You don’t need to be a great artiste to paint a black square. You don’t need to be an artiste at all. You just need to be… To be the first to do it, as many critics say. “I object, your honor.” I think many people have done this before. No one dared! No one dared to call it art and to try to publish it. To prove oneself, to say - Look, I am a painter and this is the greatest painting in the world…
Malevich was the first to do this, TO DARE…This is the verb, this is the word. TO DARE. And the square became the most popular painting in the world.
Everyone knows the BLACK SQUARE. It’s so full of meaning. And it’s an amazing picture, wonderers, fantastic, showing the world as it is today in one square, in one color, with many different shades…1001, I would say.
Why 1001, and not the traditional fifty? Malevich is neither a sadomasochist, nor is he traditional. He is classic. Because in the end we will have proven that Malevich was not the first. Hans Christian Andersen had already said all this in his fairy tale of the naked king, (The Emperor has no clothes). Malevich has just colored it. And the color? The same as the colors the clothes of the naked king…Do you understand?
Let’s take a closer look.
It’s black. It’s a black square. One really should stop here and not even try to see the light beneath the darkness. Sometimes mystery needs to remain mystery, especially when we speak of human foolishness. This is a mystery of the ages, as dark, as this dark square. Because it’s not black! No! It’s only dark! And it’s not a square! No! It’s only a quadrangle! And even its form represents doubt.
The sides of Malevich’s square are neither parallel to one another, nor are they parallel to the frame. Isn’t it a peach? No, it isn’t. It’s not a peach; it’s a quadrangle.
And dark color is a result of mixture of various paints, but not one of them was black.
It is considered that it was not negligence of the author, but a principled stand, the aspiration to create a dynamic, mobile form. It is. Its dynamism is impressive, shades are impressive as if they all come from a fairy tale 1001 nights. They do, really do. Every night the author escaping this world tried to draw his refuge in one black trait which was never black. 1001 nights he was doing this until he finally got this gorgeous ideal form, combining in itself he ugly of his world and the shadow of its perfection.
Malevich made his intention clear; he wanted to completely abandon depicting reality and instead invent a new world of shapes and forms. Trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world, He took refuge in the form of the square.’
Isn’t a peach? No, it is still a square.
It’s symbol of crowd’s ignorance and foolishness, and at the same time of a courage and arrogance of a human being. This eternal duel has two resolutions: a hero burns in fire or became a famous artist. It depends on time he was born and the level of stupidity of the crowd. Today it reaches the maximum. At the same time level of “to dare” is still a little bit more than zero. Usually one.
The world belongs to One.
The world belongs to this who dares!!!
The world belongs to the first.
The world belongs to this who sees different.
And these who don’t see, they have nothing to do but admire these who dared and succeeded, not because they understood their ideas, they did understand nothing at all, but because the crowd are always afraid to show its ignorance. This is the gold rule and it always works, especially in this black square.
We can’t say that the king is naked. We can’t say that the square is white. We risk to be accused for racism. We can’t say that it is red. It’s black. The artist sees it like this. Who are we to argue with the artist?
He dared; we admire. Not the square, but his arrogance. And everyone envies inside of him that it was not him who invented it. Of course, the most enthusiastic run drawing different forms of circles or triangles and sometimes they have chances to success but never this one to be the first to draw the black square.
So, this is a real monument to the human courage and arrogance and negligence and stupidity at the same time, the eternal fight of man a society where a person finds himself a winner. We always scare hate and admire these who dare.
The black square of Kazimir Malevich will forever remain in our memory as the mystery. What is it? 1001 shades of black, 1001 senses. A masterpiece, absence of ideas, crisis in Arts, political intrigues, game of vanity, prestige, PR, challenge, charlatanism. A simple black square or the ciphered philosophical message?
Of course, all of us will find the message. It says that it is multicolor cube.