Suprematism in World Reconstruction by El Lissitzky 1920

 

El Lissitzky: The Constructor, 1924. A triple exposure self-portrait  

“at present we are living through an unusual period in time a new cosmic creation has become reality in the world a creativity within ourselves which pervades our consciousness.”

“[…] – a world which issues forth from our inner being and which is only now in the first stages of its formation, for this reason the square of suprematism become a beacon.”

“in this way the artist become the foundation on which progress in the reconstruction of life could advance beyond the frontiers of the all-seeing eye and the all-hearing ear, thus a picture was no longer an anecdote or a lyric poem nor a lecture on moralist nor a feast for the eye but a sign and symbol of this new conception of the world which comes from within us. Many revolutions were needed in order to free the artist from his obligations as a moralist as a story-teller or as a court jester, so that he could follow unhindered his creative bent and tread the road that leads to construction.”

“suprematism itself has followed the true path which defines the creative process consequently our picture has become a creative symbol and the realization of this will be our task in life.”

“we shall reshape it so thoroughly that the sun will no longer recognize its satellite.”

“we left to the old world the idea of the individual house individual barracks individual castle individual church, we have set ourselves the task of creating the town, the centre of collective effort is the radio transmitting mast which sends out bursts of creative energy into the world. by means of it we are able to throw off the shackles that bind us to the earth and rise above it, therein lies the answer to all questions concerning movement.” 

“the new element of treatment which we have brought to the fore in our painting will be applied to the whole of this still-to-be-built world and will transform the roughness of concrete the smoothness of metal and the reflection of glass into the outer membrane of the new life. the new light will give us new colour and the memory of the solar spectrum will be preserved only in old manuals on physics.” 

“this complicated structure taken as a whole represents a UNIFIED organism. It is not therefore for that very reason “artistic”?” 

“it is right that this perceptivity shall pass judgment on man’s concept of space on the way he reacts in time […]”

“seven years ago suprematism raised aloft its black square but no one sighted it for at that time a telescope for this new planet had not been invented. The might force of this movement however caused a succession of artist to focus on it and many more were influenced by it, yet neither the former nor the latter possessed sufficient inner substance to be held fat by its attractive power and to formulate a complete world system from the new movement.” 

“for the prayed point of the paintbrush is at variance with our concept of clarity expressing our creative ability paintbrush and ruler and compasses and machine are only extensions of the finger which points the way.”

“This path into the future has nothing in common either with mathematics and scientific studies or with raptures over sunset and moonlight- or indeed with the decline of the subject with its plague-ridden aura of individualism- rather is it the path leading from creative intuition to the increased growth of foodstuffs for which neither paintbrush nor ruler neither compasses nor machine were required.”

“the artist’s work lies beyond the boundaries of the useful and the useless. It is the revolutionary path along which the whole of creation is striding forward and along which man must also bend his steps. ‘artistic work’ is but an obstacle on this path and in consequence a counter-revolutionary concept, the private property aspect of creativity must be destroyed all are creators and there is no reason of any sort of this division into artists and nonartists." 

“by this reckoning the artist ceases to be a man who is not producing useful things and must not strive to attain his title to creative activity by painting posters in the prescribed form and colour on which any attempt to pass judgment shows a GROSS LACK OF FEELING, such work now belongs to the duty of the artist as a citizen of the community, who is clearing the field of his old rubbish in preparation for the new life.”

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“it is only the creative movement towards the liberation of man that makes him the being who holds the whole world within himself. Only a creative work which fills the whole world with its energy can join us together by means of its energy components to form a collective unity like a circuit of electric current.”

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“and if communism which set human labour on the throne and suprematism which raises aloft the square pennant of creativity now march forward together then in the further stages of development it is communism which will have to remain behind because suprematism- which embraces the totality of life’s phenomena- will attract everyone away from the domination of work and from the domination fo the indoxicated senses. It will liberate all those engaged in creative activity and make the world ainto a true model of perfection. This is the model we await from kasimir malevich.

AFTER THE OLD TESTAMENT THERE CAME THE NEW- AFTER THE NEW CAME COMMUNIST- AND AFTER THE COMMUNIST THERE FOLLOWS FINALLY THE TESTAMENT OF SUPREMATISM.” 


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Publishing Information: 

Russian Art of the Avant Garde Theory and Criticism Revised and Enlarged Edition edited by John E. Bowlt 

The Principles of New Art by Vladimir Markov

"The Chinese liked to cover their vases with glaze of copper oxide, but the results of this operation were completely subject to chance. Depending on how the gases circulated around the object, it could turn any color- from white to bright red, blue or black. Because of this, the most unexpected, most beautiful combination and distributions of colored areas sometimes occur. No rational combinations could create such beauty; it is beyond the means of rational, constructive creation.”

“So essentially the principles of chance is not the result of rational processes consciously oriented toward a certain aim and is not even a game played by a hand ungoverned by the apparatus of thought, but is the consequence of completely blind, extrinsic influences.”

“Chance opens up whole worlds and begets wonders. Many wonders, unique harmonies and scales, the enchanting shades common to Chinese and Japanese pictures owe their existence only to the fact that they arose by chance, were appreciated by a sensitive eye, and were crystallized.”

 “In playing, we express our ‘I’ more vividly and unconstrainedly and emerge no longer as the masters of forces hidden within us, but as their slaves.”

"To be ugly and absurd externally does not mean to possess no inner values.
So, the principle of free art affords its ardent and passionate protection to all those absurd mamninfestations of man's soul, to that coarse and vulgar face, as it were, of art, which is so persecuted in Europe.

"In general, one can say that this apparent coarseness, vulgarit, lubok quality appeared, and began to be exploited, quite late in time and that it is the fate of only certain peoples.

"For many peoples this is a competely closed area. However much they may struggle, they will always remian graceful and delicate and will never create that distinctive lyricism that is concealed beneath the cover of the absurd and simple: the lyricism that Byzantium discovered after penetrating this area and developing it in all directions."

"It often happens that the 'I' that we have expressed turnsout, after a little reflection, to be not our 'I' at all." 

"Now one asks, was he expressing his own opinion when he flew into raptures over his purchase? I am inclined to think not. In his rapture he was sincere, but in that superfcial, shallow sense applicable to all the followers of fashion- that epidemic, that tyrant of men's opinions and tastes. I say in a superficial sense, because his raptures were not founded on the inward order of his soul created  by the presence of all impressions from reality; they were founded merely on a simple order of feelings from the conception evoked, a conception that conceals and gradually corrodes the peculiar depths of the soul." 

"And wherever fashion appears, it drives deep down into the soul that which has grown and stratified over thousdands of years and in its place foists on people its cheap, marketplace conception of beauty." 

"All this indicates that the free expression of our 'I' has dangerous enemies, becuase of which it is very difficult for man to be sincere in teh sense of freely expressing his inner essence adn not some surrogate evoked by chance.
Hence it is interesting to ask: which expression of the 'I' has more value? The expression of the 'I' that bursts from us spontaneously or the 'I' that is passed through the filter of thought?"

“Why do we think one thing, and not another, why does my glance slip into one direction and not another, why does my hand do this and not that? In all this there is sometimes no element of logic or actively directed will, and an audacious galloping about, striking changes of stimuli are always going on.

Thus, first by some miracle a brilliant thought sometimes imprints itself on the chaos of thinking, an intuitive solution to a task, a problem that had beset us for such a long time. Where does it come from?

Second, there are occasions when ideas, colors, tones, melodies of a particular order simply thrust themselves on us, and we are unable to shake them off because, like a volcano, they require an outlet.

And with dynamic force they appear at the first opportunity.

And we cannot be responsible for these phenomena, we cannot be accused of their appearance, just as we cannot be accused of our dreams and fancies.

In the same way, wec annot be responsible for our ideas taking forms in their embodiment seem, as it were, absurd and coarse but that demand their realization in precisely these forms.”

“I would go so far as to say that there is no art without plagiarism, and even the freest art is based on plagiarism in the above sense because beloved forms of the past instilled in our SOUL unconsciously repeat themselves.”

Which unites all of humanity. 

“It is not my task to analyze our ‘I’ in all its diversity, in all its nuances- that is the province of psychology; but i would like to distinguish three characteristic stages in it that to a greater or lesser extent determine our creative work.

First, the hidden, subconscious ‘I’, something that has appeared from one knows not where, often completely alien and fortuitous but at the same time, of course, individual, because in any case the right basis, whether temporary or permanent, has appeared within it..

Second, the ‘I’, also hidden, but already mature, something that we are aware of, which is organically inherent to the individuum and transmitted to it atavistically: it is all those impulses, stimuli that, like a ripe seed, demand an outlet, tormented and cramp it.

Third, the ‘I’ that presents the outward manifestation of these two hidden, individual ‘I’’s mentioned above.

In free art, of course, it is the third ‘I’ that interests us, but it does not emerge as the direct echo o fthe two preceding ‘I’s, it does not express the aggregate of the impressions and mysteries that accumulated in them, because much is lost through the effect of many outside factors encountered in the process of its manifestation that operate directly or indirectly.”

“Free creation is inherent in the artist not as a simple desire to be original, to play pranks, or to demonstrate ridiculous affectation, but as one of the means of satisfying the creative needs of man’s soul.”

  

“But, in any case, those factors that impede the free manifestation of our ‘I’ and choice it with alien surrogates should be acknowledged as undesirable.”

“We can distinguish an alien ‘I’ and any factors that impede our full manifestation of the ‘I’ by criticism and other means.

Therefore those works that the public sees marked as free action painting about which they imagine that their little Peter could daub ten such paintings at home are, as far as the artist is concerned, not works of over exuberant mischievousness or of a frolicsome brush; they are a product in which not a single spot, not one shade can be altered, a product that has appeared as a result of suffering, of long, persistent inner work, searching and experience.

Hence free creation contains the essentials of true creation and stands high above simple imitation; in now ay is it a game or mischief making, and by no means can’t be called the simple need to liberate the self from an inner repletion of life-giving energy (dissimilation).

Forms attained by the application of the principle of free creation are sometimes a synthesis of complex analyses and sensations; they are the only forms capable of expressing and embodying the creator’s intentions vis-à-vis nature and the inner world of his ‘I’.” 

“And it often seems that the absurd forms are not the echo and translation of nature but the echo of the creator’s inner psychology.” 

“The principle of free creation represents essentially the apogee in economy of resources and the last expenditure of technical devise, at the same time it proves the truest and most powerful echo of the Divine Beauty that man has sensed.” 

“And only narrow-mined doctrinaires and dunderhead philistines can demand that art should forever remain on safe, well-trodden paths, that it should not burst the dam of realism and depart for the endless horizons of free creation.

"A man possesses an ocean of impressions. He often receives stimuli that he does not see but only feels: in creating freely, obedient to his feeling, he depicts an object quite contrary to how he sees it.

Behind the outer covering of every object, there hides its secret, its rhythm- and the artist is given the ability to divine this secret, to react to the object’s rhythm, and to find forms to manifest this rhythm.

The lost image, word, melody, verse have often irrevocably sunk into oblivion, but the soul preserves and cherishes their rhythm, remaining in it as their eternal ndelible echo. And this rhythm guides the hand when he should wishes to restore lost beauty. The outward expression is often completely unattained, but we hold it dear by virtue of its analogous rhythm, its beauty equivalent to the forgotten object.

And often in objects seemingly absurd and coarse, there lies a wealth of inner beauty, rhythm, and harmony that you will not encounter in objects constructed by the mind on principle of pure proportion or practical truth.

Free creation is the mother of art. Free creation raises us above ‘this world’- this is its great prerogative.”

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“The aspiration to other worlds is inherent in man’s nature. Man does not want to walk, he demands dancing; he does not want to speak, he demands song; he does not want the earth but strains toward the sky. The surest path to this sky is FREE creation.”

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Publishing Information: 

Russian Art of the Avant Garde Theory and Criticism Revised and Enlarged Edition edited by John E. Bowlt