What does the red square mean? What does the red square mean? "Black Square" is a political move

The painting was part of a triptych

The painting was part of a triptych that also included “Black Circle” and “Black Cross”. There were other works by the author at the exhibition (about three dozen), but, of course, they were all lost against the background of the “Black Square”: the scandalous canvas hung in the most prominent place - according to the principle of the “red” corner, where icons were placed in the huts. Naturally, many perceived the picture as a challenge to Orthodoxy and an anti-Christian gesture.

The creation of the “Black Square” was preceded by a period of experiments and searches

The creation of the “Black Square” was preceded by a period of experiments and searches. The Russian avant-garde was torn apart by numerous new artistic directions. Malevich worked simultaneously in cubism, futurism and “abstruse realism” until he reached Suprematism. The latter's method was to look at the earth from the outside. Therefore, in Suprematist paintings, as in outer space, the idea of ​​“up” and “down,” “left” and “right” disappears, and an independent world arises, correlated as an equal with universal world harmony.

The image of the black square as a symbol first appeared in Matyushin’s opera

The image of the black square as a symbol first appeared in Matyushin’s opera “Victory over the Sun,” for which Malevich created sketches of the scenery and costumes. Then the image meant a plastic expression of the victory of the active human creativity over the passive form of nature: a black square appeared instead of a solar circle.

A scene from the production of “Victory over the Sun” - a reconstruction performed by the Stas Namin Theater

Later, for the exhibition “0.10” at the Art Bureau of N. E. Dobychina, Malevich used the image of a black square to create a painting. The artists were given the opportunity to exhibit many works. Malevich’s friend Ivan Puni wrote to him: “I need to write a lot now. The room is very large, and if we, 10 people, paint 25 paintings, then it will only be possible.” Malevich signed 39 canvases, which occupied a separate room.

Of course, as often happens, in addition to official version creating a picture, there are stories. So, Malevich allegedly did not have time to finish the painting for the exhibition, and therefore rashly covered it up by painting a black square. At that moment, one of his friends came into the studio and, seeing the painting, shouted: “Brilliant!” Whether this is true or not, we will never know.

By the way, recent research by specialists from the Tretyakov Gallery suggests that under the black square there are colored geometric figures that are complexly connected to each other. Having taken an x-ray of the painting, the experts also saw Malevich’s fingerprints on the canvas (which is natural) and three words, two of which were read by museum staff as “Battle of the Negroes...”, the third is difficult to make out. The phrase refers to the famous monochrome painting by Alphonse Allais, “The Battle of the Negroes in a Cave in the Dead of Night,” created in 1882, a work that Malevich had never seen.

What was discovered under"Hblack square«

Malevich made several copies of “Black Square”

Subsequently, Malevich made several copies of “Black Square”. Now, in addition to the original of 1915, three more variants are known, differing in design, texture and color. The first copy was made in 1923 for the Venice Biennale (now kept in the Russian Museum), the second - in 1929 for personal exhibition Malevich in the Tretyakov Gallery.

The third option became the hero mysterious story. It was probably written in 1932, but it was not known then. Information about the painting first appeared in 1993, when a person whose name remains unknown brought the painting to the Samara branch of Inkombank as collateral for a loan. Subsequently, the owner did not claim the canvas, and it became the property of the bank. After the collapse of Inkombank in 1998, Malevich’s painting became the main asset in settlements with creditors. By agreement with the Russian government, “Black Square” was withdrawn from public auction, acquired by Vladimir Potanin and transferred to the Hermitage.

By the way, there are two more basic Suprematist squares - red and white. The artist argued: “The Suprematist three squares are the establishment of certain worldviews and world-building... black as a sign of economy, red as a signal of revolution, and white as pure action.”

"Red Square"

Malevich's funeral in 1935 was a performance

Malevich's funeral in 1935 was a kind of performance. At the civil memorial service in Leningrad, a “Black Square” hung at the head of the coffin; the body was covered with white canvas with a black square sewn on it. A “Black Square” was painted on the coffin lid from the side of the head. During funeral procession On Nevsky Prospekt, the Suprematist sarcophagus was installed on the open platform of a truck with a black square on the hood. On the carriage of the train transporting Malevich's coffin to Moscow, a black square was painted on a white background. At the civil memorial service in the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, the “Black Square” was mounted on a podium among flowers.

Malevich's daughter Una and widow Natalya Andreevna at the artist's grave in Nemchinovka

Malevich bequeathed to bury his ashes surrounded by nature, in open space. The Suprematist coffin was sent by train to Moscow, where Malevich was cremated. His ashes were buried in a field near the village of Nemchinovka. Instead of the monument, a white wooden cube with the image of a black square was installed. To the Great Patriotic War the grave disappeared, and now a residential complex has been built on that site.

Malevich's parents and he himself were Poles by origin

. Father Kazimir Malevich Severin Malevich (gentry of the Volyn province of Zhitomir district) and mother Ludvika (Ludviga Aleksandrovna, nee Galinovskaya) got married in Kiev on February 26, 1878 (old style).

My father worked as a manager at the sugar factory of the famous Ukrainian industrialist Tereshchenko in the village of Parkhomovka (Kharkov province).

Mother Ludviga Alexandrovna (1858-1942) was a housewife. The Malevich couple had fourteen children, but only nine of them lived to see mature age. Casimir was the first-born. He began to learn to draw on his own after his mother gave him a set of paints at the age of 15.

A Brief History of the Malevich Square

Malevich wrote his first squares - red and black - in 1914, ("But it (the square) has not yet been realized by the artist himself" (E. F. Kovtun) "The Beginning of Suprematism"), and in 1915 Malevich wrote a letter to Matyushin, who was going to republish the drawings for the opera “Victory over the Sun” (Malevich performed sketches of the scenery for this opera): “The curtain depicts a black square - the embryo of all possibilities, which takes in its development terrible force(underlined by me L.P.) He is the ancestor of the cube and the ball (the circle, note, is not mentioned by L.P.). Some critics called Malevich's square the Mona Lisa of the 20th century, which helped me discover Leonard's square - "the germ of all possibilities."

And the genius of Malevich the artist, who more than once declared that the black square is “zero”, “a step beyond zero”, “the death of painting”, etc. turned out to be visionary - his BLACK SQUARE symbolizes the death not of painting, but of the Russia in which he lived. This is where his terrible power lies.

Black square.

The painting was painted by Malevich in the summer and autumn of 1915.

According to the artist, he wrote it for several months. Subsequently, Malevich wrote several copies of “Black Square” (according to some sources, seven).

It is reliably known that in the period from 1915 to the early 1930s, Malevich created four versions of the “Black Square”, which differ in design, texture and color.

According to the artist himself, “Square” occupied central place in his work. “I couldn’t eat or sleep for a long time,” said Malevich, “and I myself didn’t understand what I’d done.”

“Right-wing” art criticism perceived “Black Square” as a defiant anti-Christian gesture. The largest at that time art critic, founder of the association

"World of Art" Alexander Benois wrote immediately after the exhibition: “Undoubtedly, this is the icon that the futurists, gentlemen, put in place of the Madonna.” “Left” criticism understood “Square” in the same way, but reacted to it enthusiastically. Malevich himself, in his lectures on art, called “Square” the “Royal Child,” thereby bringing “Square” closer to the image of Christ.

During the Vitebsk period of creativity, the interpretation of “Square” changed. UNOVIS leaflet No. 1, published in Vitebsk on November 20, 1920, said: “Let the overthrow of the old world of art be inscribed on your palms. Wear a black square as a sign of world economy.”

Subsequently, some researchers associated the “Square” with Jewish motifs in the works of Malevich. Leonid Katsis in his work The Ideology of Vitebsk Unovis, the Jerusalem Temple and the Talmud elevates the “Black Square” to tefillin. Tefillin is a ritual item worn by Jews when praying. It is clear that a black cube on a black background will give us the desired “black square on a black background.” The same author records the fact that some participants in the Suprematist movement wore “black squares”.

“Square” is sometimes contrasted with the so-called. "white dragon", a blank sheet without a drawing, having symbolic meaning in Taoism.

A huge number of articles, books and other things have been written about the “Black Square”, many paintings have been created inspired by this thing, and the more time passes since the day it was written, the more we need this riddle, which has no answer or, conversely, has an infinite number of answers. quantity". The uniqueness of Malevich's painting lies in the fact that it has a large number of possible interpretations.

Red Square.

Painting by Kazimir Malevich, painted in 1915.

Titled "Woman in Two Dimensions" on the back. It is a red quadrangle on a white background, slightly different in shape from a square. It is noted that the “Red Square”, like the “Black Square”, has the property that the area of ​​the white background is equal to the area of ​​the shaded square.

Tolstoy’s story “Notes of a Madman” describes the room where Fyodor begins to experience mortal melancholy: “A clean whitewashed square room. I remember how painful it was for me that this room was exactly square. There was one window with a red curtain.” That is, a red square on a white background is, in fact, a symbol of melancholy. Malevich himself explained the concept of his first “Black Square” that “the square is a feeling, the white space is the emptiness behind this feeling.”

The red square on a white background graphically depicts the fear of death and emptiness.

The painting was painted by the artist in 1916.

In 1919-20 she exhibited in Moscow. In 1927, Malevich exhibited the painting at exhibitions in Warsaw, and later in Berlin, where the painting remained after Kazimir left for the USSR in June 1927. The painting was later transferred to German architect Hugo Hering, who sold it to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where it was kept for about 50 years.

Throughout the 20th century, the painting was repeatedly exhibited at various exhibitions, mainly European. The Amsterdam collection of Malevich's works is the largest outside former USSR- was acquired by the city authorities in 1958 for a substantial sum at that time of 120 thousand guilders from the heirs famous architect Hugo Haring. He took these paintings out of Nazi Germany, where they were subject to destruction as “degenerate art.” Malevich’s paintings fell into Haring’s hands by accident: the artist left more than a hundred canvases under his supervision in 1927, when they were exhibited in Berlin, and the author himself was urgently summoned to his homeland.

When in 2003-2004. The museum exhibited Malevich's paintings in the United States; the artist's heirs challenged the rights of Haring (and, accordingly, the museum) to dispose of them. After a 4-year trial, the parties came to a settlement agreement, under the terms of which the museum lost five significant paintings from your collection. . After 17 years of legal disputes, the painting was returned to the artist's heirs.

On November 3, 2008, at Sotheby's auction in New York, the painting was sold to an unknown buyer for $60,002,500, becoming one of the most expensive paintings in a story written by a Russian artist[

Available in several versions.

First“Black Circle” was painted in 1915 and was exhibited at the “Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings “0.10”. Now kept in a private collection.

Second a version of the painting was created by Malevich’s students (A. Leporskaya, K. Rozhdestvensky, N. Suetin) under his leadership. This painting is included in the triptych: “Black Square” - “Black Cross” - “Black Circle”. Currently kept in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

Pronounced with a purely Rostov “hack,” the word, terrible for any housewife, terrified even more, and only a few seconds later a reasonable thought arose: “GMOs in toothpaste? This is something new” I took the tube and carefully looked at the composition: there are no plant components at all where do genetically modified products come from here? “Look in the wrong place,” they morally explained to me. Look: at the tip of the tube, yes, where is the date? Do you see a red square? This means it’s dangerous, they added some nasty stuff and GMOs to save money. It’s them, the bastards, who are making a note for their own people"

To my reasonable “How do you know?” The caring lady explained: she read it on the Internet. What she said next, I admit, I didn’t even listen: I threw the tube into the basket and rushed to other counters. It seems they were shouting after me something about indifference to the lives of loved ones, general carelessness and even about a global conspiracy of industrialists

Already at home, I found an article on social networks that “educated” my random interlocutor about “warning symbols” on tubes: black contains harmful substances, red consists of more than 60% chemicals, green is made entirely from plant components. And I also found a refutation of this “discovery”: these squares are light marks by which the equipment separates the tubes from one another, and the color depends solely on the dye, which this moment poured into the car.

And it seems that an adult should not believe in such dregs at all, but the number of reprints of this disinformation was depressing. Add the phrase “sales growth” to the line of the Internet search engine bingo! The phenomenon of the red square attracted the attention of analysts, who found out that after the appearance of this bike about a year ago, sales increased significantly cosmetic products a number of Russian factories of one transnational company (which, apparently, simply used green paint). Why did it happen?

Off the top of my head I can remember a lot of similar things. For example, the story about the “sudden depletion of salt deposits,” which gave rise to a month and a half of frantic buying and an increase in the price of an ordinary briquette of table salt from a ruble to fifty. Do you remember the “buckwheat fever”? And what about the regular “leaks at nuclear power plants” and the instant disappearance of all kinds of iodine-containing dietary supplements on the shelves?! By the way, after the final decline of the wave of hysteria, the prices for these products did not fall to the original level The basis of all these phenomena was an “accidentally” abandoned rumor without any confirmation. With skillful and well-paid promotion, it has every chance of becoming an axiom “everyone knows about it.”

And this concerns not only the manipulation of consumer demand. According to the same principle, “ public opinion» in high-profile criminal cases, and especially in Lately and political. And they act on exactly the same principle as the “revelation about the red square” - people worry, and someone takes dividends from this.

We do not urge you not to believe at all in what you hear or read; it is enough just to be critical of such information. After reading the next “exposure”, do not forget to think: who might be interested in such a “leak of classified information” and how competent the author is. For, as Sherlock Holmes said, “information received from the lips of others must be checked twice.”

And from the Internet three times.

1. Black suprematist square, 1915
Canvas, oil. 79.5×79.5 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The most famous work Kazimir Malevich, created in 1915 specifically for the final futurist exhibition “0.10”, which opened in St. Petersburg on December 19, 1915. “Black Square” is part of the cycle of suprematist (from Latin supremus - highest) works by Kazimir Malevich. Being a type of abstract art, Suprematism was expressed in combinations of multi-colored planes of the simplest geometric shapes devoid of pictorial meaning. Suprematist works occupied a separate exhibition hall. Among the thirty-nine Suprematist paintings, in the most prominent place, in the so-called “red corner”, where icons are usually hung in Russian houses, hung the “Black Square”.
“Black Square” is part of the cycle of Suprematist works by Kazimir Malevich, in which the artist explored the basic possibilities of color and composition; is, according to plan, part of a triptych, which also contains the “Black Circle” and “Black Cross”.
The “black square” has neither top nor bottom, approximately equal distances separate the edges of the square from the vertical and horizontal lines frames Few deviations from pure geometry remind viewers that the picture was, after all, painted with a brush, that the artist did not resort to compasses and rulers, he drew an elementary geoform “by eye”, and became familiar with it. inner meaning intuition. We are used to thinking that the background of the “Black Square” is white. In fact, it is the color of baked milk. And in the abrupt strokes of the background, different layers of paint alternate - thin and dense. But on the black plane it is impossible to find a single brush mark - the square looks uniform.
Attempts by convinced fans of figurative art alone, who believe that the artist is misleading them, to examine the canvas to find something else original version under the top layer of painting were performed repeatedly. However, technological examination did not confirm the presence of any other image on this canvas.
Subsequently, Malevich, for various purposes, performed several original repetitions of “Black Square”. There are now four known versions of the “Black Square”, differing in design, texture and color. All copyright repetitions of the painting are stored in Russia, in state assemblies: two works in the Tretyakov Gallery, one in the Russian Museum and one in the Hermitage.
It is interesting that in 1893, a painting by Alphonse Allais with a blank black field of canvas was exhibited, entitled “Battle of the Negroes in deep cave dark night."

2. Black circle, 1923
Canvas, oil. 106×105.5 cm

3. Red Square, 1915
Canvas, oil. 53×53 cm
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

4. Red cavalry gallops, 1928-1932
Canvas, oil. 91×140 cm
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

5. Suprematist composition, 1916
Canvas, oil. 88.5 cm×71 cm cm
Private collection

6. Winter landscape, 1930
Canvas, oil. 54x48.5 cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

7. Cow and violin, 1913
Oil on wood 48.8 x 25.8 cm.
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

8. Grinder, 1913
Oil on canvas 79.5x79.5 cm
Art Gallery Yale University

9. Reaper, 1912
Oil on canvas 68x60 cm
Astrakhan regional Art Gallery them. B.M. Kustodieva, Astrakhan

10. Self-portrait, 1933
Oil on canvas 73 x 66 cm
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Marek Raczkowski.

Of course, everyone knows this, but I’ll probably collect everything in one place. It is quite possible that you will discover something new in this topic.

In 1882 (33 years before Malevich’s “Black Square”), at the “Exposition des Arts Incohérents” exhibition in Paris, the poet Paul Bilot presented the painting “Combat de nègres dans un tunnel” (“Battle of Negroes in a Tunnel”). True, it was not a square, but a rectangle.

The French journalist, writer and eccentric humorist Alphonse Allais liked the idea so much that he developed it further in 1893, calling his black rectangle “Combat de nègres dans une cave, pendant la nuit” (“Battle of the Negroes in a Cave in the Dead of Night”). The painting was first exhibited at the exhibition “Untethered Art” at the Vivienne Gallery.

This masterpiece looked like this:

Further more. Both the white and red squares were also first depicted by Allais Alphonse. " White square"was called "The First Communion of Unfeeling Girls in the Snow" (also performed in 1883). This masterpiece looked like this:

Six months later, next picture Alphonse Allais was perceived as a kind of "coloristic explosion". The rectangular landscape “Harvesting tomatoes on the shores of the Red Sea by apoplectic cardinals” was a bright red monochrome painting without the slightest sign of an image (1894).

Alle Alphonse's paintings were perceived as pure banter and shocking - in fact, this is the only idea their names suggest to us. Apparently this is why we know so little about this artist.

Thus, twenty years before the Suprematist revelations of Kazimir Malevich, the venerable artist Alphonse Allais became the “unknown author” of the first abstract paintings. Alphonse Allais also became famous for the fact that almost seventy years later he unexpectedly anticipated the famous minimalist musical piece“4′33″” by John Cage, which is four and a half “minutes of silence.” Perhaps the only difference between Alphonse Allais and his followers was that, while exhibiting his stunningly innovative works, he did not at all try to look like a significant philosopher or a serious pioneer.

Who is he? Alphonse Hallais (20 October 1854, Honfleur (department of Calvados) - 28 October 1905, Paris) - French journalist, eccentric writer and dark humorist, known for his sharp tongue and dark absurdist antics, which anticipated the famous shocking exhibitions of the Dadaists and surrealists of the 1910s by a quarter of a century. x and 1920s.

Alphonse Allais was an eccentric writer, an eccentric artist and an eccentric person almost all his life. He was eccentric not only in his aphorisms, fairy tales, poems or paintings, but also in his everyday behavior.

Having quickly completed his studies and having received the title of bachelor by the age of seventeen, Alphonse Allais (as an assistant or trainee) entered his own father’s pharmacy.

Alphonse's father, with great pride, outlined for him a career as a great chemist or pharmacist. The future will show: Alphonse Allais brilliantly lived up to the hopes of his pharmacy father. He became more than a chemist and more than a pharmacist. However, even the very beginning of his activity in the family pharmacy has already turned out to be very promising. As a debut, Alphonse conducted several bold experiments on influencing patients with a high-quality placebo of his original recipe, synthesized original counterfeit drugs, and also made several unusually interesting diagnoses with his own hands. He will be happy to talk about his first small pharmacy triumphs a little later, in his fairy tale: “The Heights of Darwinism.”

“...I also found something for a lady who suffered severely from stomach pain:

Lady: - I don’t know what’s wrong with me, first the food rises to the top, and then goes down...

Alphonse: “Excuse me, madam, did you accidentally swallow the elevator?”

(Alphonse Allais, “I laughed!”)

Having seen the very first successes of his son in the field of pharmaceuticals, his father gladly sent him from Honfleur to Paris, where Alphonse Allais spent the rest of his life.

His father sent him to do an internship at the pharmacy of one of his close friends. For more close examination, a few years later this pharmacy turned out to be a privileged Masonic cabaret " Black cat", where Alphonse Allais continued to compose his recipes and heal the sick with great success. He was engaged in this respected business almost until the end of his life. His friendship with Charles Cros (the famous inventor of the phonograph) should have brought him back to scientific research, but these plans again were not destined to come true. Fundamental scientific works Alphonse Allais's works represent contributions to science, although today they are much less famous than himself. Alphonse Allais managed to publish his most serious research on color photography, as well as extensive work on the synthesis of rubber (and rubber stretching). In addition, he received a patent for his own recipe for making freeze-dried coffee.

At the age of 41, Alphonse Allais married Marguerite Allais in 1895.

He died in one of the rooms of the Britannia Hotel, where Alphonse Allais spent a lot of his free time. The day before, the doctor had strictly prescribed him to stay in bed for six months, only then would recovery be possible. Otherwise - death. “Funny people, these doctors! They seriously think that death is worse than six months in bed! As soon as the doctor disappeared through the door, Alphonse Allais quickly got ready and spent the evening in a restaurant, and to the friend who accompanied him back to the hotel, he told his last anecdote:

“Keep in mind, tomorrow I will already be a corpse! You will find it witty, but I will no longer laugh with you. Now you will be left laughing - without me. So tomorrow I'll be dead! In full accordance with his last funny joke, he died the next day, October 28, 1905.

Alphonse Allais was buried at Paris cemetery Saint-Ouen. 39 years later, in April 1944, his grave was wiped off the face of the earth and disappeared without the slightest trace under the friendly bombs of the French liberation army of Charles de Gaulle. In 2005, the imaginary remains of Alphonse Allais were ceremoniously (with great pomp) transferred to the “top” of the Montmartre hill.

After World War II, the political Association of Absolute Apologists of Alphonse Allais (abbreviated as “A.A.A.A.A.”) was organized in France and is still active. This close-knit group of fanatical people is a public body in which Alphonse’s humor is valued above all other delights of life. AAAA, among other things, has its legal address, bank account and headquarters in the “Smallest Museum of Alphonse Allais” on the Upper Street of Honfleur (Calvados, Normandy, Pharmacy).

Every Saturday in the late afternoon, the Alphonse Museum is open to everyone for free. Visitors can enjoy laboratory experiments “a la Halle”, chemical tastings “a la Halle”, diagnoses “a la Halle”, inexpensive (but very effective) stomach pills “pur Alle” and even a direct conversation on the old telephone “Allo” "Alla." All of these services can be obtained in just half an hour in the gloomy backstage of the Honfleur pharmacy, where Alphonse Allais was born. This extremely cramped space has also been declared the smallest museum in the world, not excluding the world's smallest museum, the "authentic room" of Alphonse Allais in Paris, and the most small museum"Eric Satie's Closet" at the French Ministry of Culture. These three smallest museums in the world are vying for the title of who is the smallest. Permanent tour guide Alla long years there is a certain man, Jean-Yves Loriot, who constantly carries with him an official document confirming that he is the illegal reincarnation of the great humorist Alphonse Allais.

Alphonse Allais broke with pharmacies and began publishing regularly a very long time ago, it seems that it was in 1880-82. Alphonse's first careless story marked the beginning of his 25-year writing life. He did not tolerate order in anything and directly stated, “Don’t even hope for it, I am dishonest.” I wrote in a cafe, in fits and starts, almost didn’t work on books, and it looked something like this: “Don’t talk nonsense... for me to sit without taking my ass off and pored over a book? - this is incredibly funny! No, I’d rather tear it off anyway!”

Mostly him literary creativity consists of stories and fairy tales, which he wrote on average two or three times a week. Having the “heavy duty” of writing a ridiculous column, and sometimes even an entire column in a magazine or newspaper, he inevitably had to “laugh for money” almost every other day. During his life he changed seven newspapers, some of them in succession, and three at the same time.

Thus, first of all, a living eccentric, then a bit of a journalist and editor, and only lastly a writer, Alle worked forever in a hurry, wrote dozens of his “fairy tales”, hundreds of short stories and thousands of articles on his left knee, in a hurry and, most often, at a table (or under a table) in a cafe. Therefore, much of his work was lost, even more lost its value, but most of all - it remained on the tip of the tongue - unwritten.

Alphonse Allais never settled on just one thing. He wanted to write everything at once, to cover everything, to succeed at everything, but at nothing in particular. Even clean literary genres he always gets confused, falls apart and replaces one another. Under the guise of articles, he wrote stories, under the name of fairy tales - he described his acquaintances, instead of poetry he wrote puns, said “fables” - but he meant black humor, and even scientific inventions in his hands took on a cruel form of satire on human science and human nature ...

In addition to studying literature “under a table in a cafe,” Alphonse Allais had many more important responsibilities for society in his life.

In particular, he was a member of the board of the Honorary Hydropaths Club, as well as one of the main participants accepted into the governing bodies of the Black Cat Masonic cabaret. It was there, at the Vivien Gallery, during the “Untethered Art” exhibitions, that he first exhibited his famous monochrome paintings.

Perhaps the only difference between Alphonse Allais and his followers was that, while exhibiting his stunningly innovative works, he did not at all try to look like a significant philosopher or a serious pioneer. This is, perhaps, what caused the lack of professional recognition of his contribution to the history of art. With his works in the field of painting, Alphonse Allais very accurately explained a thesis as old as time: “It’s not so important what you do, it’s much more important how you present it.”

In 1897, he composed and “performed” the “Funeral March for the Funeral of the Great Deaf Man,” which, however, did not contain a single note. Only silence, as a sign of respect for death and understanding of the important principle that great sorrows are silent. They do not tolerate any fuss or sounds. It goes without saying that the score for this march was a blank page of music paper.

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”

“...Money makes even poverty easier to bear, isn’t it?”

“The hardest thing to get through is the end of the month, especially the last thirty days.”

“While we are wondering how best to kill time, time is methodically killing us.”

“Moving away is quite a bit of dying. But to die is to drive away a lot!”

“...As the widow of a man who died after a consultation said three best doctors of Paris: “But what could he do alone, sick, against three healthy ones?”

“...We need to be more tolerant of man, but let’s not forget about the primitive era in which he was created.”

(Alphonse Allais, “Things”)

What about Malevich's square?

Kazimir Malevich wrote his “Black Square” in 1915. This canvas measures 79.5 by 79.5 centimeters, which depicts a black square on a white background, painted with a thin brush. According to the artist, he wrote it for several months.

Black Square 1915 Malevich,

Reference:

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born (11) February 23, 1878 near Kyiv. However, there is other information about the place and time of his birth. Malevich's parents were Poles by origin. His father worked as a manager at the sugar factory of the famous Ukrainian industrialist Tereshchenko (according to other sources, Malevich’s father was a Belarusian ethnographer and folklorist). Mother was a housewife. The Malevichs had fourteen children, but only nine of them lived to adulthood. Kazimir was the first-born in the family.

He began to learn to draw on his own after his mother gave him a set of paints at the age of 15. At the age of 17 he spent some time in Kievskaya art school. In 1896, the Malevich family settled in Kursk. There Kazimir worked as a minor official, but quit his service to pursue a career as an artist. Malevich's first works were written in the style of impressionism. Later artist became one of the active participants in futuristic exhibitions.

To us, K. Malevich’s life seems incredibly eventful, full of contrasts, ups and downs. But in the opinion of the master himself, it was not too long and eventful, as he dreamed. For a long time Malevich dreamed of visiting Paris, but he never managed to do it. He visited abroad only in Warsaw and Berlin. Malevich did not know foreign languages, which he greatly regretted throughout his life. He did not travel further than Zhitomir. He was unable to experience many of the aesthetic and everyday joys available to his wealthier and more educated colleagues.

"On the Boulevard", 1903

"Flower Girl", 1903

"The Grinder" 1912

Malevich independently went all the way from a modest self-taught man to a world-famous artist, he took part in two revolutions, wrote futuristic poems, reformed the theater, spoke at scandalous debates, was fond of theosophy and astronomy, taught, wrote philosophical works, was in prison, was the director of a reputable institute and unemployed... Punin wrote that Malevich belonged to those people who were “charged with dynamite.” Not every one of them famous artists could so polarize public opinion. Malevich was always surrounded by devoted friends and passionate rivals; he provoked the harshest abuse from critics, “his students idolized him like Napoleon’s army.” Even in our time, you can meet people who have a sharply opposite attitude towards both Malevich’s legacy and his personal human qualities.

The whole meaning of Malevich's life was art. Malevich brought the explosive energy characteristic of his character into his work. His evolution as a painter truly resembles a series of explosions and catastrophes. They were not particularly spontaneous; the researchers said that it was a “testing ground” where the art of painting tested and honed its new capabilities.” Based on this, one can determine the trends in the history of art at the beginning of the 20th century. Malevich was an outstanding artist who contributed to the development of art of that time.

Malevich’s “Square” was written for an exhibition held in a huge hall. According to one version, the artist was unable to complete the painting on time, so he had to cover the work with black paint. Subsequently, after public recognition, Malevich painted new “Black Squares” on blank canvases. Attempts to examine the canvas to find the original version under the top layer were made repeatedly. However, scientists and critics believed that irreparable damage could be caused to the masterpiece.

Wikipedia tells us that Malevich actually has not one Black Square, but four:

*Currently there are four “Black Squares” in Russia: in Moscow and St. Petersburg there are two “Squares” each: two in the Tretyakov Gallery, one in the Russian Museum and one in the Hermitage. One of the works belongs to Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin, who purchased it from Inkombank in 2002 for 1 million US dollars (about 28 million rubles) and transferred it to the Hermitage for indefinite storage.

Black Square 1923 Malevich, Wikipedia

Black Square 1929 Malevich, Wikipedia

Black square 1930s Malevich, Wikipedia

Malevich has a Red Square and a White Square, and much more. But for some reason it was this Black Square that gained worldwide fame. However, not only is it not a square drawn in Malevich’s painting (the corners are not right!), but it is also not completely black (at least the file with the painting contains about 18,000 colors),

Wise art critics write:

The conceptual content of “Black Square” is, first of all, to bring the viewer’s consciousness into the space of another dimension, to that single Suprematist plane, both economic and economic. In this space of a different dimension, three main directions can be distinguished - supremacy, economy and economy. The form itself in Suprematism, due to its non-objectivity, does not depict anything. On the contrary, it destroys things and acquires meaning as a primary element, completely subordinated to the economic principle, which in symbolic expression is “zero forms”, “black square”.

Again, considering that black, objectified and expressed in the form of a “black square,” is inextricably linked with a white background and without it, the manifestation of color always remains incomplete and dull. This reveals another, no less significant formula for the “black square” as a symbol: “Black square” is an expression of the unity of opposite colors. In this most generalized formula, black and white can be expressed as light and non-light, as two attributes of the Absolute, existing both inseparably and unmerged. That is, they exist as one, one - thanks to which one is on the other

And of course, I can’t help but recall an excerpt from a well-known film: