Thoughts on Malevich’s Black Square

 Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935), Quadrangle (or The Black Square), 1915, oil on canvas, 79 x 79 cm.

Malevich’s Black Square was first displayed in December 1915 as part of the exhibition entitled ‘Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings: 0.10′ at the Nadezhda Dobychina Gallery in Saint Petersburg. It currently hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. The work is classified as ‘Suprematist’, a term which refers to the Russian artistic movement originating c. 1913, and which was largely spearheaded by Malevich himself. It is closely related to analytical Cubism in its concern with geometrical forms. The painting presents some interesting problems to the reader of visual art. On one level it can be seen as a work that defies figuration, meant here in conventional terms to refer the representation of ‘real’ objects that are derived from the day-to-day visual environment, such as human and natural forms. In its original context Malevich’s painting clearly presented something alien to its audience, and it should be added that the painting’s significance is understood in terms of its particular anti-representational stance relative to the traditional iconography of earlier representational art, occupying a key position as it does in the movement towards abstraction.

Beyond this it is interesting to consider that the Black Square can represent something purely in its own terms and its meaning here is clearly dependent upon what the viewer brings to the painting in terms of his/her understanding of the concepts of both ‘blackness’ and ‘squareness’. Malevich apparently referred to the ‘Black Square’ as ‘a naked icon without a frame’ (quoted in Neret, G, Malevich, p. 49), perhaps intending to suggest that this was a symbol that did not yet possess any cultural baggage and was open to interpretation. He is thus the originator of a new icon arising from a fusion of the meanings of ‘black’ and ‘square’. This is not to suggest that squares and the colour black were not considered in art before Malevich’s time, but rather that at this point they hadn’t been offered together to a viewer in such blatant terms and essentially in the context of nothing. For Malevich to see the painting as ‘without a frame’ is also interesting. Perhaps the square is its own frame, or perhaps Malevich implied that the blackness could potentially have been extended beyond the simple boundaries offered here - he had to stop somewhere! How much blackness can one (or, does one need to) absorb in any one sitting? As regards the squareness, a contemporary viewer accustomed to nearly a century of technological development is likely to respond somewhat differently to the first witnesses to Malevich’s painting: we are now accustomed to gazing through square holes into space on a daily basis (televisions, computer screens and office windows). A final point: It is worth noting, facetiously, that it is apparent when close up to the picture that the black paint has cracked in several places, fragmenting into a number of mis-shapes. One is not staring therefore into absolute blackness any more: instead the mind searches within the square for those familiar forms that had once been denied it.

Neret, G., (2003) Malevich, Cologne, Taschen.

Scharf, A., (1994) ‘Suprematism’, in N. Stangos (ed.) Concepts of Modern Art, London, Thames and Hudson.