Kasimir Malevich and his "Suprematist Composition:White on White"

The painting Suprematist Composition: White on White by Kasimir Malevich is a traditional painting exclusively in the sense that it is an oil painting on canvas. After this fact, all ties with "traditional" painting are severed, and that is the point. Suprematist Composition: White on White shows a stark white square (with beige tones) matted diagonally against a background of almost the same stark hue. It seemingly lacks iconography and narrative, and to the common viewer it is quite intimidating. Painted in 1918, this work arrives on the heels of Cubism and Futurism, which were both artist-defined movements that challenged the boundaries of what art was expected to look like. But the cubists and futurists still held onto iconography, narrative, and titles that acquainted the viewer with what he or she was looking at. Malevich's Suprematist Composition: White on White in and of itself has no reference point for the viewer to latch onto. Or does it? Malevich is credited with being the painter who “terminated the tradition of five long centuries in Western painting, departing from the triumvirate of fundamental tenets that had secured creative man in his world: a ceaselessly illusionistic representation of observable experience; realism as a measure of truth; and requisite accuracy proclaimed through perspectival systems.”¹ How much of this statement should the viewer accept as fact? We will find that upon deeper inspection, Suprematist Composition: White on White has more similarities to narrative, traditional art than meets the eye.

The square, shown here in Suprematist Composition: White on White (Fig. 1), represents the static aspect of Suprematism, as opposed to the dynamic “suprematist straight line.”² There existed 24 Suprematist forms, derivatives of three basic elements of Suprematism; the black square, the black circle, and the black cross. Malevich showed his Black Square (Fig. 2), a black square on a white background, for the first time in Petrograd in 1915 at the ‘Zero-Ten’ exhibition. The direct predecessor of his 1918 Suprematist Composition: White on White, it is considered the symbol of Suprematism, and the writer José Maria Faerna says that it “represents nothing and it expresses nothing. It is the “ground zero” of painting, an image reduced to its most elementary components, an empty form that conveys nothing but the stamp of the painter's hand.”³ While this statement is in agreement with the Suprematist doctrine, it is not necessarily the only possible analysis.

Before creating Suprematism, Malevich considered himself a neo-primitivist and then a cubo-futurist, the former style influenced by Cézanne and the latter, obviously, by the Cubists and the Futurists. There is a general assumption that Suprematism descended directly from Cubism, but this is incorrect. While the visual vocabulary of the Cubists and the Futurists were certainly influential in Malevich’s quest for fundamental forms, he found that cubo-futurism was too reliant on visual reality to articulate the invisible reality he sought. Cubism was only one of many influences, including the technical attributes of Expressionism, and the ideas of Nikolai Kulbin, Vasily Kandinsky, Mikhail Matiushin, Alexei Kruchenykh and many, many others that combined and contorted to evolve into Suprematism as we know it today.

While these influences cavorted in Malevich’s psyche, he produced what are considered the origins of Suprematism in 1913 when he provided the décor for the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun. In this décor, each of eight total drawings is framed within the format of a square. He retrospectively declared that the fifth act’s backdrop for Victory over the Sun (Fig. 5) was the first public presentation of Suprematism. It is a large blank square divided into four diagonally, with a smaller square divided diagonally in two in the middle, with the top half black and the bottom half white. Despite the fact that its form and color are similar to Suprematist Composition: White on White, and to Black Square, it could just represent night and day, or the sun setting, rendering it somewhat representational. Regardless, it is the square which prefigures later suprematist ideas that is significant. Let us delve a bit deeper into the ideals of Suprematism illustrated by Suprematist Composition: White on White.

Simply put, Suprematism is “that end and beginning where sensations are uncovered, where art emerges ‘as such.’”⁴ Malevich liked to assert that Suprematism emerged in 1913 and that 1914 was “the year when the square appeared.”⁵ The truth is, disregarding the Victory over the sun compositions, the first square (Black Square) appeared in 1915. This was at the "Zero-Ten" exhibition mentioned earlier, along with 39 other totally abstract canvases by Malevich that had never been seen by the public before. Another influence at this time was ‘zaum,’ a language invented by Velimir Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh that attempted subconscious and alogical expression. Malevich and his colleagues took these principles and applied them to Suprematism, in the hopes of achieving a state of completely nonobjective art in order to attain total creativity. Roslavets, a modernist composer, explains:

Within a particular interpretation, the notion of the “nonobjective” can be reduced to a simple rejection of the dependency of the artist on the necessity to represent the object and on subordination to canons that require the artist to copy “nature,” to render as accurate as possible a reproduction of visible nature and surrounding objects. If, however, in the interpretation of our term one goes back to a universal, the artist's striving toward “nonobjectiveness” in art can be raised to a profound basic principle of creativity.⁶

In addition to attaining a state of nonobjectivity, Malevich sought to have art reflect the dissonance of the modern soul and to have art “penetrate into essence.”⁷ What Malevich may not have realized, however, is that the subconscious obeys natural law, as does everything else in nature, and that by using it to create, in spite of seeking to abandon all references to real-world objects, he ended up utilizing the geometric elements directly derived from nature. This may also be the reason we find iconic references in his Suprematist Composition: White on White.

Growing up in Russia, Malevich was undoubtedly exposed to Russian icons, and he is said to have been religious. The influence of Russian icons can be seen in various works by him, including Study for a Fresco (Self-Portrait) from 1907 in which he dominates the foreground much like a Marian icon, with smaller figures in the background, recalling iconic saints. According to Yevgenia Petrova, in this very painting, “Malevich depicted himself as God. This “Messianic” approach to his role in society and art accompanied the artist all his life. Malevich viewed himself as a Messiah, called not only to save, but to transform the world, and he regarded his theoretical writings as “new Gospels in art.” ”⁸ We take as an example the Theotokos of Vladimir (Fig. 4), a Russian icon depicting baby Christ and the Virgin Mary, the source of Christ and therefore of Christianity, a creative force. Now we look at Suprematist Composition: White on White. Petrova nudges us toward understanding the parallels: "In Russian icons, a white background traditionally symbolizes purity, sanctity, and eternity...Implying more than just the movement of contemporary art beyond the bounds of "Nothing" or traditional figurative art, Malevich's oeuvre was reclaiming the icon for art, in a new, updated form."⁹ An observant classmate saw something more literal in this interpretation of Suprematist Composition: White on White: the background as the Virgin and the crooked square as baby Jesus, being held up by the background, its mother. In broader terms, Malevich was using Suprematism to interpret Creation, and as an artist, he was acting as Creator. Petrova goes on to show us that “...Suprematism is the artistic expression of the existence of man in this universe. “The weight” [of the world that God gave to man who then couldn't handle it so God turned it all to dust and unweighted it for man, making the weight into light, according to Malevich's 1910s essay God Is Not Cast Down: Art, Church, Factory], designated by color and form and dispersed throughout the universe, is what constitutes the monochrome Suprematist canvas.”¹⁰ This analysis imbues Malevich’s work with a spirituality not readily grasped without background knowledge, and loads the monochromatic nature of the work with religious meaning. Petrova explains:

Malevich was, in essence, creating a new type of icon. Unlike Russian Orthodox icon painters who illustrated biblical texts, however, Malevich excluded all narrative from his compositions. He minimalized the images, reducing them to pure forms, and he monumentalized the squares, circles, and crosses employed by icon painters in the clothes of the saints, elevating them to the level of independent, multisignificant symbols. By placing a square, circle, or cross on a white or gray background, Malevich was returning to the canons of Old Russian art, reinterpreting them in his own original manner.¹¹

Further underlining this argument is the now familiar photographic image of a dead Kazimir Malevich lying in state in Leningrad (fig. 3), with Black Square hanging above him, where a crucifix or Madonna image might be in a devout Christian home. It certainly reads here as a religious and/or spiritual symbol. While all this information clicks for those of us weaned on representational symbols and conspiracy theories, Malevich's contemporaries (the Bolsheviks and the Constructivists, respectively) were not pleased with the underlying spirituality. Firstly, the Bolsheviks had banned religion at this time, and secondly, Russian avant-garde art was supposed to be non-objective and without narrative. Therefore it is understandable that the Bolshevik art critic and member of the Constructivist movement, Boris Arvatov,¹² criticized what he decided was Malevich's use of Suprematism as a creation of a new religion. In his 1922 review of Malevich's “God Is Not Cast Down” he wrote: “I have constantly pointed out that Suprematism is the most detrimental reaction under the banner of the revolution...After Malevich's candid thrusts, even the doubters, even the short-sighted, will discern the black face of the old art behind the mask of the red square.”¹³ Arvatov was close in his intuition, but he missed the mark. Malevich wasn't trying to create a new religion, but rather attain something spiritual through his art, based on his writings and our analysis.

It must be stated that this theory is in direct opposition to Jose Maria Faerna's assertion that, in harmony with the suprematist ideals of non-representational forms and a rejection of the natural world, that to Malevich, “in childhood, the icons that he saw in his home seemed to him devoid of content: “Nobody understood that an icon was a representation of an actual person, or that color was its medium of expression. I never made any association of ideas when I looked at these paintings, and they seemed to have nothing to do with me or my life.”¹⁴ On the following page, however, she inadvertently supports the former theory by saying that the Black Square of 1915 was “a virtual icon of Suprematism...”¹⁵ The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines icon as a pictorial representation (image), a conventional religious image as mentioned above, or an object of devotion (idol). It is from the Latin eikenai, meaning to resemble. In one coup, Faerna's statement discredits the entire suprematist ideal of non-representational art.

This icon theory stands in direct opposition to the stated purposes of Suprematism and the ideals therein. In one of Malevich's public statements of warning against literal rational interpretation, he tells us that what we just did was miss his point: “I give warning of a danger. Reason has now imprisoned art in a box of square dimensions...”¹⁶ The point was supposed to be (until we ruined it) that the lack of cohesion and narrative would lead to the mind turning back onto itself continuously until it totally abandons the effort of interpretation.

The Suprematists sought to liberate consciousness. They stressed that their goal did not lie in establishing a new aesthetic, but rather a way of thinking. For Malevich especially, Suprematism was a spiritual quest. Art here was not the goal but rather the means of expressing their desires for society as a whole. This objective of creating a new society is expressed by Malevich in The Non-Objective World when he says, “The art of the past which stood, at least ostensibly, in the service of religion and the state, will take on new life in the pure (unapplied) art of Suprematism, which will build up a new world...”¹⁷ In this aspect they were entirely original, whereas the rejection of representational art had been present since the dawn of modern art. Ironically, in the same way 16th century Renaissance artists struggled to escape the stigma of being ‘manual workers’ to be perceived instead as intellectual artists working with their minds, the Suprematists shied away from 'art', a trained skill, and worked towards creativity, a gift. Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918) is illustrative of the Suprematist ideals in that it is nonobjective, universal, and seemingly random. “This was no “empty square” which I had exhibited but rather the feeling of nonobjectivity.”¹⁸ According to Malevich, the square on “the white field was the first form in which nonobjective feeling came to be expressed. The square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling.”¹⁹ For all of the principles that Malevich tried to instill into Suprematist Composition: White on White, it seems counter-intuitive to call it ‘non-objective,’ as the way he truly wanted the viewer to understand it seems rather subjective. Basically, according to this passage, if the viewer doesn’t ‘feel the nonobjectivity,’ he or she just doesn’t get it. Whether the viewer chooses to agree with Malevich’s statements about his work are entirely up to him or her, but as Malevich’s work was created by his hand, a human hand, it is inexorably tied to that human’s experience, and therefore cannot be totally nonobjective, whatever the circumstances may be. In Swans of other worlds, Charlotte Douglas states that “Modern Russian painters were deeply aware of their legacy of 700 years of icon painting, and their understanding of the role of the artist in society and the nature of his work was in part an extension of this cultural experience,”²⁰ which not only supports the icon theory Suprematist Composition: White on White, but also backs up the fact that artists cannot ignore cultural experiences.

Suprematist Composition: White on White was shocking when it debuted in 1918, and it still is to some. It seems that this is what Malevich was hoping for. “The square seemed incomprehensible and dangerous to the critics and the public...and this, of course, was to be expected.”²¹ What's interesting is that it was rejected first not by the general public, but by fellow artists, among them the Constructivists. The Constructivists, the most famous of who is El Lissitzky, were the opposite end of the same stick, the stick being Russian avant-garde art. Once allies, the two art factions fell out with each other and competed for supremacy in Russian modern art (the Suprematists won supremacy with the sheer force of the name, in my humble opinion). In around 1925 a Constructivist critic said, “The only good canvas in the entire Unovis exhibition is an absolutely pure, white canvas with a very good prime coating. Something could be done on it.”²² Another artist, Alexandre Benois, leader of the Russian symbolist group Miriskusstva (‘World of Art’) decried Black Square as a “sermon of nothingness and destruction.”²³

Whether Suprematist Composition: White on White serves to exemplify Malevich’s stated Suprematist ideals, exposes his deep piety, or just reveals a lifetime of cultural experience, it is illustrative of both a break from the past and a beginning of a future in modern art history. The exact links between Suprematism and modern art of the 1950's and 60's are unclear, but there is an obvious formal similarity in the minimal art of Ellsworth Kelly, Al Held, and Ad Reinhardt. Despite the lengthy proclamations of the artist concerning the meaning of Suprematist Composition: White on White, the neutrality of the Suprematist imagery, particularly the white square, allows the viewer to arrive at his or her own conclusions.