Opinion on the "Black Square"

SQUARE






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Tatyana Tolstoy in 1913, or 1914, or 1915, on which day - unknown, Polish-born Russian painter Kazimir Malevich took a small canvas: 79.5 to 79.5 centimeters by filling it with white paint on the edges and middle of the thick black zamaleval color. This simple operation could be carried out by any child - is true, children would not have enough patience to paint a large area of one color. The work of a force of any draftsman - and Malevich in his youth worked as a draftsman - but a draftsman's not interested in such a simple geometric forms. The same picture could be drawn Mentally ill - but that's not painted, as if painted, it is unlikely she would have the slightest chance to get to the exhibition at the right time and place.



Doing this simple operation, Malevich was the author of the most famous, most mysterious, most frightening picture of the world - "Black Square". Easy movement of the brush it once and spent impassable line, marked the chasm between the old art and new, between a man and his shadow, between a rose and a coffin, between life and death, between God and the Devil. In his own words, he "brought everything to zero". Null for some reason turned out to be a square, and this simple discovery - one of the most terrible events in the arts in the history of its existence.

Malevich, and he realized that he did. A year and a half before this landmark event he attended with his friends and associates, in the first All-Russia Congress of the Futurists - at the cottage, in beautiful northern countryside - and they decided to write the opera "Victory over the Sun" and there is, in the country, immediately set to its implementation. Malevich designed the stage. One of the decorations, black and white, something resembling the future, not yet born on the square, has served as the backdrop for one of the action. What then spilled out of his hand by itself, blindly and enthusiastically, and later at the St. Petersburg workshop, suddenly realized how theoretical achievement, the latter, the highest achievement - the discovery of the critical, the mysterious, the unknown point, after which, in connection with which for which there can be nothing else. Fumbling with his hands in the dark, brilliant intuition of the artist, the Creator of prophetic insight, he felt the figure of a Prohibited Prohibited colors - so simple that thousands were passing, crossing, neglecting, not noticing ... But to say something that few before him were plotting "a victory over the Sun", a few dared to challenge the Prince of Darkness. Malevich dared - and, as befits a truthful stories about trade with the Devil, about the thirst of Faust, owner willingly and promptly appeared and prompted the artist to a simple formula of nothingness.

At the end of the same in 1915 - was already in full First World War - an ominous painting was presented among others at the exhibition of the Futurists. All other works of Malevich simply hung on the walls in the usual way, "square" as it is intended a special place. At the surviving photos show that the "black box" is located in the corner near the ceiling - there and so, as they hang the icon. It is unlikely that from him - a man paints - escape the idea that this most important, sacral angle is called the "red", the gift that "red" means here is not color, and "beauty". Malevich deliberately hung black hole in the sacred place: the work he called "an icon of our time." Instead of "red" - black (zero color), rather than individuals - fail (zero line), instead of an icon, that is, windows up, in the light of eternal life - dark, cellar hatch in hell, eternal darkness.

A. Benoit, a contemporary of Malevich, himself a great artist and art critic, wrote about the film: "Black box white frame - this is not simply a joke, not an easy call, not a casual little epizodik that occurred in the house at the Champ de Mars, and this is one of the acts of self-affirmation of the principle which has your name and the abomination of desolation which boasts that it is through pride, through arrogance, a violation of all the love and tender, will lead all to ruin. "

For many years before, in September 1869, Tolstoy experienced a kind of a strange experience, having a deep impact on his life and served as is likely turning point in his philosophy. He left home in high spirits to make an important and profitable purchase: buy a new property. They rode on horseback, gaily chattering. Night came. "I fell asleep, but woke up: I felt something terrible. (...) Suddenly, it seemed that I did not need no reason at this distance to go, that I will die here, in a strange place. And I was terrified. The travelers decided to spend the night in the town of Arzamas. "Here at last arrived to some little house with the pole. House was white, but it seemed to me terribly sad. So it was even scary. (...) A corridor, a sleepy-eyed man with a stain on his cheek - a spot that I felt awful - demonstrated the room. Gloomy was the room. I walked in - even zhutche I was.

(...) Pure whitewashed square chamber. As I remember, painfully, I was that little room that was exactly square. The window was the one with the red gardinkoy ... (...) I took a pillow and lay down on the sofa. When I woke up, nobody in the room was and it was dark. (...) To sleep, I felt there was no chance. Why I drove here? Where I'm driving myself? What, where I run away? I was running from something terrible, and I can not escape. (...) I went into the corridor, I thought to get away from the fact that tormented me. But it went for me and cast a shadow over everything. I'm just more, it was terrible.
- What kind of nonsense - I said to myself. - What I miss, what I fear?
- Me - quietly answered the voice of death. - I'm here.
(...) I went there, but just lay down, suddenly jumped up in horror. And the anguish and longing, - the same spiritual longing, what happens before vomiting, but a spiritual one. Terrible, terrible. It seems that fear of death, but remember, just think about life, the life of a dying terrible. How's life and death merge into one. Something my heart was torn to pieces and could not tear. Once again I went to look at the sleeping, once again tried to sleep, all the same horror - red, white, square. Breaks something and not broken. Painful, and painfully dry and angry, not a drop of kindness in itself, I felt, but only a smooth, quiet anger at myself and the fact that I did.

This famous and mysterious events in the life of a writer - not just a sudden attack of severe depression, but some unexpected encounter with death, evil - is called "Arzamas horror. Red, white, square. Sounds like a description of one of Malevich's paintings.

Leo Tolstoy, which had a red-white square, could not either foresee or control the incident. It came before him, pounced on him, and as a result of what happened - not once, but steadily - he renounced life, what led up to that, from his family, love and understanding from loved ones, from the foundations of the world around him, from the art. A certain opened his "truth" led him into the void, zero, self-destruct. Preoccupied with "spiritual quest", by the end of his life he found nothing but a handful of platitudes - version of early Christianity, and nothing more. His followers also went from the world and also went nowhere. Drink tea instead of vodka, do not eat meat, to condemn family ties, self-make boots, and bad stitching, crooked - that is, in fact, all the result of personal spiritual quest, passing through the square. "I'm here" - silently whispered the voice of death, and life derailed. Yet the struggle continued, still to come was Anna Karenina (cruelly murdered by the author, were punished for what we wanted to live), is yet to come was a few literary masterpieces, but the square has won, the writer drove from a life-giving force of art, turned to primitive parables, teachings and cheap extinguished before their physical death, startled the world in the end is not artistic power of his later works, but the scale of their genuine suffering, individual protest, public self-flagellation, a hitherto unheard-of scale.

Malevich was not expecting too square, while searching for him. In the period before the invention of "Suprematism" (a term Malevich), he confessed "illogic", an attempt to go beyond the boundaries of common sense, confessed to "fight logizmom, naturalness, homely sense and superstition. His call was heeded, and the square appeared before him and absorbed him into itself. The artist could be proud of the reputation that earned him a deal with the devil, and he was proud of. I do not know whether he noticed that the ambiguity, which brought him this fame. "The most famous painting of the artist" - this means that his other works of less famous, not so significant, not so attractive, in short - they are worse. And indeed, compared with the square of all his things strangely pale. He has a series of pictures with geometric, bright peasants, who, instead of individuals - empty ovals, as it were transparent eggs without embryos. This colorful, decorative paintings, but they seem small, bustling mess of rainbow colors, before they are shaking the last time, mingle in colorful funnel and leave to the bottomless bottom of the square. It has landscapes, pinkish, impressionistic, very ordinary - such written many, and write better. At the end of his life he tried to return to figurative art, and these things look as scary as it could be predicted: not men, and embalmed bodies, hard wax look beyond the framework of their garments, as if carved out of bright scraps, scraps of "peasant" series. Of course, when you reach the top, then the next - the way only down. But the horror that at the top - nothing.

Art critics love writing about Malevich: Black Square "encompasses all the pictorial representations that existed before that, he closes the path of naturalistic simulation, it is present as an absolute form, and heralds the art in which the free forms - unrelated or related - are meaning of the picture.

Right, Square "closes the way" - including the artist himself. He is present "as an absolute form" - and this is true, but it does mean that compared with all other forms are not needed, because by definition they are not absolute. It "proclaims the art ..." - but this proved untrue. It heralds the end of art, the impossibility of it, the uselessness of it, it is that the oven in which art is consumed, then the hole, into which it falls, for he is, a square, according to Benoit, quoted above, is "one of the acts of self-affirmation of that beginning which has your name and the abomination of desolation which brags that it is through pride, through arrogance, a violation of all the love and tender, will lead all to ruin. "

Artist "dokvadratnoy" era of learning his trade all his life, struggles with a dead, inert, chaotic matter, trying to breathe life into it, as if fanning the flames, as if praying, he tries to light in the rock world, he stands on tiptoe, craning to look to where the human eye does not hold out. Sometimes his work and prayers, his affection crowned with success, for a brief moment or for a long moment, "it" happens "it" comes. God (an angel, spirit, muse, sometimes the demon) concede, agree to, let go those things, those volatile emotions, those bits of celestial fire - the name we call them can not - which they reserve for themselves, for their hidden from us; wonderful home. Having obtained a divine gift, the artist is experiencing the most acute moment of thanks, neunizhennogo humility, nepozornoy pride, the moment special, bright and cleansing tears - visible or invisible, a moment of catharsis. "It" crowded - "it" is like a wave. The artist becomes superstitious. He wants to repeat this meeting, he knows he can next time and do not question the divine of the audience, he opens the spiritual eyes, he understands the deep inner sense that it (greed, selfishness, arrogance, conceit) can close the gates of paradise in front of him, he tries to so turn your inner feelings in order not to sin before his angelic guides, he knows what he is - at best, only co-sponsor, the apprentice, but - beloved apprentice, but - crowned co-author. The artist knows that the spirit blows where it wishes, and as he wants, he knows himself, he, the artist, in his earthly life does not deserve that spirit has chosen him, but if it happened, we should joyfully give thanks for a miracle.


Artist "poslekvadratnoy" era, an artist, to pray at the square, looking at the black hole and recoiled in horror, does not believe in muses and angels, he has his own black metal angels with short wings, pragmatic and self-satisfied and gentlemen who know how much a worldly fame and how to capture its most dense, multilayered pieces. Craft did not need, needs a head, do not need inspiration, need calculation. People like new - must invent a new, people like to rebel - they ought to be outrage, people are indifferent - they have to be shocking: to slip under his breath stinking, abusive, korobyaschee. If the hit man with a stick on his back - he'd turn around, there's the need to spit in his face, and then bound to take money for it, otherwise it is not art, but if the man angrily yelled, we have to declare him an idiot and explain that the art is the message that art is dead, repeat after me: dead, dead, dead. God is dead, God is never born, God should tread, God hates you, God - the blind idiot God - is a dealer, God - is the Devil. Art is dead, you - too, ha, ha, pay money, so you have a piece of shit, this is - this is - dark, dense, local man, hold on tight. There is not and never had a "loving and tender, no light, no flight, no lumen in the clouds, not a glimmer in the darkness, no dreams, no promises. Life is death, death is death immediately.

"How's life and death are merged into one" - in horror wrote Leo Tolstoy, and from that moment until the end of fighting as he could, as to understand how managed - a titanic, a battle of biblical proportions. "And a man wrestled with Jacob until the rising of the dawn ..." It is terrible to look at the struggle of genius with the Devil: that one will prevail, then the other ...

The Death of Ivan Ilyich "is a battlefield, and it is difficult even to say who won. Tolstoy in the story said - said, repeats, persuades, hews our brains - that life is death. But at the end of the story of his dying hero is born in death, as in the new life, relieved, flips, enlightened, go away somewhere where he seems to have received your consolation. "New Art" mocks the very idea of comfort, enlightenment, elevation - and mocks proud, dancing and celebrations.

Talking about God, or so infinitely complex that started its frightening, or, conversely, is very simple: if you want God to be - he is. If you do not want - no. He has everything, including us, but for us it is, first and foremost, and there we are. God is not imposed on us - it is his distorted, false image imposed on us by other people - he just quietly, like water, is in us. Searching for him, we look for yourself, denying it, we deny ourselves, jeered at him, we are making a mockery of themselves - the choice is ours. Dehumanization of the desecration - the same thing.

"Desacralisation" - the slogan of the XX century, the slogan of ignoramuses, mediocrity and incompetence. This is an indulgence that some other mediocrities issue, urging the third, that's how it all should be - everything has to be pointless, vile (supposedly democratic, supposedly available), that everyone has the right to judge each, that authority can not be, in principle, that the hierarchy of values obscene (because all are equal) that the value of art is determined only by supply and demand money. "New" and surprisingly fashionable scandals are not new and not scandalous: Square fans as the achievements of art and placing all impose a variety of body fluids and their products as if Adam and Eve - one who suffers from amnesia, another syndrome of Alzheimer's - to convince each other and their children that they are the clay, but clay, nothing but clay.

I guess an "expert" to "modern art" in one of the funds in Russia, present on American money. We bring "art projects", and we must decide to give or not give money to implement them. Together with me in the Expert Council are working real experts on the "old", dokvadratnomu art, are connoisseurs. We can not bear box and "self-affirmation of the principle which has its name abomination of desolation". But we have projects and have another abomination of desolation, only abomination and nothing else. We are obliged to spend the money allocated to us, otherwise the fund will close. And he feeds too many of our poor country. We try, at least, to give money to those who thought the least contrary and nonsensical. In the past year had given money to the artist, putting up the empty frames along the river to another in capital letters (word) "I" that holds a nice shade, a group of creators, who organized the rally to collect feces for dogs in the parks of St. Petersburg. This year - the woman, plaster stones stamps and sends them to cities in Russia, and the group, spilling a pool of blood in a submarine: the visitors must cross the puddle under the reading of the history of Abelard and Heloise, is playing in the headphones. After the next meeting we will go out and smoke in silence, without looking at each other's eyes. Then he shook hands and hurried quickly disagree.




2002 © Tatyana Tolstaya
Source: http://starat.narod.ru/pictures/male...e_tolstaya.htm
Text is printed from: Tatyana Tolstaya, Okkervil River, Publishing
House "Horseshoe", 2002