Essay by Randy Morris on Tom Chambers' "Pixelscapes and Malevich's 'Black Square'"


On Diamonds, Suprematism, and Putin
By Randy Morris

Tom Chambers photo essay on suprematism (on the MOCA website), and his brief mention of Malevich's repression in Stalinist Russia, brought to mind disparate but compelling associations which led to this article.

Over the last year I read a news story about a company that makes diamonds from cremation ashes to commemorate a loved one. The article implied that the quality of the resultant diamond depended on the chemical composition of the deceased, a claim I found dubious. We can turn highly refined carbon into diamonds, but the refining of the carbon, if at all effective in achieving the high purity required to grow diamond crystals, should not depend much on the source of carbon. If one decided to use the product of living material as a carbon source, almost anything would work, from bacterial sludge, to road kill, to garden debris.

The diamond that results, except for the inevitable but minute amounts of contaminate and flaws in the crystalline structure, is absolutely repetitive, boring and information free at the atomic level, devoid of any of the complexity and almost infinite variability of life. With a surface cut with symmetric facets the diamond jewel sparkles in the light, and satisfies our appreciation of rare, durable, small shiny things that can be worn as ornament. The emotion we attach to that ornament does not come from any appreciation of the beauty of the carbon source, which the diamond must shed by its nature. Indeed, if we want to best commemorate the death of one we love, we refine out as much of their chemical nature as possible, and repel any other contaminates from outside life, to leave the purest, clearest, whitest diamond crystal. The diamond becomes a symbol, a perfect digit, sublime in its beauty and perfection, in its ability to endure and glitter.

So too, as Tom Chambers clearly illustrates, suprematism reduces any picture that has been pixilated into black and white. As known to any of us technically minded enough to engage in "digital art", any black and white photo may be represented convincingly this way, given enough pixels. Suprematism from every picture, selects a small number of squares of black and white. Just like a diamond lacks the structure of its carbon source, the resulting squares are devoid of any of the information content of the original picture. Indeed, that seems to be the point of the operation. The squares become a symbol, sublime in their simplicity, in their purity.

But what do they symbolize? The process of digitization is interesting but not something you want to spend endless hours in an art gallery contemplating, at least not this author. It doesn't seem convincing as a way to commemorate someone, like a diamond might. You don't put an assemblage of black and white squares in an art gallery and say, "These squares commemorate my mother in death." At least I don't think I've ever seen that done. From Tom Chambers' article, Malevich said that his square inspired within him, "a feeling a non-objectivity". I think Malevich intends non-objective to describe abstract artworks that have no direct visual referents, i.e., no objects to which they refer in the outside world. This is consistent with the process of suprematism, since the resultant quintessential black square on a white foreground, refers to either none or all of the possible pictures from which it may come.

The completed process of suprematism seems rather pointless, like taking a computer full of binary data and reducing all of it to a one and a zero. It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer convinces a car salesman to test drive a new car until the gas tank runs dry. When the car finally sputters to a halt on the highway, both are dumbstruck until Kramer, ever the pragmatist, decides to hoof it. I like this as a metaphor for modern art movements which insist they're rooted in non-objective minimalism. I do not know whether Malevich ever suffered from a sense of anti-climax. According to Tom Chambers' article, Malevich explained that, "A blissful sense of liberating non-objectivity drew me forth into a 'desert', where nothing is real except feeling." I cannot tell from Tom Chambers' article, or any of the quotes from Malevich, exactly what real feelings Malevich was experiencing, let alone what real feelings Malevich intended a black square on a white foreground to induce in anyone viewing his art. If Malevich intended us to feel liberated as he did upon viewing his squares, then as far as I am concerned, he failed utterly as an artist.

Malevich clearly tried to banish any social agenda from his art, since he stated, "Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to have nothing further to do with the object, as such, and believes that it can exist, in and for itself, without 'things' (that is, the "time-tested well-spring of life")." Tom Chambers refers to this as being anti-materialist and anti-utilitarian, meaning, I guess, a work that refers to a pure mental state, and perhaps more to the point, a very minimalistic mental state. Again I fail to see what feelings, what mental state, can be expressed by a black square on a white foreground.

However, Malevich's lack of social agenda apparently got him into trouble with the Stalinists, since they banned his work and other abstract art as 'bourgeois' for its failure to express social realities. So the art critics of Stalinist Russia agreed that Malevich achieved his intent, but felt that this intent was "bourgeois" and therefore subversive. It is hard to understand how Malevich's anti-materialistic views could be labeled 'bourgeois', except by the corruption of logic employed by an authoritarian or fascistic state that considers subversive any expression that does not directly support the goals of the leadership. Authoritarian and fascist leaders seek to reduce life to either "obey us", or 'become an enemy of the state", a one, or a zero.

Putin, Stalin's successor, has become an openly fascist leader, steadily restricting the civil liberties of Russian citizens, making sexual orientations other than heterosexuality illegal, sending musicians to prison (Pussy Riot) for political protest, now threatening Ukraine and sponsoring fascist, racist Russian speaking terrorist groups within former Soviet States. The longer he remains in power the more he will try to control, to 'correct' his citizens, including Russian artists. It is just a matter of time.

Art that comes to us from the past was never good at supporting the goals of authoritarian leaderships, either secular or religious. The art of the Vatican endures because of its humanism rather than its ideology. In the free world, we mostly restrict our creativity through self-imposed dogma. Perhaps the real threat posed by fascist and theocratic states will bring greater appreciation for the full spectrum of creative potential that comes from a free mind. Unfortunately, as long as Putin remains, Russian artists, especially the heirs of Malevich, can look forward to repression, and an encroaching aesthetic "desert" like the Stalinist era.

April, 2014

Go to:
Tom Chambers' "Pixelscapes and Malevich's 'Black Square'" exhibit on the MOCA site

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