GREGOIRE
JEANMONOD
Art and its stories as an inspiration
Kasimir Malevich
Black square on white background
1915
Back to basics
The Russian Kasimir Malevich, who was one of the pioneers of abstract art in the 1910s, is best known for having been the founder - and the main representa-
so much - of an avant-garde current that he has
baptized itself " Suprematism" . This
name, sounding somewhat eso-
teric, actually reflects the ambition of
Malevich: say the supremacy of the "senti-
pure " through forms themselves
same "pure", that is to say freed from
of all figurative load, symbolic or
same suggestive.
​
It was in 1915 that he produced the work which
turned from base, if not from manifesto, to Suprematism: the Black square on a white background . Followed shortly by the Black Circle
on a white background or the black cross on a white background .
Simple shapes that do not lend themselves to any interpretation, and colors that could not be more neutral: what
wanted Malevich, it was to find the "degree
zero of the painting" , to create works that
would not return to no one else reality that the
painting itself . And whatever we think
today from the mystical dimension of which
tinted his theories, force is to admit-
to be freed in this way of centuries of
tradition to return to the pictorial vocabulary
the most elementary , Malevich opened the
way to generations of artists who, to their
turn have questioned the original nature of painting and the emotions it was able to arouse.
Black Circle on White Background , 1915
What we can take away:
​
We arrive, whatever the nature of our activity, after generations of men and women who have participated in the progressive complexification of a system. And as heirs to this system, it is difficult for us to question it. However, the intellectual exercise is interesting: by getting rid of the layers of complexity accumulated over time, we can reach the essence of our profession, rediscover its raison d'être, and perhaps glimpse new ways to exercise it differently, ways hitherto hidden by artificial sophistication.
