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The core of Malevich’s ‘artistic expression’ in his Black Square is buried in parentheses a paragraph or two before the end:
> Black Square was not simply a two-dimensional surface, parallel to a single wall and projecting outwards from it in one direction. Judging from the way it was displayed when first exhibited in 1915 — across the corner of the room (like a Russian icon) and as high up as possible — it was required to project from two walls and the ceiling, i.e. in three dimensions, embracing the room over which it presided as a cubic space.
Black Square’s artistic merit is precisely because it was intended to occupy the space in the room that an icon traditionally would, and implied the absence (or rejection) of God.
Except Malevich had written extensively about why he painted the Black Square and he never said it was to reject god.
Malevich even wrote an essay "Бог не скинут: Искусство, церковь, фабрика" (God is not thrown down: Art, church, factory) in which he argued that god exists because it is impossible to prove otherwise.
From this essay it is possible to conclude that Malevich in Black Square painted god as he imagined it. He wrote that since the seventh day of creation god rests and does nothing. That is why it appears as if god does not exists. Black Square depicts nothing.
I may have overstepped with rejection. But in that essay he argues that there’s no such thing as God, God is just the embodiment of perfection in the universe, and man becomes God by attaining perfection, calls God fallible, refutes the concept of the trinity, says God is not omniscient, and ultimately concludes that God is not cast down because God is a creation of man as the answer to what is essentially a question of semantics, and so exists as the answer to an exercise in philosophy rather than in any real sense.
I didn’t know this, thank you! This just goes to show how much context is part of something being art!
This is impressively researched, and a great examination of a hidden through-line in art history. I appreciate that the writer doesn't approach the subject from an adversarially revisionist perspective ("Malevich was a plagiarist!") but rather builds for the reader a better appreciation for the cultural lineage that led to Black Square.
Amazing depth of research, but worth noting that it’s largely limited to works that are now within the public domain.
As such, while more technical, than conceptual or historical, there are now blacks that absorb light to degrees that were impossible before and are magical to see, even in pure sunlight. In 2016, an Indian-born British artist named Anish Kapoor was given exclusive rights to use Vantablack, the darkest material in the world with an absorption rate of 99.96%; Black 3.0 and Musou Black, which absorption rates are lower were created in response to Kapoor being only artist allowed to use Vantablack. To see examples, just Google keywords like: blackest black, vantablack vs black 3.0 vs musou black.
The daftness of Kapoor's exclusive right to Vantablack prompted artist Stuart Semple to create Black 2.0 and 3.0 (as mentioned by parent) with a license granting use by anyone except Kapoor.
https://stuartsemple.com/project/black-v1-0-beta-worlds-matt...
Kapoor's response was to surreptitiously get a pot of Black 3.0, dip his middle finger in it, and take a photo of that finger flipping the bird.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2019/aug/...
Correction: Kapoor’s finger was dipped in pink, not black, with the text “Up yours #pink” by him in the comments.
Here’s the photo:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BOWz73wgj7R/
This Wired story covers the topic in detailed:
https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-s...
Ah yes, thanks!
I never thought I'd have an opportunity to post about this, given that Java applets are no longer supported, but: S. Sverdlov in 1998 created an Oberon-2 compiler in Java called "J()B" for creating applets. The first such applet was a Black Square implementation: https://pm.vogu35.ru/JOB/
This is a fascinating article. The path from “death of Christ” to “death of religion” is quite a turnaround.