Black Square
Kazimir Malevich (1879 to 1935) · About 1923
A black square on a white ground, and nothing else. It is a little over a metre across, the square is not quite geometrically exact and the black is not quite uniform, but the effect is of an absolute: a picture that refuses to show you anything and instead shows you the act of painting itself. Malevich called this idea Suprematism, the supremacy of pure feeling in art, and the black square was its zero point, the place where the old picture ended and something new began.
The Russian Museum's version was made around nineteen twenty three for the Venice Biennale, with the help of Malevich's pupils, and is the largest of the four he painted. Look at the edges: the white border is brushed in visible strokes, and the black surface has a matte, slightly uneven skin. This is not a mechanical object but a painting made by hand, and that tension between idea and touch is where its power lies. Nearby hang the companion pieces, a Black Cross and a Black Circle, so you can see the square as one member of a small family of primary forms.
The first Black Square was shown in Petrograd in December nineteen fifteen, hung across the corner of the room in the place where an icon would traditionally go. That gesture announced that the new art replaced religion as the source of meaning. Malevich fell out of favour under Stalin and died in nineteen thirty five, and this version came to the Russian Museum from the collection assembled for the Museum of Artistic Culture. Standing in front of it today you are looking at the most argued about painting in Russian art, and a work that still divides visitors into those who see nothing and those who see everything.
Did You Know? Malevich was buried in a coffin of his own design decorated with a black square, and mourners at his funeral carried a banner bearing the same emblem.
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