Conflicting Approaches to Creativity? Suprematism and Constructivism

Chapter 13 Conflicting Approaches to Creativity? Suprematism and Constructivism

Christina Lodder

We tend to think of Suprematism and Constructivism as being diametrically opposed in their approach to the work of art and the process of creativity. In part, this is because of the overt animosity that existed between Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin, who are regarded as the leaders of these two movements. This enmity has usually been regarded as the result of the long- standing rivalry between the two artists, which had been strengthened by the competitive atmosphere that characterised the pre-revolutionary Russian art world.1 By the early 1920s, personal antagonisms had been reinforced by several crucial and substantial creative and theoretical differences, some of which pre-dated the Revolution, although many had appeared with particular inten- sity after the emergence of Constructivism in March 1921. Constructivism’s emphasis on industry, technology, utility, and Commu- nism seemed completely at odds with Suprematism’s more explicitly aesthetic, spiritual and metaphysical content. In 1924, Malevich stressed, ‘those who know Suprematism and Constructivism will not confuse these two phenom- ena’.2 He was particularly opposed to the importance that the Constructivists gave to technology and utility. For Malevich, Constructivism represented the ‘academicism of technology’,3 and its focus on objects of practical necessity

1 For a penetrating analysis of the relationship between Malevich and Tatlin, see Charlotte Douglas, ‘Tatlin und Malewitsch: Geschichte und Theorie 1914-1915 / Tatlin i Malevich: istoriia i teoriia 1914-1915’, in Jürgen Harten, ed., Vladimir Tatlin: Leben, Werk, Wirkung. Eine inter- nationales Symposium (Cologne: Dumont Buchverlag, 1983), 210-218 (German) and 430-437 (Russian). See also Christina Lodder ‘Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich: A Creative Di- alogue’ in Tatlin: New Art for a New World: International Symposium (Basel: The Museum Tinguely, 2013), 243-247. 2 Kazimir Malevich, ‘Zapiski ob arkhitektury’ [Notes on Architecture], 1924, ms; English translation in K. S. Malevich, The Artist, Infinity, Suprematism: Unpublished Writings 1913-1933, ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia Hoffmann (Copenhagen: Borgens Forlag, 1978), 109. 3 Kazimir Malevich, letter to the Dutch Artists, 7 September 1921; English translation in Kaz- imir Malevich, Letters, Documents, Memoirs and Criticism, Russian edition: eds., Irina A. Vakar and Tatiana N. Mikhienko; English edition: trans. Antonina W. Bouis, ed. Wendy Salmond, general ed. Charlotte Douglas (London: Tate Publishing, 2015), I: 153.

© KoninklijkeBrillNV,Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004384989_015 260 Lodder was completely antithetical to the spiritual ambitions of Suprematism. He in- sisted that ‘utilitarian functions have one role in life, the functions of art a different one’.4 For the Constructivists, Suprematism seemed too much con- cerned with art itself, rather than concentrating on reconstructing the external world. It seemed to ignore communist ideology, and the demands of industry, engineering, science, and technology in favour of aesthetics. While acknowledging this incontrovertible opposition in terms of creative outlook, I would like to suggest that the Suprematists and Constructivists also shared certain fundamental values and principles in their approaches to the creative process and the nature of artistic form. I shall argue that these shared values, which were rooted in the pre-revolutionary period, continued through- out the existence of the two movements in the 1920s.5 While their common commitment to using their artistic skill to reconstruct and reconfigure physical reality may have been stimulated by the October Revolution, other concerns, such as their dedication to creative invention and their steadfast involvement in exploring the elements of artistic culture, such as space, material, form, colour, faktura [texture], and technique, have their origin in the 1910s when Suprematist painting first emerged and constructed sculpture developed (on the basis of which the more ideologically and industrially charged Construc- tivism was later formulated in March 1921). Indeed, although Constructivism as a term and set of creative principles only materialised in 1921, Suprematism and constructed sculpture developed in close proximity in the 1910s. Suprematism as a pictorial style appeared in early summer 1915, when Malevich painted the first Suprematist composition, and it became public knowledge in November and December 1915 (Fig. 13.1).6

4 Kazimir Malevich, ‘Maliarstvo v problemi arkhitekury’, Nova generatsiia, 2 (Kharkov / Kharkiv, 1928): 116-124; English translation, as ‘Painting and the Problem of Architecture’, in K. S. Malevich, Essays on Art, 1915-1933, ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin (Copenhagen: Borgens Forlag, 1968), II: 11. 5 For an excellent discussion of the relationship between Suprematism and Constructivism which focuses on the evolution of terminological and theoretical distinctions, see Tatiana Goriacheva, ‘Suprematism and Constructivism: An Intersection of Parallels’ in Charlotte Douglas and Christina Lodder, eds., Rethinking Malevich: Proceedings of a Conference in Cel- ebration of the 125th Anniversary of Kazimir Malevich’s Birth (London: Pindar Press, 2007), 67-81. 6 Malevich showed three Suprematist canvases at The Exhibition of Contemporary Decora- tive Art. Embroidery and Carpets from Artists’ Designs [Vystavka sovremennogo dekorativnogo iskusstva. Vyshivki i kovry po eskizam khudozhnikov] (Moscow: Galereia Lemers’e, 1915), which opened on 6 November 1915, several weeks before Malevich showed thirty-nine Suprematist paintings at The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings, 0.10 (Zero-Ten) [Poslednaia futuristich- eskaia vystavka kartin, 0,10 (nol’-desiat’)] (Petrograd: Khudozhestvennoe Biuro N. E. Dobuchi- noi, 19 November 1915 – 19 January 1916). See Julia Tulovsky’s essay in this volume.