Malevich square in five minutes

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-10 19:46

Can't art be abstract? Then where is the line between mediocrity and difficult art for perception? Can thousands of art critics make mistakes, and common sense will be trampled upon? It seems to me that the idea of a continuous and unidirectional development of mankind is somewhat exaggerated. That people, as a human civilization, are just developing, and from year to year they are better and smarter. Ed.

With my granddaughter, before she grew up, I often visited museums in Moscow. I tried from an early age to introduce her to the beautiful. To the Beautiful with a capital letter. She began to drive her around the age of seven, in front of the school itself - the most, it would seem, the right age for active perception of the surrounding reality. Naturally, the first trip was to the Tretyakov Gallery, then to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. And what, I remember, was very struck by her from the very first visits to our museums, so it was her complete indifference to all types of unrealistic art, whose magnificent collection was then in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Then I sincerely thought it was a child. due to his natural age-related underdevelopment, he no longer lives in the real world around him, but in his own, fictional and unlike our adult, children's world. Therefore, some unrealistic arts should be closer to its perception, something like impressionism, abstract art, applied, avant-garde, or, at worst, primitive art. That is, those types of art where the child's fantasy and imagination works more than the nature of the artist himself, fixed by his gaze and transferred to the canvas with a brush, is indicated. However, I was wrong.

The granddaughter turned out to be completely indifferent to all manifestations of old and newfangled "isms" in the visual arts. But the paintings, painted in a realistic manner, immediately interested her very, very much. And it turned out to be completely irrelevant to her what exactly was depicted on the canvas. She examined portraits, genre sketches, landscapes, and large dramatic canvases on historical and biblical themes with equal interest. And the views of the sea in the paintings of Aivazovsky immediately amazed her. It was something new in her knowledge and perception of the surrounding reality. She had not yet seen the sea and, in essence, did not know what it was. She stood for a long time in front of the large canvas of "The Ninth Wave", going in, now to the right, now to the left of the picture, now coming very close, now moving away from it.

The ninth wave. Aivazovsky

She diligently wrinkled her forehead, screwed up her eyes or opened her eyes wide and even moved her lips, as if whispering something to herself, then turned to me and asked:

- Grandpa, will we go to the sea someday?

I nodded my head in the affirmative. Naturally, we went to the sea. Only later. After few years. However, the Black Sea did not make much of an impression on her. And she never compared it to the Aivazovsky sea in my presence. Either I forgot, or I didn’t find the similarities.

It cannot be said that all the pictures we met in museums were unfamiliar revelations for the granddaughter. Not at all. She was already familiar with most of them. According to the illustrations. Based on illustrations of the one-volume encyclopedia of world painting, published in the 90s by the publishing house "OLMA-PRESS". A large, colorfully designed volume with magnificent color illustrations of paintings by foreign and domestic artists of both the classical style and various newfangled trends there. This encyclopedia was the granddaughter's favorite book. She could play with her for hours. She put this encyclopedia on her table, sat down next to her on her chair, opened the book on any page and began to play her own, not too much for us, adults, understandable games.

Therefore, many museum paintings turned out to be familiar to her and she met them as her family and friends.

Seeing Shishkin's painting "Morning in a Pine Forest", she happily threw up her hands:

- Oh, my bears, and you are here! Hi guys! Well, how are you not bored here without me? I'm glad to see you!

"Morning in a pine forest". Shishkin

At Repinsky's “Ivan the Terrible Killing His Son,” she frowned and angrily shook her finger at him:

- Oo-oo-oo-oo! And you are here! Bad grandfather!

In front of Kuindzhev's "Moonlit Night on the Dnieper" she stood for a long, long time, then she sighed and said quietly:

- And you are better here than me …

Kuindzhi "Moonlit Night on the Dnieper"

She greeted the three heroes of Vasnetsov, as with relatives, each separately by the hand, stretching out her little palm to them:

- Hello, Alyosha Popovich! Hello, Ilya Muromets! Hello, Dobrynya Nikitich!

Heroes. Vasnetsov

Seeing Alyonushka sitting on a stone by the pool, she sighed and said quietly:

- Hello, Alyonushka! Hello dear! Didn't you save your brother too? Do not Cry! Do not! He will come back to you! Alive! I promise!

Alyonushka. Vasnetsov

And rarely did she comment on any painting in the museum, left without her attention, without her comments, with which she would not have spoken, had not spoken. And she spoke to them as to living beings, dear and close to her, finding for each of them her own words and her own intonation.

And, perhaps, the only one whom she did not comment on, with whom she did not speak, with whom she did not speak, was Vrubel's “Sitting Demon”. She stood for a long, long time in front of the picture, stood motionless, without moving, without uttering a word, and not noticing anyone or anything around. She seemed to freeze from the sudden rush of feelings and emotions. Then she sighed, shook her head, and walked on. I didn't watch anything else in the Vrubel's halls. And on "Defeated Demon" did not pay any attention at all, looked indifferently and blindly. So understand them, these future women!

Demon sitting. Vrubel

She also stood for a long time in front of the portrait of Princess Struyskaya, painted by Rokotov. She knew about this portrait from the encyclopedia and from Zabolotsky's poem, which we had learned by heart for a long time. But then she did not directly connect the lines of the poem with the portrait in the illustration. And she was right. Illustration is illustration. An illustration is a picture that has little to do with a living person! Well, of course there are similarities! But this resemblance is illusory, not alive! And now she is standing in front of a real portrait of Princess Struyskaya, serious, focused and even somewhat tense, as if she met with Struyskaya herself, a lively, beautiful, elegant and very bright woman, from whose face it is impossible to look away.

"Portrait of A. P. Struyskaya" by Rokotov

Only the eyes of this woman are so sad that it's time to cry and she quietly, in a whisper, utters the lines from Zabolotsky's poem:

Her eyes are like two mists

Half smile, half cry

Her eyes are like two deceptions

Shrouded in the mist of failure.

Before Vodka's "Bathing the Red Horse" she froze in shock and even opened her mouth in amazement, then said with admiration:

- Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

But the greatest impression on her was made by Ivanov's painting "The Appearance of the Messiah to the People," which then occupied the entire back wall of one of the halls of the museum. It's hard to say why? Either the actual size of the picture amazed her, or something else. Do not know. After all, she saw her in an illustration in an encyclopedia. However, the illustration only gives a general idea of the picture, and that is rather vague. Only the work itself in nature carries the thoughts and feelings of the artist, which filled him while working on the picture, his energy and his will. And the granddaughter was simply stunned by what she saw. Ivanov's huge canvas literally captivated her. She could stand there for hours, silently peering into the picture and not paying attention to anyone or anything! She stood, looked and for some reason sighed in silence.

In the halls with abstract and avant-garde art, she did not linger, snorting disdainfully:

- Ugh! And I can do it!

I tried to intelligibly explain to her the meaning of these types of art on the example of Malevich's "Square", but she did not particularly listen to me. She interrupted me and simply asked:

- Grandpa! And if I take my paints and draw the same square on a sheet of paper, will it be taken to the museum?

I replied that no. She asked

- Why, grandfather? I'll draw the same one! So big!

I could not answer anything intelligible to her question. Because I still don't know the answer to this question. After all, she, my granddaughter, drew it, her square. On the first day off, when she didn't have to go to kindergarten. With watercolors, on a large sheet of white cardboard! Sinful - I helped her. I cut out a sheet of cardboard about a meter by a meter, marked it out and made a pencil outline of a 60x60cm square. The rest, that is, painting, was already done by her. Moreover, we did not have enough black paints. I had to mix blue with dark brown. And the square turned out. Nothing square. Cute. And in some ways even attractive. I made a solid wooden frame for him, glazed it and we hung this square in her room. A square is like a square. Nothing special. Black, or rather some kind of dark square. Edges not too straight, sides not too parallel, and not even painted over too carefully. Somewhere there are some strange dark spots. A spotted square, so to speak. In the lower right corner of the square, an ornate inscription obliquely. ANECHKA. Again sinful - I made the inscription. The granddaughter just circled the letters with her hand. Well, what can you do if she also didn’t know how to write. And I, looking at him, still ask myself a question that I can’t answer in any way. Because there is probably no answer to it.

And with the appearance of this square, my granddaughter's life changed dramatically. At first, his friends from the yard saw him. And the pandemonium began. Children up to ten years of age from all nearby yards stayed with us almost completely. We watched the notorious square. And then school began - first grade. The fame of the "Anichkov" square came there as well. The class teacher at the class meeting asked Anya's parents to bring the square to school. The school had a classroom where samples of the creativity of the students of the school were placed. The square was hung there. And then he moved to the city art gallery, as one of the samples of children's creativity of the city's students. The granddaughter received a bunch of certificates for her outstanding creation. Further more! An article about the granddaughter's square appeared in the city newspaper, then in the regional one! At the regional competition of children's creativity, her square received the First Prize with a cash prize of as much as five thousand rubles - a crazy amount for those times. And in 2004, when she was in the seventh grade, she was invited to participate in the international competition "Gifted Children", held under the auspices of the Moscow Humanitarian University. She took first place in her subgroup and was invited to study at the Surikov School. I was invited without exams.

The most striking thing here is that the granddaughter did not know how to draw and did not possess any inclination to painting. She didn't want to paint! And I didn't want to draw her! And she did not go to study at any Surikovskoe. She is now studying at a technical university. And even now, after so many years, she cannot speak about her square without trembling. She jerked at one word - a square. And the painting remained in the city art gallery. It still hangs there. And when I’m there, I look at this creation of ours and ask myself questions that I don’t find an answer to.

So what is so special that my granddaughter and I did ten years ago in just five minutes, which still causes a stir among the residents of the city. Here I am throwing away the time for the preparatory work, which was carried out by me, not my granddaughter. But five minutes is for sure! Not more! Plus, then my fiddling with the frame and glazing! We will not count either! We take the net or, as the technologists say, the machine time of the operation. Just five minutes! Five minutes of "business", and in the art gallery of the city, this "masterpiece", this "work of art", that is, a square, always has people! And why, one wonders, stare ?! What else can you see there, besides an elementary, carelessly "painted" square ?! Nothing!!! But they are watching! And many of them seriously assert about the mystical effect of this square on their psyche! A society of fans of Anechkin square arose in the city. There is a place in one of the houses of culture where they gather, spend their zeal! And then there was talk that Anechkin square cures some diseases. Mental, nervous, colds. And during seasonal flu epidemics, whole queues of sick people are formed to receive it! And they say that many are cured! They're getting better! All this would be funny if it were not so sad! Is this an epidemic of general insanity, or is there something more serious lurking here? Do not know! Do not know!

After all, my granddaughter and I, the unwitting authors of this "outstanding" work of local fine art, are absolutely sincerely convinced that our "creation" has nothing to do with works of art. She and I did not have the slightest doubt about this point of view. Neither me nor my granddaughter. What real works of art can actually be, the granddaughter saw in museums. Such works cannot be created in five minutes. Ivanov painted his picture for 25 years. And even for that. to write a believable copy of it, it will take several years of the most intense work of masters of artists. The very people who own the skill of a painter and know how to draw! And not everyone can draw! Try to paint someone's portrait! Take a chance! I think that out of a hundred people who have tried it, two or three will get something believable, no more! The talent or ability to reproduce the reality around us on paper or canvas is not born so often. Something you can teach. If only to start teaching from childhood. This is exactly what they did at the Academy of Arts, created under Peter the Great. Children of serfs from the age of 6-7 were taken into it, without even testing their artistic abilities. Taught from the very beginning! And each of them became an artist. Some are good, some are bad. And some of them are outstanding!

But if you don’t want to study, you don’t want to hunch back, you don’t want to bend your back over the easel, but you want everything at once, in one moment! And fame, and honor, and recognition, and money! Well, okay, money is more difficult, then at least fame, at least talk about me! In this case, there is only one way - to reiterate at all about your special view of the reality around us and your unique path in art! I do not want and will not copy this "filthy" world! I don't like him! I will write only about my own impressions, about my own view of this world! I let this world pass through myself and it appears on my canvas the way I see it! Not the way you see him, but the way I see him! And then we, ordinary people, see God knows what in the pictures! A mess of colors, geometric shapes and ugly human faces. And we are told by helpful officials from the arts and representatives of the artistic intelligentsia that all this is contemporary art! The so-called advanced avant-garde art! The art of the future! And squares, circles, triangles, cubes, polygons enclosed in massive frames are pouring down on us from an endless row of glorified canvases; people who are unlike people; landscapes in the form of rotting garbage dumps; nature, similar to the earth after an atomic war, and so on and so forth. Everything that does not require any skill for its image and can be painted on the canvas with your eyes closed with your left foot or even with your right heel. And it all began once upon a time with Malevich's square!

Where does this so-called contemporary art come from? And why is it so unlike our real world, why is it not so aesthetically pleasing, so ugly? The answer is simple. There is a category of people who do not love beauty. Any beauty. Starting from feminine and ending with natural. They feel uncomfortable and uncomfortable next to beauty. They are closer to a trash heap than a flower bed. And they trample the flower beds, trample the flowers. Not paying attention? In vain! A small example. In the early 80s, new bosses came to the city of Donetsk. The city was terribly dusty, dirty, uncomfortable. And he was never different. In a word - a millionth mining city. The new leadership decided to ennoble the city. And they decided to start with planting flowers in the city, with roses. Flower beds with blooming roses appeared on the streets of the city. In the morning, the city authorities plant blooming roses on the flower beds; at night, city residents trample these roses. The city authorities decided not to give up and continue their activities. Residents of the city - too! The war went on for three years! And the residents of the city were taught that roses are now an integral part of the city's face, that roses are beautiful! Now the city of Donetsk is one of the most beautiful cities in the country. There are many such examples of the barbaric attitude of people to beauty! Here is a very recent one! In St. Petersburg this year they decided to hang copies of paintings by Russian artists, made in vandal-proof performance, on the Nevsky Prospect. A noble idea - you won’t say anything! Let the city residents see in nature what is our national pride! So, they tried to break these pictures and break them out of the walls! And when they were convinced that it was impossible to break the paintings, they began to write swear words on them with spray guns and just paint over them! Beauty annoys some of our population! Therefore - here's her from our fine arts! This is our avant-garde art!

Well, we will return to our squares, to Malevich's square and to the square of my granddaughter! And immediately the question is - if Malevich's square is considered an outstanding work of art, then why the same cannot be said about my granddaughter's square ?! After all, his name in the city is Anechkin square. Thus, there is Malevich's square, but there is also Anechkin's square! Although, frankly, the language does not dare to call this Anechkin square a work of art. After all, the children of the whole world before Malevich calmly drew such squares and squares on sheets of paper and did not think to enclose them in frames and hang them on the wall. It just never occurred to anyone like that! But I took an ordinary child's drawing of a seven-year-old girl, framed it and hung it on the wall. So, what is next? And then a very big weirdness turns out. All of a sudden, this children's drawing became the most famous painting of a small town near Moscow, a kind of local landmark, a local celebrity. Had I been smarter, smarter, and more "naughty", then it would have been possible to create such a PR here that all of Moscow would start talking about Anechkin Square. But I didn't. And I still don't regret it.

But what follows from this? And from here the following follows: a square drawn or written by an ordinary person is just a square and nothing more. And the square, painted at one time by the famous artist Malevich, is something out of the ordinary! And where, then, to put my Anechka's square? After all, if I had not inserted it into the frame, but had not glazed it and hung it on the wall, it would have remained just a child's drawing! And no one would ever know anything about him and there would not be so much talk about a talented girl at the age of seven who wrote her own square, the so-called Anechkin square, which is no worse than Malevich's square. True, this girl has never been distinguished by a penchant for painting and has not drawn anything more than this notorious square in her life and is not going to draw! But that's another story!

So what is Malevich's square? An outstanding work of art of the 20th century or an outstanding hoax of the 20th century ?! Does Malevich's square have artistic value? If yes, then why not say the same about my granddaughter's square! But I am told that the same cannot be said about your granddaughter's square! I ask why? They answer me - that's why! These are, they say, different squares! The saddest thing here, you know what? If you take a dozen copies of Malevich's squares and one square of Malevich himself and hang them all in the museum hall, then no one will determine which of these squares is Malevich's square! This can only be done by experts, picking up the pictures themselves. So what follows from this? And the elementary thought follows that any square, enclosed in a frame and hung on the wall, should and will have the same effect on visitors as the Malevich square itself! That is - none! And all these countless stories about the amazing power of the psychological impact of Malevich's square on people are the self-hypnosis of exalted young ladies, the most elementary invention or a figment of a sick imagination. And nothing more! Remember the sessions of Kashpirovsky and his followers! It's about the same - a void, erected on a pedestal!

Let's repeat our questions again. What is Malevich's square and where did it come from in the history of our Russian and world culture? There is such a point of view, which Gorky expressed in one of his letters to Leonid Andreyev at the beginning of the 20th century. Gorky said that Malevich's square was a cruel joke of a drunk Malevich, made by him on a dispute with his comrades in one of the restaurants of the then Petrograd. Malevich, being very drunk, said that he could put his signature on any nonsense captured on canvas, even on a black square, and ordinary people would still admire and praise his paintings. The company immediately went to the workshop, where Malevich, on one of the canvases fixed on a stretcher and ready for painting, immediately, within five minutes, wrote a square and put his signature. They immediately started talking about the square in the intellectual environment of Petrograd. And soon, on December 19, 1915, he was exhibited at the "Last futuristic exhibition of paintings 0, 10" in Petrograd. And he created a literal sensation among the inhabitants and the entire Russian intelligentsia. And one more words of Gorky about Malevich's square about the same years. Malevich's square is a challenge, it is a spit in the face of a rotten bourgeois society, which has completely lost its bearings of beauty and is mired in contemplation of its own excrement. No one in the entire history of the existence of mankind has spoken to this mankind so clearly and so openly about its emptiness and insignificance.

What does an ordinary intelligent person with a normal psyche feel when he first sees Malevich's square, the most famous of all man-made paintings, on earth? Naturally a shock! Shock and amazement from the primitiveness of what he saw. And this, they say - everything ?! A seditious thought appears - they are simply fooling me, deceiving me ?! Well, this "nonsense" cannot be considered an outstanding work of art! Yes, I'll paint about a dozen of such squares in a day! But then, having calmed down, he tries to reflect. Well, let it be primitive, let it be nonsense, let it be a mockery of common sense. But people have been looking at him for almost a hundred years. And they do not just look, but also admire and praise them in full. Maybe I don't understand something? They are standing nearby and everyone is watching. With reverent, unearthly faces. And no one is outraged! He is confused, he is depressed, he despises himself for his dullness, for his lack of education, for his lack of culture, for his dullness. But with all his might he restrains himself, tries not to show his cultural savagery. Ashamed! People will see and guess. Therefore, he makes an intelligent face and also begins to stare at this square. But he feels nothing in himself, except for elementary irritation. And from this irritation begins to get angry. But already on myself. On their lack of understanding. And he pulls himself together, gathers courage and also makes a reverent face, and also lets out an admirable, meaningful cry! Mm-yes-ah! Can people-and-and!

And that's it! The play is over! Now you can breathe! Thank God he didn’t break! He survived his role to the end! And it does not occur to him that the visitors to the museum standing next to him are experiencing approximately the same feelings that he has just experienced. It seems to him that he is the only one such "fool". Therefore, he will now always show others how much Malevich's square affected his psyche. And he begins to invent all sorts of incredible stories about the impact of Malevich's square on himself, on his relatives and friends. And he is so carried away by his fantasies that he even begins to believe in what he is telling. And he begins to feel special, almost the chosen one, and now looks down on people. Everything! Malevich's square really worked on him! Isn't this proof of his strength and power? Hurray to Malevich's square - the most ingenious and empty work of art on earth! Hooray! Hooray

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By the way, the true author of the very idea of the "Black Square" was not Malevich at all, but a big joker and "eccentric" - French journalist, writer and artist Alphonse Allais (see below)