ebullición del pintor[30].

Entre 1911 y 1913 Malévich elabora sin duda el ciclo más impresionante que jamás se haya dedicado a la vida campesina; en él ocupa un lugar privilegiado la representación popular de la vida religiosa ortodoxa[31]. El artista aúna el esquematismo y el laconismo naïf del neoprimitivismo con los principios del precubismo «cezanniano» (tratamiento estereométrico de las formas y construcción no ilusionista del espacio). La siega del centeno, El leñador, Rostro de una joven campesina (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), Mañana en el campo después de la tormenta (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Nueva York) son el resultado de la puesta en práctica del célebre precepto de Cézanne en la carta que envía a Emile Bernard el 15 de abril de 1904: «Reproducir la naturaleza mediante el cilindro, la esfera, el cono, todo dispuesto en perspectiva […]. Para nosotros, los hombres, la naturaleza es más profunda que en su superficie». Sabemos la fortuna que esta declaración tuvo entre los pintores cubistas. Podemos decir que la interpretación que de ella hace Malévich es totalmente original respecto a la de los pintores franceses con la que algunos críticos la han querido comparar (las obras de Picasso y de Braque de 1907-1909 o los Desnudos en el bosque[o Leñadores] [1910] de Léger). Lo que, en 1911, Louis Vauxcelles denominó «tubismo» de Léger, no guarda sino una relación superficial con los elementos iconográficos que intervienen en la estructura de los cuadros de Malévich en 1912. La diferencia capital entre el pintor ruso y los pintores franceses reside en que el primero parte de una estructura de base primitivista, la del lubok, el rótulo de tienda, el icono, en tanto que los franceses añaden elementos procedentes de las artes primitivas a una estructura de base «civilizada», «cezanniana». Por tanto, el pintor ruso emprende el camino inverso al de los pintores franceses.

Sin embargo, si bien Malévich mantuvo la estructura de base de sus cuadros primitivistas anteriores, también aplicó a pies juntillas el principio «cezanniano» de la simplificación cilíndrica, esférica y cónica, dando lugar a una mutación iconográfica total. Pese a que los contornos de los personajes, los objetos, los motivos paisajísticos son perfectamente reconoscibles, nos hallamos, de hecho, ante un nuevo realismo, que el pintor calificó de «transmental» (zaumnyi). En efecto, si bien los elementos de referencia (campesinos, cubos, hachas, casas, troncos, haces, gestos) no presentan ninguna ambigüedad semántica y semiótica, su representación en el lienzo ya no responde a las leyes del «sentido común» y de la lógica visual, sino a las de la «creación intuitiva», más allá del sentido común y de la lógica. Oponiendo la razón, que desarrolla lógicamente formas utilitarias para el uso cotidiano, a la intuición, como manifestación del subconsciente, el pintor escribe: «La creación intuitiva es subconsciente y no tiene un objetivo ni una respuesta concreta […] El sentimiento intuitivo ha encontrado una nueva belleza en los objetos: la energía de las disonancias resultante del encuentro de dos formas»[32]. Y añade: «La forma intuitiva debe salir de la nada»[33].

La gama de colores utilizada distingue totalmente al autor de Recolección  del centeno de los artistas franceses de su época. Alrededor de 1910, Braque y Picasso habían reducido su paleta a unos pocos ocres, marrones, grises y negros. El pintor ruso, por el contrario, heredero de una tradición eslava de arte popular multicolor (particularmente en su Ucrania natal), cubre los elementos geométricos de sus cuadros con toda suerte de matices rojos, rosas, naranjas, bermellones, azules de Prusia, verdes, índigos, malvas, blancos y negros. Un verdadero universo del color que, pese a ser aplicado con determinación y energía, se mantiene en una vibración constante que integra, como ya hemos destacado, la herencia impresionista merced a degradados sutiles y al juego de luces y sombras. A su vez, genera un contraste vigoroso entre la rigidez sacra y estática de los gestos, fijados en la inmovilidad del instante, y los deslizamientos, los desplazamientos dinámicos de los volúmenes geométricos ensamblados como las ruedas de una máquina, recubiertos con pintura metalizada. Es la primera síntesis del cubismo y el futurismo.

Hasta 1913 Malévich se mantiene fiel a la figura, cuyo contorno primitivista de base mantiene, sin cesar de interpretarlo en diferentes estilos. Se entiende a la perfección cómo pudo pasar en unos meses del «realismo transmental» (Retrato perfeccionado de Ivan Vass. Kliunkov [Museo Estatal Ruso]) a lo que denominó «realismo cubofuturista» (Retrato de Matiuchin [Galería Tretiakov]). En los dibujos para el retrato de Matiuchin, así como en el lienzo, la legibilidad de la representación se oscurece al máximo. Aquí y allá aparecen elementos decorativos (un fragmento de cráneo, un teclado, partes de un piano, etc.), pero su distribución ya no se corresponde con ninguna figuración «reconocible». Nos hallamos ante un equivalente semiótico, un sistema de signos dispuestos únicamente en función de las leyes internas del cuadro. Estamos en pleno cubofuturismo, pues la estructura sólidamente construida se fusiona con la interpenetración de los objetos y del hombre (según los principios y la práctica del futurismo italiano, en concreto de Boccioni y de Balla hacia 1912).

El año 1913 es especialmente fecundo para Malévich. Con los poetas y teóricos del futurismo ruso Velimir Khlebnikov y Alexei Kruchenij, trabaja en las recopilaciones litografiadas Los tres (Troïé) y Juego en el infierno (Igra v adu). Su concepción del espectáculo Victoria sobre el sol, una ópera de Matiuchin basada en un prólogo de Khlebnikov y un libreto de Kruchenij, en diciembre de 1913, marca un punto de inflexión en la evolución de las artes del siglo xx. Desde el punto de vista escénico es el primer espectáculo cubista del mundo, y es también la primera obra teatral enteramente futurista. En definitiva, supone, para Malévich, la primera etapa hacia el suprematismo. Dice al respecto el poeta Benedikt Livchits: «En los límites de la caja escénica, la estereometría pictórica nacía por vez primera; un sistema rígido de volúmenes reducía a la mínima expresión los elementos del azar impuesto desde el exterior por el movimiento de los cuerpos humanos. Los haces de los faros fragmentaban estos cuerpos, que perdían alternativamente brazos, piernas, la cabeza, ya que para Malévich no eran sino cuerpos geométricos sometidos a la descomposición en elementos y a la completa desagregación en el espacio pictórico. La única realidad existente era la forma abstracta que había engullido, sin dejar nada, toda la vanidad mundana de Lucifer»[34]. También en los bocetos de Victoria sobre el solaparece por vez primera el «cuadrado negro», en concreto en el apunte del personaje del Enterrador, cuyo cuerpo forma un cuadrado[35]. Este «embrión de todas las posibilidades»[36] culminará en 1915 en el «suprematismo de la pintura». En las telas de 1913-1914, las superficies cuadrangulares invaden el espacio. Pero triunfa el «alogismo» —una nueva denominación de la «transmentalidad» (zaum) con la que calificó sus obras de 1912. A principios de 1913 escribe a Matiuchin: «Hemos llegado al rechazo del sentido y de la lógica de la antigua razón, pero tenemos que esforzarnos en conocer el sentido y la lógica de la nueva razón que se ha manifestado, el más allá de la razón si se quiere; comparativamente, hemos llegado a la transmentalidad (zaumnost´) […] Empiezo a entender que en lo transmental también rige una ley estricta que justifica el derecho a la existencia de los cuadros»[37]. El triunfo del «alogismo» en las pinturas de Malévich en 1913-1914 se confirma en una serie de obras que podríamos denominar «programáticas». La pintura pierde definitivamente su estatuto de representación del mundo sensible gracias a un «gesto» que introduce el absurdo. Así, en Vaca y violín (Museo Estatal Ruso) una vaca destruye la imagen del violín, el objeto figurativo po