AHIS BC 3626y Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Abstract Expressionism, Kazimir Malevich, Avant-Garde
25 Aug 2016
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Tuesday, January 19th, 2016
Abstract Expressionism
Russian Avante Garde
Kasimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915
• Believes that this painting is the culmination of the
reaction to representation
• It is the epitome of painting because it has reached
its endpoint
• There is no representation that is left
• This is the negation of representation tradition
• Modernism introduces the demystification of
representation
o There is no mystery as to how it was created
• The painting does away with composition and relationships (there is no depth
or transparency)
• The renaissance developed a way of constructing depth where there is none, an
illusion
o Modernism is a constant deconstruction of that, there is no fiction.
• The black square is what is real.
• This is the most self-reflexive painting of its time.
• Malevich displays the painting not in the traditional space, flat on the wall, but
in the corner of the room.
• This is an almost factual, scientific painting.
o Black square is a square on a square, its one of continuity.
o Creates a process of echo
o There is a correlation between figure and ground
o (black square on a white square)
o its not a perfect square, but the painting doesn’t have a direction, there
is no upside down there is no correct way, top or bottom.
o Mutally reassuring tautological construction
o The black square literally defaces all traces of representation.
o It is the negation of representation
YET…
• Malevich also claims that this new factual object is also a
new icon, an icon of new experience
• This empirical modernist picture enters modernist
painting but it by calling for an empirical sense there is a
new reinvention of painting as a discourse of
irrationality.
• Christian Russians placed icons in the upper left hand corner of the room,
where Malevich places his painting.
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