Kazimir Malevich

Kasimir Malevich's (1878-1935) sudden and startling
realization of a nonrepresentational way of painting, which
he called Suprematism, stands as a seminal moment in
twentieth-century art. Rainer Crone and David Moos trace the
artist's development from his beginnings in the Ukraine to
his involvement with Futurist circles in Moscow through to
the late 1920s and beyond. They convincingly demonstrate
that Malevich's late representational painting, still widely
misunderstood, solidifies his extraordinarily inventive
stance.

Against the historical background of distinctly Russian
progressive cultural and scientific movements, the authors
define affinities between Malevich's work and other
nonpolitical revolutions: relativity and quantum theory in
physics; the work of Roman Jakobson and the "Prague School"
in linguistics; and the exploration of language in the
writings of the poet Velimir Khlebnikov. They situate the
artist within the fundamental epistemological shift from
nineteenth-century objectivity to an all-pervasive modernist
subjectivity, relying upon Malevich's contribution to
illustrate the ways cultural production is mediated through
various modes of transmission.

Rainer Crone holds the Chair for Twentieth Century Art
at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitä ;t, Munich, and is adjunct
professor of art history at Columbia University. David
Moos is a doctoral candidate in art history at Columbia
University.