Danish shivani

FA. 3rd year

“An abstract painting is something standing in place of a picture, which is nevertheless not

a picture of anything.” – Charles Harrison, Abstraction.

Consider the statement with reference to:

• Picasso - La Suze (1912)

• Malevich - Lady at a Poster Column (1914)

• Mondrian - Composition (1916)

Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which

may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.1 Western art had

been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic

of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. By the end of the 19th

century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the

fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which

individual reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that

time.2 Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure

"Abstract Art Uses a Visual Language of Form, Color and Line to Create a Composition." Stefano Fake. March 26, 2014. Accessed
April 11, 2019. https://stefanofake.com/2014/03/12/abstract-art-uses-a-visual-language-of-form-color-and-line-to-create-a-
composition/.

2 "A." Image Studies. June 29, 2015. Accessed April 11, 2019. https://imagestudies.wordpress.com/1926/07/06/361/..
 from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete and below three art work will be

discussed which belongs to different level of abstraction, which are mentioned in last sentence.

Kazimir Malevich was born in Kiev on 11 February Old Style (23 February New Style) 1879 and

died in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) on 15 May 1935. Although he was of Polish extraction and

was born and brought up in Ukraine, Malevich's artistic career was centered in Russia. Above all,

he is associated with the innovative Russian artists of the 1910s and 1920s; he became one of the

leaders of the avant-garde and emerged as an important pioneer of abstract painting with his

invention of suprematism in 1915. he only professional training Malevich seems to have received

was at the private school run by Fodor Rerberg (1865–1938) in Moscow, which he attended

intermittently from 1907 to 1910. Malevich's early output was eclectic, including impressionism

(e.g., Portrait of a Member of the Artist's Family, 1906).3

As a painter malevich was able to realize the broader linguistic implication trans rationalism more

fully than his poet colleagues because he was able to exploit the material advantage intrinsic to the

medium of paint while the poets were by definition limited to the printed page. Malevich Tran

rationalism encompasses the additional aspect of visual and aesthetic formation and construction

of the letter itself.

Lady at a poster column (1914) is a sensorial bombardment of pictorial and verbal information

that confront the viewer in similar fashion to a passerby absorbing advertisement and

announcement. The hectic nature of fragmented fact with the composition dwells upon the

interactive cognitive capabilities of human perception. And reflect upon the system of ordering

3 "Malevich, Kazimir (1879–1935)." "Malevich, Kazimir (1879–1935)." Encyclopedia of Modern Europe: Europe Since 1914:
Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. 2019. Accessed April 11, 2019.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/malevich-kazimir-1879-1935.
 information that the mind is receptive to. Unlike Englishman in Moscow here Malevich has

expanded the primarily surface to include another dimension that of collage. Newspaper element

from Russia and French journal are integrated, bringing written language into the primary realm

of the visual. Through a brief but intense visual blast pieces of excerpted words from newspaper

are absorbed. The masculine adverb AFRICAN is coupled with gr and from the mysterious

fragment are stirred a combinatory subclass of words images and ideas like ‘city’ or ‘citizen’ or

‘haul’ or one’s mind wanders these association are off course impact upon manipulated and

contextualized by the preceding ‘AFRICAN. Other verbal flash includes the name AVIVA and

below the temporally oriented line day 9 into 14 and further below ‘Thursday seeming a favorite

day of Malevich. Fixing the center of the paining is the newspaper share to part from without which

reads in one uncut line4.

Inside the newly fused system fragments from the printed page of a single bold letter like ‘y’ or a

design of pyramidal dots qualify as expressive. No distinction is made between printed parts of a

page and blank parts, as the paper rectangle between the ‘y’ and painted pink rectangle assert.

Letter surface tentatively and then degenerate into the oblivion of paint in the purple’/grey and

dark blue/gray rectangle letter are born and letters are repressed. With an uncontrolled and tangles

letter are born and letter are repressed. With an uncontrolled and unpredictable logic a faint ‘o’

and ‘e’ a stronger ‘p’ and an oversized dual tone ’s’ arise from mercurial painterly region which

also breed a line of small dark grey, vertical brushstrokes. In the center of the composition the

outline of a black circle can be regarded as the more secure proposition of an ‘o’ on the right side

is a bold black ‘B’ backed by clearly defined white, brown and blue planes of color. The hesitant

4 Galenson, David W. Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth Century Art. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009
 method of painterly letter formation on the left side of has yielded more concrete results on the

materially constructed and tactile right side Cyrillic ‘B’ a pronouncement of paintings ability to

generate entirely new semantic significance. The form observed to be an S is this linguistic series

of signifiers may also be regarded as the purely visual entity that is one sound hole in the face of

violin or other string instrument. Malevich had employed this devise previously in cow and violin

where the single evident sound hole on the right side appear as a written S comparison to any of

Picasso’s and Braque’s cubist painting that utilize the violin reveals that they never transformed

any of the actual and observed components always rigidly adhering to observed reality malevichs

intentionally conceptual transformation of the sound hole in the violin becomes a li linguistic

correlate to a visual form. In this painting S which functions linguistically is a clear reference to

the auditory significance of the letter. With the multiple implication Malevich transformed the

letter into the sign, relying upon the fluctuating context of the painting to expand its meaning. The

sequence of letter formation from the left to the right side transcend the zaum critique of

convention integrating phonetic and implied semantic into the dominant spatial system painting.

It is with in this restrained two dimensional format that Malevich obliterates observed reality with

great assertion of color, the triumphant touch of his brush able to confront, mitigate and integrate

any aspect of any language that allows man to imagine and interpret his universe.5

Picasso and Braque did not stop with inclusion of precisely printed words and number in their

works in the phase of their work known as synthetic cubism they began to add character cut from

the newspaper and magazines, other pieces of paper and found object such as labels from wine

bottles, calling cards, theater tickets even swatches of wallpaper and bits of rope. These items were

5 Crone, Rainer, and David Moos. Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure. London: Reaktion Books, 2014.
 pasted directly onto the canvas in a technique Picasso and Braque called “paiper colle” what we

know as collages. Some synthetic cubist compositions such as Picasso la suze constructed entirely

of found elements. In this work newspaper clippings and opaque pieces of papers function as the

shifting planes that hover around the aperitif label and define the bottle and glass. These planers

are held together by a sparse linear structure much in the manner of analytic cubist work. In

contrast to analytic cubism however the emphasis is on the form of the object and on constructing

the form. Color reentered the compositions and much emphasis was placed on texture design and

movement. These abstract, fragmented elements all appear to rest on a blue table in front of a wall

with diamond-patterned wallpaper and newsprint. Serving as a formal element, the newsprint also

suggests the popular Parisian café activity of reading the paper while smoking and drinking. The

texts add a political and social dimension to the image: they juxtapose newspaper articles referring

to horrific events from the First Balkan war with stories of Parisian frivolity. Along with the texts,

the distorted, fragmented forms in this Cubist image allude to such conditions of modernity as the

lack of coherent perspectives or meanings in a constantly changing world. Picasso's work can thus

be seen as simultaneously warning against the absurdity of modern life while also delighting in

life's simple pleasures.6

When Mondrian saw Cubist paintings by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso at a 1911 exhibition

in Amsterdam, he was inspired to go to Paris. Tableau No. 2/Composition No. VII, painted a year

after his arrival in 1912, exemplifies Mondrian’s regard for the new technique. With a procedure

indebted to high Analytic Cubism, Mondrian broke down his motif—in this case a tree—into a

scaffolding of interlocking black lines and planes of color; furthermore, his palette of close-valued

Mittler, Gene A., and Rosalind Ragans. Understanding Art. New York, NY.: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2007.
 ocher and gray tones resembles Cubist canvases. Yet Mondrian went beyond the Parisian Cubists’

degree of abstraction: his subjects are less recognizable, in part because he eschewed any

suggestion of volume, and, unlike the Cubists, who rooted their compositions at the bottom of the

canvas in order to depict a figure subject to gravity, Mondrian’s scaffolding fades at the painting’s

edges. In works such as Composition 8, based on studies of Parisian building façades, Mondrian

went even further in his refusal of illusionism and the representation of volume.

During the war years, Mondrian continued to move toward greater abstraction, rejecting diagonal

lines and decreasing his reliance on his favored subjects—trees, seascapes, and

architecture. Composition, which developed from studies of a church, is among the last of his

works that can be traced to an observable source. Canvases like this make it clear that Mondrian’s

interest lay foremost in coming to terms with the two-dimensionality of the painted surface. For

this work, the artist designed a strip frame (now lost), which he said prevented the sensation of

depth created by traditional carved frames.7

The inexorable consistency and internal logic of his solutions hint at a larger conceptual principle,

which is outlined in great depth in the artist’s extensive theoretical writings. Like many pioneers

of abstraction, Mondrian’s impetus was largely spiritual. He aimed to distill the real world to its

pure essence, to represent the dichotomies of the universe in eternal tension. To achieve this, he

privileged certain principles—stability, universality, and spirituality—through the yin/yang

balancing of horizontal and vertical strokes. His philosophical framework was grounded in the

7 Composition, 1916 by Piet Mondrian. Accessed April 11, 2019. https://www.piet-mondrian.org/composition.jsp.

 Neoplatonic and Tantric-inspired texts of authors connected to the Theosophical Society, the

Dutch branch of which had counted Mondrian as a member since 1909.8

It is clear that the Mondrian’s work is more abstract because of the tendency of any visual refrence

from the world, on the other hand Picasso and Malevich work also come in abstract art because

they didn’t show any deliberate visual representation but there is a sense of belonging through

the use of things which we use in our daily life which help to shape once perception about the

painting that is because of the medium which artists like Picasso and maleviuch had used in their

work.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Composition, 1916 by Piet Mondrian. Accessed April 11, 2019. https://www.piet-

mondrian.org/composition.jsp.

"Malevich, Kazimir (1879–1935)." "Malevich, Kazimir (1879–1935)." Encyclopedia of Modern

Europe: Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. 2019.
Accessed April 11, 2019. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-
transcripts-and-maps/malevich-kazimir-1879-1935.

"Abstract Art Uses a Visual Language of Form, Color and Line to Create a Composition." Stefano
Fake. March 26, 2014. Accessed April 11, 2019. https://stefanofake.com/2014/03/12/abstract-art-
uses-a-visual-language-of-form-color-and-line-to-create-a-composition/.

Crone, Rainer, and David Moos. Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure. London: Reaktion
Books, 2014.

8 "Tableau No. 2/Composition No. VII." Guggenheim. March 20, 2019. Accessed April 11, 2019.
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/3007.
"Cubism." Art 109 Renaissance to Modern. March 12, 2012. Accessed April 11, 2019.
https://art109textbook.wordpress.com/new-online-textbook-2-2/art-in-the-machine-age/cubism/.

Galenson, David W. Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth Century Art. Cambridge: Cambridge

Univ. Press, 2009.

Mittler, Gene A., and Rosalind Ragans. Understanding Art. New York, NY.: Glencoe McGraw-Hill,
2007.
"A." Image Studies. June 29, 2015. Accessed April 11, 2019.
https://imagestudies.wordpress.com/1926/07/06/361/..