The Black Square-Reinhardt after Malevich
In 1915 Kasmir Malevich executed the painting we refer to as The Black Square (fig. 1), a geometric abstraction (figure) juxtaposed against a white background (ground) that measures two feet and seven inches squared. With the work, Malevich successfully created a rift in the conventions of fine art, into which the painting asserted itself,
“In 1913 (1915) Malevich exhibited a black square painted on a white canvas. Here a form was displayed which was opposed to everything that was understood by ‘pictures’ or ‘painting’ or ‘art.’ Its creator wanted to reduce all forms, all painting to zero. For us, however, this zero was the turning point. When we have a series …show more content…
“If nature has to be bettered by the maker, the work of predecessors would be the only external guide to how to better it.” Reinhardt used the model Malevich provided for him in two ways. Formally taking advantage of the simple black square platform the initial painting provided and then (or first) conceptually taking advantage of Malevich’s absolute assertion of zero, paying homage to the concept in his writings to a friend, “I often feel I’m inventing a new language, the language of Manet, Monet, Mondrian, …show more content…
If you recount Malevich’s statement that his paintings were representative of the subconscious, “sun as light therefore lay at the base of the whole art of painting, only it could not penetrate the skull where exists another ‘sun’—knowledge.” Malevich is saying that his black paintings are abstracted from the ‘darkness of the subconscious’ this became representative of a re-contextualization from the mind to the canvas. Duchamp with his use of the ready-mades, mainly The Fountain (Fig. 3) takes advantage of this new style of art making but takes it a step further. Whereas Malevich believed the intuitive discovery of the surface plane by the cubists created an opening for non-objectivity, Duchamp re-created this shift towards conceptualism and escalated it through the same type of rejection of aesthetic and