Euroacademia Conferences
Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers (9th Edition)April 24 - 25, 2020
Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (9th Edition)June 12 - 13, 2020
8th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions AgainJanuary 24 - 25, 2020
Re-Inventing Eastern Europe (7th Edition)December 13 - 14, 2019
The European Union and the Politicization of Europe (8th Edition)October 25 - 26, 2019
Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (8th Edition)June 28 - 29, 2019
The European Union and the Politicization of Europe (7th Edition)January 25 - 26, 2019- 7th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions AgainNovember 23 - 24, 2018
Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers (8th Edition)September 28 - 30, 2018- Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (7th Edition)June 14 - 15, 2018
Invisible Face and/in Black Square: Strategy of Self-expression and Identity of Malevich’s Suprematism
-
-
-
Presentation speakers
- Xin Ai, Peking University / University of Amsterdam
- Download presentation
Abstract:
The self-acclaimed originality of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century was largely based on the rebellion against the visual tradition and the creation of the new “ism”. As a classic genre of painting and the stubborn carrier of the figurative art, portraiture naturally suffered from the strong impact of avant-garde’s radical ideology. Rosalind Krauss notes that the “grids” paradigm that emerged since Cubism has acted as an anti-narrative, anti-historical model of the avant-garde thus ended the possibilities of plastic arts imitating the real world. Malevich’s Suprematism has pushed the abstract exploration of the avant-garde to the extreme and the pure. The function of depicting the figure’s face in traditional portraiture completely failed here, focusing instead on the expression of the mysterious, transcendent and accessible metaphysical thoughts. From Portrait of Matiushin (1913) to Self Portrait: Color Masses in Two Dimensions (1915), the erasure of the face in portraiture played an important role in the maturation of the Suprematist identity and the “Black Square” modality, forming the intertextuality and dialogue with other Suprematist paintings in the same period, both formally and conceptually. This article aims to clarify the evolutionary process of “replacing iconic face with black square” by Malevich, as well as to explore the philosophical, religious and scientific synthetically motivations behind this phenomenon, namely how the fourth dimension and theosophy, doctrines that were extremely popular in avant-garde circle then, influenced on Malevich’s strategy of self-expression and identity. At the same time, this article will also attempt to give some response and development on Krauss’ “myth of originality” from the perspective of “faceless portraiture”.
-
Related Presentations
