Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretican. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the advent-garde, Suprematist movement. This is relatively small painting filled with its large black square hovering over a tired white ground. Amid the visual clamour elsewhere in the museum, it acts like a sudden silence, the first thing one notices is that the surface of the black square is crazed with craquelure. Its forlorn state acts like a protest and reminds the viewer that in 1934, when socialist realism was declared the official artistic doctrine of the soviet union, this painting and many others work by Malevich were abruptly removed and hidden from sight. It was more than 40 years before Black Square returned to public view.

BLACK SQUARE:

This piece epitomized the theoretical principles of Supermarism developed by Malevich in his 1915 essay From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism : The New Realism in Painting. Although earlier Malevich had been influenced by Cubism , he believed that the Cubists had not taken abstraction far enough. Thus , here the purely abstract shape of the black square (that had been painted before the white background) is the single pictorial element in the composition. Even  though the painting seems simple, there are such subtleties as brshstrokes, fingerprints, and colours visible underneath the cracked black layer of paint. If nothing else, one can distinguish the visual weight of the black square , the sense of an "image" against a background, and tge tension around the edges of the square. But according to Malevich, the perception of such forms should always be free of logic and reason, for the absolute truth can only be realized through pure feeling. For the artist the square represented feelings, and the white, nothingness. Additionally, Malevich saw the black square as a kind of godlike presence, an icon- or even the godlike quality in himself. In fact, Black Square was to become the new holy image for non-representational art. Even at the exhibition it was hung in the corner where an Orthodox icon would traditionally be placed in the Russian home.

Early 1914, Malevig had become interested in the possibilities of flight (as had the Futurists) and the idea that the airplane might be a symbol for the awakening of the soul surrounded by the freedom of the infinite. Malevich was also interested in aerial photographs of landscapes, although he later backed away from this source of inspiration , feeling that it led him too far from his vision of a totally abstract art. However, at the time, in Airplane Flying Malevich was able to further explore the pictorial potential of pure abstraction. The rectangular and cubic shapes are arranged in a solid, architectonic composition. The yellow contrasts starkly with the black, while the red and blue lines add dynamic visual accents to the canvas. The whiteness of the background remains unobtrusive but contrasting , and has infused the interplay of colourful shapes with its energy. Malevich believed that emotional engagment was required from the viewer in order to appreciate the compostion, which constituted one of the key principles of his theory of Suprematism. Indeed, Malevich wrote about expressing the feeling of the "sensation of flight , metallic sounds" and the other technological advances of the modern age. His abstract painting was meant to convey the concept (abstract idea).

In these two images i have created my own Black Squares inspired by Malevich himself.

When creating inspirational pieces my main aim is to focus on the key things so for example in Malevich's piece his main focus was a black square agasint a white background so i used colour as my simiular feature. I used Adobe Photoshop to create these sqaures , i used the custom shape tool to create a equal four sided square but to put my own twist into the art work i decided to overlap sqaures instead of one square directly in the middle of the page, i put white on black and overlapped it with white and black squares creating a black and white squared pattern. Personally , i think that my inspired square images was successful because it shows some similarties within mine and Malevich's work.