John E. Bowlt : Esoteric Culture and Russian Society

One of 19 essays in the catalog of "Abstract Art :  Abstract Painting 1890-1985" ..for the  1986 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

 **********

Ivan Kliun, untitled, 1923, 16 x 12"

The creative wealth and diversity of the Russian avant-garde (the constellation of artists that contributed to Russia’s  cultural renovation just before and after 1917) is indicated by the enormous range of aesthetic and philosophical ideas that they formulated and practiced. One of the central concerns of the modernist artists in Russia was the exploration of nonobjective painting, an exploration that found its most elegant conclusions in the Improvisations and Compositions of Wassily Kandinsky, the Suprematism of Ivan Kliun and Kazimir Malevich, the Painterly Formulae of Pavel Mansurov, the architectonic paintings of Liubov Popova, and the Constructivist paintings of Aleksandr Rodchenko. There were many artistic systems operative in the Russian avant-garde, and many artists are still unfamiliar , especially of the "second generation" during the 1920s — for example, Kliment Redko and Konstantin Vialov. There can be no question that, from the beginning of their careers, all these artists were exposed to the spiritual in art, especially because many facets of their culture still reflected the esoteric concerns of Symbolism. But the curious fact remains that only one of the major avant-garde painters, Kandinsky, maintained a consistent and studious interest in psychic phenomena, arguing at all points of his development that any investigation into the creative process must be undertaken with the help of both scientists and occultists.

With no mention of painting in the title -  and several other essays in this catalog covering the Russian avant-garde - I  was intending to skip this one — until I read the above first paragraph. Kliun, Rodchenko, Mansurov, Popova, and Bialov were all new names for me. AND - the word "elegant" appears in the second sentence.  Will this be the rogue art historian  who actually shares aesthetic feeling? To top it off - the author confirms what I suspected: most of these Russian artists did NOT have a"consistent and studious interest in psychic phenomena".  Is it too snarky to call it a passing fad ?  It might have become more without the militant materialism  of the Russian revolution - but once a life is devoted to painting, why confine expression to any other kind of spiritual practice?

 

Ivan kliun, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, 1910, 13 x 11"

As it turns out - no - the author will not tell us how he feels about paintings. Instead, his focus is on social/cultural context -  especially the  Symbolist movement of which the above is a beautiful, though piteous, example.  Consumptive women were apparently a typical Symbolist subject matter. I’ve never seen fatal illness so beautifully depicted. 

(The  above piece  was included in the catalog - but since this author does  not discuss specific paintings, there’s no point in sticking with the catalog for examples. 

Disciplining and improving the body through Yoga practices, including fasting, and gymnastics was also a ritual of preparation for the day of awakening when the converted would be summoned to make the final journey, the ultimate pilgrimage. The theme of the long and arduous journey, of vagabondism and nomadism assumes an added significance in the context of Russian bohemia. Whether genuine pilgrimages (Filonov's trip to the Holy Land in 1908), spasmodic meanderings (Khlebnikov's treks across Russia), nostalgia for the steppes (Kuznetsov), marathon marches across the Caucasus (Gurdjieff), artistic grand tours (Petrov-Vodkin's bicycle trip to Western museums in 1901), or simply the "mobility and instability of the Russian social mass, ", the rootlessness of the Russian bohemians was a prominent and important element. Artistic researches coincided with physical searches, a condition that lasted right up until the late 1920s when one writer referred to the "tramp-like and nomadic tribe" of the Soviet intelligentsia

Above is a typical snippet of text.  No special interest in either paintings of spiritual practices - just relevant biographical details - such as a gossip columnist might record.

So let’s just go through the artists who get mentioned - continuing with Kliun:

Kliun, Composition, 1920 , 29 x 15"

A certain kind of tension keeps these elements in a balance

eternally ephemeral.

They could fly apart at any moment -

but they don’t

Ivan Kliun, Red Light, Spherical Composition, 1923,  27 x 27"

Not much here for the mind to measure. The red light is slightly oft-center above - but it’s dead-center in the catalog’s illustration - who knows which is correct.

Kliun, Composition With Three centers, 1932,  26 x 18"

Sure reminds me of  Kandinsky from that period.

Pavel Mansurov, Composition 181, 1918,  9 x 15"

A graphic haiku

Pavel Mansurov, 1931,  70 x 12"

Pavel Mansurov (1896-1973), 1969,  57 x 27" (Formule Pictorale)

Love the interaction with the uneven edge of the wood panel

 

Mansurov, 1972

According to one source:  " Mansurov was head of the theoretical section of the Institute of  Artistic Culturee in Petrograd.  In the sixth point of his 1923 “Declaration,” he states the following: “Down with religion, the family, aesthetics, and philosophy” (p. 206)"

The cultural atmosphere of Moscow and Saint Petersburg in the first decade of the twentieth century was so highly charged with the Symbolist ether that it was virtually impossible for young artists to escape its effects, either visual or philosophical. Filonov, Kliun, Mikhail Larionov, Malevich, and even Rodchenko began their careers as Symbolist painters, and some of their pieces of the 1900s, such as Kliun's Portrait of the Artist's Wife, 1910, and Malevich's Woman in Childbirth,1908, are compelling manifestations of the Russian style moderne, or Art Nouveau, reliant on the conventional, if still esoteric vocabulary of consumptive maidens, embryos, lotuses, lilies, and so forth. 

 In fact, during his attendance at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1904-5 and at Fedor Rerberg's studio in Moscow during 1905-10, Malevich became deeply interested in the metaphysical concerns of the Blue Rose group of Symbolist painters led by Pavel Kuznetsov; he even tried to participate in their single exhibition in March-April 1907. The motif of women and embryos that appears in some of his early works, such as Woman in Childbirth and The Nymphs, 1908 , relates directly to the concurrent Symbolist interpretation of woman as the incarnation of a higher, purer, more spontaneous realm, as refracted variously in the poetry of Vladimir Solovev and Blok and in the concurrent paintings of mothers and babies by Kuznetsov.  The Blue Rose artists aspired to capture and register ulterior reality through their allusive vocabulary of

So now let’s take a look at the paintings associated with Symbolism:

Kazimir Malevich, Nymphs (Oak and Dryads), 1908, 13 x 13"

A strange and wonderful piece.  Pictorial space is utterly destroyed in that world centered on the big red tree trunk.  Were psychedelics involved?

Kazimir Malevich, Woman in Childbirth, 1908, 9 x 10 "

The Malevich shown above is at least as interesting as his Suprematist works.  It’s like expressionism, but it’s so upbeat - a happy woman with child - a familiar theme in Christian art - but this is not Christian.

Pierre Bonnard,  Woman Pulling on her Stockings, 1893

Here’s something similar from 10 years earlier,

probably too relaxed and ordinary, though, to call it Symbolism

Pavel Kunetsov (1878-1968), Birth, 1906, 28 x 26"

A similar theme by the leader of the Blue Rose Group - proclaimers of Symbolism.

Fedor Rerberg (1865-1938), On the Boulevard 190(3 or 5), 10 x 13"

capturing bourgeoise ladies having a moment in the park.

We’re told Malevich frequented  his studio.

Viktor Borisov-Musatov (1870-1905), Phantoms, 1903

An artist for whom "Symbolism was a primary component of a world view".  It recalls, for me, Bocklin’s famous Isle of the Dead — or maybe a book cover for Romantic pulp fiction.

Ciurlionis, Creation of the World III,  1905-6

Also referred to as essentially a Symbolist - 

this  Lithuanian composer appears to have migrated to non-objective painting even before Malevich.

Mikhail Vrubel.  (1856-1910),  Demon Downcast, 1902,  55 x 152"

Without the identifiable figures and stuff,

this is  angst fueled Abstract Expression

or maybe cover art for a death metal album.

The artists detailed in this essay represented but a very small component of the Russian avant-garde. If their work can be associated, although not filled, with mystical content, the concurrent paintings of Gustav Klucis, Lissitzky, Popova, Olga Rozanova, Sergei Senkin, and the constructions of Rodchenko, the Sternberg brothers (Georgi and Vladimir), and Tatlin stand almost outside this context. If the antimystical statement of Lef (Left front of the arts) in 1924 means anything, most members of the postrevolutionary avant-garde would be highly indignant at being linked with the occult traditions of the fin de siècle, as Mansurov implied in 1981. The pioneers of abstract art in Russia did not consistently and continuously support systems of higher meditation in the way that Blavatsky, Gurdjeff, and Ouspensky did. We should beware of regarding the art of the avant-garde as a pictorial counterpart to the esoteric teachings of the time. Still, it is highly improbable that without this mosaic of ideas, without this mystical impetus, artists such as Kandinsky, Malevich, and Matiushin would have created the innovations that they did or would have linked their abstractions with the world of the future. For them, painterliness was next to godliness. Ultimately, the exact correlation between the spirit and its embodiment is impossible to determine, and we must remain content with allusions, insinuations, and veiled connections; after all, these are the essential ingredients of the spiritual in art.

Allusions- insinuations- veiled connections.

If that identifies the spiritual in art - what art does not have it?

Examples follow for the seven artists mentioned above:

Gustav Klucis (1895-1938)

So socialist - and so spaced out.

Olga Rozanova  (1886-1918), 32x 29", 1916-17

Just a bit too serious than the jazzed up urban sophistication of Stuart Davis.

El Lissitsky (1890-1941) A Proun, 1925

Lyubov Popova, Spatial Force Construction, 1920-21, 44 x 44"

This one’s a killing machine.

Sergei Senkin (1894-1963). 1921, Non Objective Composition

Alexander Rodchenko, Dance, 1915

Could have been made yesterday

Stenberg  Brothers, 1925, Kamerny Theatre, 28 x 42"

Belongs in the poster hall of fame.

Vladimir Tatlin, relief, 1916-17, 24 x 21"

Mystical or not- they do seem to proclaim the emergence of a new social order - and a new man to populate it.  Some of these artists identified with suprematism - others with Constructivism.

The author does not discuss them, but Suprematism seems to present a highly organized energy emerging from the void (the blank canvas). Constructivism seems to reflect the new, angular, organized world that has been built.

There certainly seems to be an intense idealism that the more personal  non-figurative painting of our era does not share.

... for Malevich, Kliun, and their colleagues Symbioism was a transitory concern. Filonov, Larionov, and Rodchenko, affected by the mood of the fin de siècle, also transmuted their spiritual lexicons, expanding them far beyond the confines of the Symbolist program. It is precisely this extension and reprocessing of occult ideas that is of great relevance to the premise of spirituality in abstract art. Consciously or unconsciously the avant-garde developed affirmatory, practicable systems from the often disparate thoughts of the Symbolists. They asserted "optimism of feeling"and linked their art to everyday life, as with Natalia Goncharova and Larionov's Neoprimitivism, or to broad social, utilitarian issues, as with Malevichs and Tatlin's design projects. They created a credible doctrine out of the "haze of the unspoken. 

David Burliuk mentions those two neoprimatives   here in the Blue Rider Almanac - and examples are shown in that post.

Ciurlionis - Summer Iii

Ciurlionis , Day

Valley of the Green Giant?

A vital argument espoused by Symbolists and to some extent by particular artists of the avant-garde, above all Kandinsky, was that the more an art form aspired toward music, the closer it approached the ultimate revela-tion, whereas the more spatial or material it was (for example, architecture), the more static and distant it became. This explains, in part, their fascination with the musical painter Ciurlionis, who, in "fusing time and space" created his pictorial symphonies from the "boom of the waves and the mysterious language of the age-old forest, from the twinkling stars, from our songs and our immeasurable grief."Like Kulbin and Matiushin, Ciurlionis sensed the presence of a titanic strength in natural phenomena not only in the more obvious manifestations such as lightning or a tree bending in the wind but also in those phenomena that are ostensibly serene but are in fact variable and dynamic. That is one reason why Ciurlionis "humanized" some of his landscapes, imbuing trees and clouds with anthropomorphic forms (for example, Day, 1904-5, and part 3 of Summer, 1907), thereby symbolizing the supernatural, gargantuan force inhabiting every component of the natural world. This concept of the inner energy of nature underlay the philosopher Berdiaev's argument that "painting is passing from physical bodies to ether and astral ones. The terrifying pulverization of the material body began with Vrubel. The transition to the other plane can be sensed in Ciurlionis. "Berdiaev, Bely, and Ivanov might have praised Ciurlionis for his advance toward the "global orchestra," but the artists of the avant-garde actually had little patience with him. Alexei Grishchenko, a pupil of Tatlin and one of the first to write about the connections between modern Russian art and Byzantine art, responded to Berdiaev by dismissing Curlionis, "who for me and any real painter is just individualistic-synthetic nonsense. "

Here are some pieces by Alexei Grishenko (1883-1971)

Possibly in chronological order -

the later two are after 1930.

The dismissive quote about Ciurlionis was published in 1922.

Ivan Kudriashev, Luminescence, 1926, 42 x 28

Kliment Redko, 1897-1956

Kliment Redko, Abstract Space, 1921,  20 x 27" 

Both of the above examples by Redko feel visionary - as in a special moment of revelation.

Serge Charchoun, Movement of a Painted Film Based on a Folk Song, 1917, 18 x 13"

Bowlt admits that Charchoun really does not belong in an essay about art in Russia: the artist spent his entire career elsewhere,. But this piece is too wacky to be ignored.  It’s facial structure is like nothing else in this catalog 

One of the most sophisticated distribution centers of this wisdom was the Society of Free Aesthetics. Founded in 1906 on the Bolshaia Dmitrovka in downtown Moscow, the Society of Free Aesthetics arranged lectures, exhi-bitions, and dinner parties, and most of Moscow's artists and patrons visited it. 

 Under the leadership of Bely and Briusov, the society did much to propagate Symbolism, although it broadened its interests considerably after 1909-10, when mercantile members began to "raise their voices."se The intellectual membership of the society was domi- nated by painters and musicians, including all the Blue Rose artists; the painters Goncharova, Larionov, Vasili Perepletchikov, Valentin Serov, and Yakulov; and the musicians Leonid Sabancev and Scriabin, both highly esteemed by Kandinsky. Like other cultural clubs in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the society inspired a continuous cross-fertilization among the representatives of various disciplines, something that resulted in many joint projects. The society lasted until 1917, when it closed, as Bely recalls, because of an "excess of lady millionaires. "

Here are the visual artists mentioned above.

None of them were especially committted to non-objective painting - 

though some occasionally did it.:

Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964), self portrait 1910

Which might be compared to the more intense self portrait of another artist born in 1881:

Picasso: self portrait 1907

Valentin Serov (1865-1911) Portrait of Princess Olga Orlova,  1911

A wonderful figurative painter whose works I will probably never see.

Georgy Yakulov  (1884-1928),  Spring, 1915

Vasiliy Pereplyotchikov. (1863-1918), Peka, Boat in the Water, 1898

Reminds me of early Mondrian.

Natalia  Goncharova (1881-1962). Rayonist Lilies, 1913

For some reason, Rayonism never conquered the mainstream like Cubism - perhaps because it’s more enjoyable.

Two impressive contributions to Iskusstvo were devoted to the art of Japan and Mexico: seventeen photographs of old-master Japanese paintings and twenty-three photographs of Mexico taken by the Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. Their appearance coincided with a growing tendency to document and research primitive and oriental cultures rather than to regard them as merely colorful phenomena alluring to the Western palate, as in Bakst's interpretation of Schéhérazade of 1910 or Somov's honeyed illustrations to One Thousand and One Nights. The oriental aspect of early Russian modernism has yet to be studied in depth and, no doubt, further investigation will establish valuable precedents to Kulbin's Buddhism of 1910 and Goncharova and Larionov's praise of the East in 1912-13. It is known that Yakulov's simultanist perception of space and light derived from his experiences in Manchuria in 1904-5; Kuznetsov and Martiros Sarian, the "Russian Gauguinists, "49 traveled extensively in Kirghiz and Armenia as they were producing their Symbolist masterpieces; and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin painted his strong impressions of North Africa in 1910 just as the first reproductions of Assyrian drawings appeared in Kulbin's book, Studita impressionistov (Studio of the Impressionists). Such disparate experiences, part of the entire complex of Russian orientalism, prepared the ground for the general assessment of the East as a receptacle of mystical truth and for the more down-to-earth statements of the Neoprimitivists to the effect that "[we] aspire toward the East... [and] protest against servile subservience to the West. "

Leon Bakst, set design for Scheherazade , 1910

Love the book, the symphonic suite, the ballet, and the set design as  shown above

Konstantin Somov, Harlequin and Death

Could not find Somov’s Arabian Nights online

Nickolas Kulbin, , Portrait of the Artist, 1916

Buddhist? Maybe.

Martiros Sarian, Running Dog, 1909

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, African Child, 1907

Hard to find any non-objective paintings among these Orientalists.

*******

One final note:  how small all these pieces are compared with postwar American abstract paintings .

At around 48" - a rectangular support begins to become part of the enveloping room and stops being a vision of another world.

Charlotte Douglas : Beyond Reason : Malevitch, Matiushin, and their Circles

 

One of 19 essays in the catalog of "Abstract Art :  Abstract Painting 1890-1985" ..for the  1986 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

 **********

Mikhail Matyushin :  Painterly Musical Construction II, 1918, 20 x 25"

Hard to say how this piece actually looks - but since it was in the Costakis collection, it’s probably eye catching.

Pyramid power?  It would not be surprising to find it as a poster in a new age bookstore.  It feels like it could have been made fifty or even a hundred years after its creation.

How shall I see my cat in the new dimension? …… ,Matiushin,  1915 

 It was no coincidence that the musician and painter Mikhail Matiushin was pondering his cat's fourth-dimensional shape just as his friend Kazimir Malevich was painting his first Suprematist pictures. They wrote to each other often that year, Matiushin from Petrograd, Malevich from Moscow, both trying to break out of the stylistic and philosophical confines of Cubo-Futurism. It was evident by then that the appearance of the world was about to be radically transformed and that even companions as close and comfortable as the family cat might be unrecognizable in the new art.

Unfortunately,  no Cubo-Futurism by Matyushin  can be found online or in this catalog.  Below is an example by Malevich:

Kazimir Malevich. (1879-1935) The Knife Grinder, 1912-13

If unlabeled, I might have guessed  Chicago’s Hairy Who.  Kinda swingin’, jazzy, industrial, and humorous. It does indeed blend analytic Cubism with Futurism - but once we acknowledge that conflation,  why view it ever again?

Malevich, Perfected portrait of Ivan Kliun,  1913

This portrait, however, centers on a colleague - and that seems to pull it together.

So I remain intrigued.

Lyubov Popova, The Pianist, 1914, 42 x 35

Could have been made by asking  AI  to "make a cubo-futurist painting of a pianist"

Oleksandra Ekster. (1882 -1949). City, 1913 , 35 x 28"

This  piece, however, feels less like a gimmick and more like a phenomenon.

Oleksandra Ekster, 1919, City at Night

As analytic Cubism became less fashionable - Ekster moved on to Suprematism.

One of my favorite painters from this era.

If she had any connection to a spiritual movement, I’m sure the author would have told us.

Alexander Bogomstsov (1880 - 1930), Lumberjack, 1913

Olga Rozanova, (1886-1918), Factory and Bridge, 1913

I like the dynamics of these Cubo-futurist pieces as well.

They seem less about art theory or spirituality than 

just artists expressing their life force.

For Malevich, Kruchenykh, and Matiushin, Cubo-Futurism had always been the art of the transcendent, expressing the highly developed consciousness of a future species of humanity that would possess radically new organs of sight as well as a new and universal language. 

Perhaps that’s why their cubo-futurist work,  as found online in 2024, is mostly forgettable.  Ekster was probably less interested in art theory.

The theories of painting and writing associated with Cubo-Futurism - as stated by Kruchenykh in a variety of writings- postulate a revolution in human consciousness, an evolutionary psychic change that would alter the consciousness to a state similar to that achieved through the spiritual discipline of Yoga. Indeed, Eastern mystical concepts so infused Cubo-Futurist theory that it is now difficult to isolate them as mere sources for avant-garde ideas. They are the very conceptual foundation of the entire aesthetic; they motivated its approach to poetic language and to the making of art in general. Central to the Cubo-Futurist understanding of the new art is Kruchenykh's notion of zaum language, a transcendental language of the future that would be the outward manifestation of an artist's evolutionary change in consciousness as well as the mode for conveying his consequent altered perceptions. Zaum, meaning "beyond reason" or "beyond the logical mind," " is a higher level of conscious- ness in which one has an expanded sense of logic and reason; it is not entirely emotional in concept nor merely anti-intellectual in intention.

One might say that  all art "postulates a revolution in human consciousness" to the degree it’s untethered to an established tradition.  But even established traditions csn’t help but evolve - sometimes in revolutionary ways.  Zaum was certainly quite new in 1913.  A hundred years later it’s outdated and irrelevant to contemporary art.  It’s the paintings of that era, not the ideas, that are still alive.

We have come as far as the rejection of reason, but we rejected reason because another kind of reason has grown in us, which in comparison with what we have rejected can be called beyond reason [zaumnyi] which also has law, construction and sense, and only by learning this shall we have work based on the law of the truly new "beyond reason." This reason has found Cubism for the means of expressing a thing. . . We have arrived at beyond reason. I don't know whether you agree with me or not, but I am beginning to understand that in this beyond reason there is also a strict law that gives pictures their right to exist. And not one line should be drawn without the consciousness of its law; then only are we alive. 24 Thus even before the development of Suprematism what Malevich had in mind for his art was not a personal intuitive expression but an ultimately rational and well-thought-out art, an art calculated to demand from the viewer the superlogic available only in the state of zaum. In 1914 Malevich turned to a new style of painting but with the same purpose in mind. His Alogist pictures, such as An Englishman in Moscow, 1913-14, and Composition with Mona Lisa, 1914, project a dense collection of whole and partial images, words, collage

Malevich, Composition with Mona Lisa, 1914

This is revolutionary agitprop for Modern Art,  isn’t it?

Out with the old (rationality, humanism)

In with the new (dynamic nothingness)

Malevich, An Englishman in Moscow, 1913-14

This piece was addressed, at some length, by Paul Crowther in The Phenomenology of Modern Art:

In these general terms, we might say that to be avant-garde involves the invention of new artistic codes and idioms so as to comprehend the phenomenological elusiveness of the real. The scope of Malevich's practice as artist, designer, and theorist is an exemplar of this flexibility. His work is enormously complex and refuses to cash-out in terms of some exact 'absolute' style. This is illustrated marvellously in his Englishman in Moscow, of 1914. I’m feeling strangeness as an appealing hook to summon momentary attention- but not profound enough to drive endless investigation. The foreground, the central figure's form, and the background are fused, using structures that blend a sense of the facet with that of the geometrical solid. These features and their spatial distribution, the overall planar emphasis of presentation, and the use of lettering, all evoke the visual character of cubist space. However, what is more striking is Malevich's stylistic re-appropriation of this. In his work the individual forms are much more distinct than those in Braque's and Picasso's cubist works. Indeed, in great contrast with their paintings and collages, the pictorial space in this work is not created through the distending and merging of the represented object with the surrounding space (or with spatially contiguous objects) or with the picture plane itself. Rather the composition is based on a psychology of visual declaration or association where pictorial elements such as the fish, church, candle, and the ladder, may be reflections in a window or in a mirror that the Englishman is gazing into, or they may be visualizations of things that represent psychological barriers between him and his perception of Russia.

To me, it feels like a  poster at a travel agency  promoting Moscow as an intriguing destination for English gentlemen.  That was probably not the artist’s intention - more likely he just wanted to be enigmatic.

Malevich, Paintly realism of a football player, color masses in the fourth dimension, 1915

I wrote  about this piece here and I wrote about the deaccession required to purchase it here 

 Douglas presents "Englishman in Moscow" in a brief episode of transition between Cubo-Futurism and Suprematism.  That makes sense - and I’m glad he finally left out the human figure.

BTW - the  above piece is at the Art Institute of Chicago so I’ve seen it several times.  It came here in 2011.  Regrettfully the museum sold several other early Modernist pieces to pay for it - including a Post-Impressionist Picasso and a very nice Braque still life.   

It’s fun and lively as a reproduction.  Love that menacing black parallelogram looming up above and the sequence of balanced smaller shapes down below.  It’s a happy dance - though the facture is rough and unpleasant.  .Malevich was too busy inventing new isms to give much attention to up-close aesthetics.

It’s a piece best seen on the internet.

Malevich, Suprematist Composition 1916, 35 x 28

Feels like chamber music for percussion ensemble.

Less personal than cosmic.

And 100% masculine 

(except for one small pink quadrangle - that’s about to get crushed)

No woman would ever write:

~. "This is how I reason about myself and elevate myself into a Deity saying that I am all and that besides me there is nothing and all that I see, I see myself, so multi-faceted and polyhedral is my being ,; and "I am the beginning of everything, for in my consciousness worlds are created. I search for God, I search within myself for myself. God is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful. A future perfection of intuition as the ecumenical world of supra-reason."

BTW - the author connects the above text to the following quote from Swami Vivekananda:

"No books, no scripture, no science, can ever imagine the glory of the Self, which appears as man - the most glorious God that ever was, the only God that ever existed, exists, or ever will exist. I am to worship, therefore, none but my Self. "I worship my Self,' says the Advaitist. "To whom shall I bow down? I salute my Self."

Malevich, Composition, 1915

Looks like a Rube Goldberg machine.

It’s so much more intriguing that the following spin-off by a student:

Ivan Kudriashev, 1920

Similar pieces by this artist have been listed at auction for under a thousand dollars. 

That seems quite low - but then, I would not acquire them even if they were free.

Ivan Kudriashev, Straight motion design, 1925

This one’s more dynamic - as well as original

Ivan Kudriashev, construction of a rectilinear motion, 1925

Kudriashev was into rocketry and space exploration,

as was his father.

Pavel Filonov (1883-1941), Peasant Family (Holy Family) 1914

Wow.

I saw a few Filonov pieces in 2000 when an exhibit of the Russian avant garde came to the Chicago Cultural Center.  I remember them as remarkable - but too obsessive and intense for me to want to enter their world.  But maybe if it had been a one-man show, I would have capitulated.

"Avant garde" is more of a marketing concept than anything else - so it doesn’t really apply to Filanov.  He adamantly refused to market his pieces - so he lived as a pauper.  He painted the way he did as a kind of confession of faith - which was somewhere between Russian Orthodox and Taoist.

Man and Woman, 1913, watercolor, 12 x 9"

Unlike Renaissance pictorial space- this is a window onto an inner rather than outer reality.

German War, 1915

War as an abattoir 

Portrait of the artist’s sister , 1915

And then, remarkably enough, he taught himself to paint in the Renaissance tradition — just to please his sister, it is said.

Portrait of that sister’s husband and son. 1915

Portrait of Stalin, 1936

Wonderfully threatening. 

A cold blooded, asymmetrical killer

Victory Over Eternity, 1920-21

(also appears on the internet flipped horizontally and vertically

Not sure which is correct)

This is where his vision becomes Taoist.

A universe whose unity - and boundless energy - is beyond comprehension.

Formula of Spring, 1928-9

The map of a great city?

Neurons  in the brain ?

How I wish this was hanging on my wall -

but even if I visited his studio in 1930 he would not have sold it to me -or anyone else.

One of the consequence of keep i g art off the market - no in-print books on Amazon - relatively low auction results - nothing in American art museums. And sadly - his texts on art theory - like “the Canon and the Law’ cannot be found in translation. (There is one compilation - but it’s way out of print)

Composition, 1928-29

Mind boggling.

So many infinities.

Did he ingest an hallucinogenic ?

In 1914 Filonov had organized a small group of painters whom he invited Matiushin and Malevich to join. Its synthetic philosophy, which he called "world flowering," was based on an aesthetic evolutionism that had much in common with Ouspensky's ideas but that, in addition, insisted on the same extremes of intellectual and physical effort called for in Raja-Yoga. Filonov gave primary importance in his art to sdelannost (the quality of being made, well made, or finished). Working continuously and intensely on a piece until he considered it "made," he eschewed all sketches and preliminary studies. 

For Filonov the idea of concentrated work was not only a practical approach to art and the basis of his aesthetics of "made paintings" but also a mode of spiritual discovery for the artist: "Revelation occurs only after long, persistent work . the new is discovered through hard work, " he wrote in his declaration "Sdelannye kartiny" (Made paintings) of 1914. Through persistent effort the artist embodies "his immortal soul" in the work of art, imparting to it a fully religious significance. A made painting demands that the artist attend to all the complexities of the universe with "purity," "exactness," and "control" " so that the resulting work becomes the concrete intermediary between the universe and humanity. Paintings produced in this way "should be such that people would come from all the countries of the world to pray to them."

Where can I sign up?

Regretfully, artist-run spiritual movements don’t last very long.

Boris Ender (1983-1960), Movement of Organic Form, 1919, 40 x 39"

Boris Ender, Abstract Composition, 1919-20, 40 x 38"

A  few fine, suggestively cosmic pieces — but though the artist lived 40 more years, nothing more of much interest can be found online.

Xenia Ender,  Red Trees, late 1920’s,  8 x 10 "

Mikhail Matyushin (1861-1934), Space View 360 Degrees, 1920, 19 x 16"

Really like this one.

Mikhail Matiushkin,   Extended Space, 1922-23, 27 x 38"

Mikhail Matiushkin, self Portrait  Crystal, 1917

Matiushkin had an interesting career.  He began with a 30-year career as a musician in the Imperial orchestra - then he got into avant garde art - and eventually the metaphysics of visual perception - for which - incredibly enough - he was subsidized by the Soviet Ministry of Culture, as documented below:

The Organic Culture Section, consisting of M. I. [sic] Matyushin, as the Head, B. V. Ender and K. V. [Xenia] Ender, as scientific collaborators, is studying the perception of pictorial elements by the human organism. The basic questions in this case are, on the one hand, the variability of colour and form depending upon the varying conditions of visual perception in time and space (broadening of the angle of vision) and, on the other, the participation in visual perception of the entire cerebro-neu-ral system, and not merely the mechanism of the eye alone. In this case, the outcome of the experimental work was the elaboration of tables showing the variability of the primary colours of the spectrum and of the most elementary forms, as well as a series of observations in the field of so-called "additional sight. "—1925

I've found no claims that Matyushin contributed anything to science, and I wonder what good may have come from training students to see independently with each eye or in  360 degrees.  The author does claim that his research was the beginning of industrial design - but I doubt very much that they had any effect on the great designers who came after.

Malevich and his circle were concerned with the cultivation of styles that were compatible with scientific ideas, and to that extent at least, their approach may be considered rational. Their aesthetics resulted from a unified world view that encompassed all dichot-omies; for them science and Eastern mystical ideas were seamlessly joined in a conceptual continuum, and knowledge of the world might be obtained by beginning at any point. 

Strangely, in the end, the art of the Russian Cubo-Futurists seems to give us not the future but the eternal present. In their art, as in the transcendent state of zaum, the observer is conscious only of an everlasting now, a self-sufficient being, in a world radically trans-formed. It was their awareness of this other world, whose living presence could only be shadowed forth, that allowed artists to number themselves among the new, advanced spe-cies; it was only in this sense that they considered themselves people of the future. Their art was intended both to induce and reflect this new consciousness, to serve as a passport to and report from the transcendent order of reality. Clearly, only an objectless art could fulfill this role.

But  can’t all paintings, to some degree, take viewers to a "transcendent order of reality" ?   Has anyone outside his circle ever claimed that’s Matiushin’s  transcendent order was better - or higher - or deeper - or more real than all the other paintings one might find in an art museum?  If the author of this essay knew of anyone else who thought so,  wouldn’t she have mentioned it?

I would certainly like to own a few of his pieces as shown above - but there’s a few million other artworks I would love to look at every day as well.

Science and art are incompatible.  Science can prove, for example, that Illinois was once crushed beneath a mile of ice.  But it cannot prove that one painting’s order is any more transcendent than any other’s.  Only the eye of the beholder can do that.