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

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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.