All too common is it that when we walk into a museum and hear those snide comments.
What is it? Is it even art?
My kid could of made that!
It is especially common when it comes to abstract art.
Without a figure or a still life or a landscape to hold on to, what is it even about?
So today I want to talk to you about a painting that is often at the butt of these kind of jokes.
It is Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square.
So this all starts when Malevich’s friend asked him to design the costume and the set
for a Cubo-Futurist opera called Victory Over the Sun.
Cubo-Futurist opera was an anti-establishment avant garde production
where it was basically incomprehensible.
It was made of nonsensical words and offbeat plots, and a very jarring score.
In late 1920s Soviet Russia, Malevich believed that non-objective art was the future, but
was forced to go back to the figurative.
Thus, with his buddies, they decided to destroy the object altogether.
Now the show mostly just annoyed their audience, but among the flamboyantly colored and futuristic
set, there was one pivotal backdrop that appeared the end of the opera.
It was a single black square painted on a white backdrop.
It was not until two years later during the second staging that Malevich realized what
he had created.
A genuinely original artistic expression.
He called it Suprematism.
It was a pure abstraction, removed of all visual cues so that the viewer will have the
Experience of non-objectivity… the supremacy of pure feeling.
These painting are freed from any object.
They do not depict an object that is not really there.
They are exactly what they say they are.
It is a black square, paint on canvas. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Now, his paintings were definitely difficult to swallow for many, as does with many of
the art that challenges our preconceived notions of what art is.
As a viewer, we have been trained to recognize signs and symbols.
For example here is a house, here is a person. We know that they are not a physical person
or a physical house, but we recognize that they are representations of them.
In Black Square, Malevich removes all of these references, but we are still trying to look
at it, and trying to rationalize it.
For many, this is what get on their nerves.
What am I looking at? Well… paint.
Yeah, but what am I looking at?
You are looking for a sign that does not exist.
At least for some abstract work, you can reason, there is pretty shapes and the colors are
musically balanced.
In Pollock’s work you can look at the drips, the motion, and energy.
But in Malevich, we get none of that. There is no seductive color or shape.
It is just plain.
And that is precisely the point.
Why can art not be something more than just a pretty picture on the wall?
Malevich launched Suprematism at
The last Futurist exhibition of paintings: 0.10
in Petrograd, now St Petersburg, in December 1915.
The title refers to the ten participants, though 14 ended up showing, who were all seeking
to find the zero degree, the irreducible core, and the bare minimum of painting and sculpture.
The Black Square was the star of the show. It was given a very special position.
It hung high, practically touching the crown molding of the ceiling, across the two right
angles, where the wall meets.
This location, in Russian Orthodox homes, is reserved for religious iconography.
By replacing what is usually the head of Christ, the cheeky placement can be read as a way
of exerting independence from a Western European tradition.
So his work is not just a black square.
It responds to cultural, social, and historical situations.
And its value does not only lie within the paint on the canvas, but its historical significance.
So no, I am sorry, but your kid probably could not have made it.
And even if you told them to make a copy, it will not cost as much as that one, and
it would just be really mean to the kid.
So tell me what you think of the Black Square.
This video is not really to tell you that it is the greatest work ever, or that it is perfect.
There is definitely a lot of problems that critics, fellow artists, and even Malevich
himself has pointed out.
So let me know what you think!
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Please check out my tumblr, I recently answered a question about the difference between illustration
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Feel free to leave a question in my tumblr, or on my youtube comments down below and I
will try my best to answer them!
What is your opinion on the term my kid could of made that?
I think it is kind of ridiculous.
I feel like a person who makes that kind of comment usually does not know a whole lot
about art history.
They might of just walked around in art galleries and said
Oh they just threw some paint on there.
Which is, well, sometimes true, but there is a lot that goes on into it!
So I hope you do not think it is a joke!
And if you do think something is a joke, feel free to leave a comment down below, and maybe
I can take a look and see what I think.
Thanks for watching! Bye!