Rus Modernizmi ve Süprematizm
Russian Modernism and Suprematism

Summary/Abstract: Suprematism, an approach in Russian painting that aims to use abstract geometric forms by excluding natural objects, was first introduced as an art term and concept by Kazimir Malevich in 1913. Suprematism, which had a significant impact on Russian art and culture, was an avant-garde movement that influenced Eastern European countries in the 1910s and 1920s, and later spread throughout the Western world. Malevich arrived at his understanding of Suprematism as a result of the influences of Futurist and Cubist views. He argued that the Constructivist and Cubist works of the period, considered avant-garde, restricted the artist's freedom in terms of form and object, and imposed the necessity of being bound to the three-dimensional world through geometric planes and mathematics. According to Malevich, art is not a worldly but a metaphysical state. In her article entitled Religious Renaissance, which defines Kazimir Malevich's concept of ‘Nothingness’, Tatiana Levina examined Malevich's understanding of art in the Suprematism movement in a religious and philosophical context. It has been observed that metaphysical movements and religious thought, which emerged particularly at the beginning of the 20th century, influenced Suprematism and Malevich. The artist sought to create a universal spiritual void through geometric abstraction (square, line, circle). Meanwhile, he was influenced by the ideas of Russian thinkers such as Bulgakov, Berdyaev and Florensky. Suprematist works represent a spiritual dimension rather than the material world. Through Malevich's art, the viewer experiences a universal void. In his first exhibition in 1915, Malevich founded the Supremus group together with artists such as Ivan Puni, Mikhail Menkov, Jean Pougny, Kseniya Bogulavskaya and Olga Rozanova. The group, which formed around the Supremus magazine, was influential in spreading the Suprematism movement. Malevich's departure from representational approaches in painting also influenced artists such as Lyubov Popova (1889-1924), Gustav Klutsis (1895-1938), Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956), and El Lissitzky. The first Suprematist works were exhibited in December 1915 at the exhibition entitled ‘The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting 0.10’ in St. Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd. The influence of Suprematism was clearly evident in the early years of the Soviet Revolution in 1917. Suprematism, referred to as ‘Revolutionary Art’ after 1918, was supported by influential artists such as Kazimir Malevich. Kazimir Malevich established connections with the Bauhaus movement in Germany and the De Stijl movement in the Netherlands, playing a significant role in the recognition and spread of the movement outside Russia. The ‘Tenth State Exhibition’ held in Moscow in 1919 proved that the ‘Soviet Creation and Suprematism’ movement had become widespread in Russian art. Kazimir Malevich usually exhibited his works in Russian homes, where icons were placed, stating that works depicting the visible world had no connection with art. Suprematism finds its representational form, which allows for the expression of pure emotion, in non-objective representation. As non-objective art reaches its peaks, the contours of the visible world gradually disappear from view. After the political revolution in Russia ended in victory, the primary problem for progressive artists such as the Suprematists was to extend the revolution into academic and educational spheres. The years before the revolution (1913–1917) were years of united action against the established academicism of the old order. The history of this internal struggle among artists in Moscow was a concrete example of one of the most decisive conflicts in the evolution of modern Europe. Under the political power of the Communist Party, the modern movement in art was condemned in principle and in practice, and there was an insistence on rebuilding the pictorial reality that had prevailed under the old order. From their 1920 manifestos onwards, the Constructivists were in a position of guilt for producing art that did not stem from ‘socialist reality’. This situation implies that, rather than engaging in self-sufficient pure production, the artist should use their talent to interpret the factual world and, in particular, to interpret this reality in a way that develops the official thinking of the social order. Especially in periods that cannot be considered metaphysical, this distinction has found expression only as confidence or distrust in the face of nature. Trust has pioneered mimetic or naturalistic art, while distrust has pioneered abstract art or a geometric, epic realism supported by the ideology of the proletariat. In art history, these two tendencies have elicited extremely mixed reactions. The underlying motivation is often entirely unconscious. Constructivists were directly employed by the state for everyday purposes. Constructivist painter and photographer Alexander Rodchenko designed posters, advertising billboards and product logos for ordinary Soviet goods. In Russia, ‘aesthetics’ became official during the Stalin era. The Association of Revolutionary Russian Artists (AKhRR), founded in 1922, stated that art should be made for the working class and easily understood by them. AKhRR is an association of Soviet figurative painters who, with the ideological support of the proletariat, preferred epic realism to modernist abstraction. Instead of modernist aesthetics, Soviet art was expected to lean towards photo-realism in its epic depictions of famous leaders such as Lenin and Stalin, as well as proletarian men and women in factories and fields. Such epic realism was recognised as official state art policy by Andrei Zhdanov, chairman of the culture committee, at the 1st All-Union Congress of Writers in 1934. The war that plunged Russia into isolation, which continued in the years following 1918, led artists who were part of the European artistic avant-garde network in the country to engage in aesthetic experiments as well as political turmoil from the period of political instability onwards. The political dynamics and broad sphere of influence of the Bolshevik Revolution did not affect all avantgarde artists equally in the years following 1918, and the tension between communist ideals and capitalist hegemony pulled artists in different directions. Russian avant-garde artists welcomed the Bolshevik Revolution and, instead of producing meaningless works for the bourgeoisie, embarked on a struggle to advance the revolution.

• Details
• Contents