Kazimir Malevich about Repin`s wretchedness, harm of labour, horrors of communism, female hams and joys of peasant life
Kazimir Malevich was not famous for his eloquence. He boasted that he almost didn`t read books and didn`t squander his time on polishing his verbal expressions. However, he was a natural born speaker. There was a kind of unexplained magic in his rough and crooked phrases. And it was true regarding anything he did.
Our thickheaded press reminds me dull firemen who extinguish the fire of all that is new and wretched firewarden Repin is the leader of these firemen.
When the habit of consciousness to see images of nature, madonnas and shameless venuses on canvas disappears, only then shall we see the primary painting. I was transformed by the zero forms and I saved myself from the whirlpool of rubbish academic art. Things disappeared like smoke for the sake of new culture of art, and art moes toward its aim, creativity, to domination over the forms of nature.
While the screen remains the place where men in the street can pile up their everyday junk, cinema will not be an independent art, because it is a new garbage can invented by technical forces of the science, where an inhabitant shows its chitterling, or the camel loaded by the trash of a nomad Kirghiz.
Cinema is a practical, comfortable and cheap distribution of knowledge, and that is its benefit and, maybe, its aim, however, cinema is the ruinous phenomenon in terms of bringing up artistic culture... One cannot see the artistic form behind this junk and kisses. And if we compare it <cinema> to the works of art, then it will not stand any criticism. It is a deaf and mute Lovelace hanging around the boudoirs.
Communism is a total enmity and breach of peace, because it aims at subordinating every single idea to itself and to destroying it. Yet not a single slavery knew the kind of slavery that communism brought, because the life of any person depends on the leader.
Painting in suprematism is out of question, painting has long ago become outdated, and the artist is the prejudice of the past.
Enslaved by the idea of practical realism , the man wants to adjust the nature to his ideal. Thus, all this objective, scientifically reasonable and practical realism together with its culture belong to the idealist with the ideas never impracticable... Therefore I completely understand the storm of anger, both war and wire entanglements, carbon monoxides, suicides, weeping, grinding, sorrow and melancholy of poets, artists and technicians - the materialists aspiring to catch and embrace the subjectless.
I emulated life of the peasants. I rubbed the crust of bread with garlic, ate lard holding it with fingers, walked barefoot and used no boots. Peasants always me the clean was seemed to and good-looking. I remember those weddings when the fiancee and her friends were some coloured people - in the suits made of colourful wools, the ribbons intertwined in their braids and head-dresses, in goatskin knee-boots on copper and iron horseshoes with the boot tops embroidered with patterns. The groom and his comrades are in grey sheepskin hats, blue trousers, in pantaloons to be exact - it took no less than sixteen arshins of cloth to sew it, white embroidered shirt and red woolen belt. That was the background for my feelings to the art, to the painting.
As for the politics in relation to me, it is expressed in a very mean form, certainly, on the authorities` part or to be exact from the administration in the art sphere - common confession, honour, respect, but nothing more to the hell, they do not let me out and do not give anything... But I pull myself together with all my might, expecting a certan second failiure of The Arts Academy. And these locusts that nibbles young forces of the generation as must eventually die.
Yes, I am a true hero, a revolutionary, bringing bourgeois Art to the deadlock, rather than socialist bolshevists did that.
"It has long been known that I am a scarecrow in the art world, and especially in Russia". (From the letter to Nikolai Suyetin, 1927)
Labour is not the perfection of human life, that is essentially lazy. I want to make laziness not the mother of all vices, but the perfection's mother.
They say there's plenty of food in Kyiv - cherries, sweet cherries and other berries growing on the ground. I wish I tasted varenikis with cream and some of these berries with milk and sugar.
(From the letter to Iryna Zhdanko in Kyiv, from Leningrad, July 3, 1931.)
Illustration: Kazimir Malevich Still life, 1911
The artist only needs reason for his home everyday life, and artists use it in their works.
Dostoevsky once said naively: "The mind is given to attain what one wants". Therefore he wrote witty works instead of artistic ones.
There is nothing to be seen in a point except for a point, therefore in Suprematism a point appears as a square or a circle, thus arising the strongest indignation of the whole society. But they will finally come to the point - to oneself.
Kazimir Malevich is teaching his students from The Unovis group, the city of Vitebsk, 1925.
Province blackwater is extremely sensible, like a copper bowl, like a quiet bog covered by water, ripples from light breeze. The day after my arrival every single person in Vitebsk knew about that. They didn`t stop talking and there was swell growing on, because the newspaper reported of "a well-known famous artist-futurist arriving, the one who set the art record with suprematism"; they only forgot to add that he will soon bite through the iron poker, drink a molten copper and swallow the horseshoes.
Hat off to the futurists, who forbade to paint female hams, portraits and guitars in the moonlight. They did an enormous step - they gave up the meat and glorified the machine. But the meat and the machine are muscles of life.
As Edison can`t go back to the primitive image technique, so is the new art that is not capable of heading to Rubens, Rembrandt and Sezanne. So the masses will have to understand it, like the astronomer has to study new phenomenon in astronomic space, operating with more complex numbers, than the number of one`s fingers.
Quotations sources: letters, notes and theoretic works by Kazimir Malevich.
Quotations of Kazimir Malevich gathered by Andrew Zimoglyadov.
When the habit of consciousness to see images of nature, madonnas and shameless venuses on canvas disappears, only then shall we see the primary painting. I was transformed by the zero forms and I saved myself from the whirlpool of rubbish academic art. Things disappeared like smoke for the sake of new culture of art, and art moes toward its aim, creativity, to domination over the forms of nature.
While the screen remains the place where men in the street can pile up their everyday junk, cinema will not be an independent art, because it is a new garbage can invented by technical forces of the science, where an inhabitant shows its chitterling, or the camel loaded by the trash of a nomad Kirghiz.
Cinema is a practical, comfortable and cheap distribution of knowledge, and that is its benefit and, maybe, its aim, however, cinema is the ruinous phenomenon in terms of bringing up artistic culture... One cannot see the artistic form behind this junk and kisses. And if we compare it <cinema> to the works of art, then it will not stand any criticism. It is a deaf and mute Lovelace hanging around the boudoirs.
Communism is a total enmity and breach of peace, because it aims at subordinating every single idea to itself and to destroying it. Yet not a single slavery knew the kind of slavery that communism brought, because the life of any person depends on the leader.
Black cross
1923, 106×106 cm
Enslaved by the idea of practical realism , the man wants to adjust the nature to his ideal. Thus, all this objective, scientifically reasonable and practical realism together with its culture belong to the idealist with the ideas never impracticable... Therefore I completely understand the storm of anger, both war and wire entanglements, carbon monoxides, suicides, weeping, grinding, sorrow and melancholy of poets, artists and technicians - the materialists aspiring to catch and embrace the subjectless.
Three women on the road
1930, 28.5×43 cm
As for the politics in relation to me, it is expressed in a very mean form, certainly, on the authorities` part or to be exact from the administration in the art sphere - common confession, honour, respect, but nothing more to the hell, they do not let me out and do not give anything... But I pull myself together with all my might, expecting a certan second failiure of The Arts Academy. And these locusts that nibbles young forces of the generation as must eventually die.
Yes, I am a true hero, a revolutionary, bringing bourgeois Art to the deadlock, rather than socialist bolshevists did that.
Red figure
1930, 30×23.5 cm
Reaper
1912, 68×60 cm
Still life
1911, 52.5×51.8 cm
(From the letter to Iryna Zhdanko in Kyiv, from Leningrad, July 3, 1931.)
Illustration: Kazimir Malevich Still life, 1911
The artist only needs reason for his home everyday life, and artists use it in their works.
Dostoevsky once said naively: "The mind is given to attain what one wants". Therefore he wrote witty works instead of artistic ones.
Province blackwater is extremely sensible, like a copper bowl, like a quiet bog covered by water, ripples from light breeze. The day after my arrival every single person in Vitebsk knew about that. They didn`t stop talking and there was swell growing on, because the newspaper reported of "a well-known famous artist-futurist arriving, the one who set the art record with suprematism"; they only forgot to add that he will soon bite through the iron poker, drink a molten copper and swallow the horseshoes.
Hat off to the futurists, who forbade to paint female hams, portraits and guitars in the moonlight. They did an enormous step - they gave up the meat and glorified the machine. But the meat and the machine are muscles of life.
As Edison can`t go back to the primitive image technique, so is the new art that is not capable of heading to Rubens, Rembrandt and Sezanne. So the masses will have to understand it, like the astronomer has to study new phenomenon in astronomic space, operating with more complex numbers, than the number of one`s fingers.
Scab operator at the steam bath
1912, 77×103 cm
Quotations of Kazimir Malevich gathered by Andrew Zimoglyadov.
