The Black Square by Kazimir Malevich-- My Take

Kazimir Malevich, the founder of Suprematism, believed that Suprematist art would be superior to all the art of the past, and that it would lead to the "supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts”.

Painted in 1915, The Black Square is often regarded as Malevich’s “royal, living infant.” The Black Square is just that- a black square painted over a white background. This has become a major landmark in abstract art and attracted the cynicism of many.

Why exactly is this art? The question has many answers.

Though some defend it by saying that it is actually a very complex painting requiring knowledge of colors, compositions and proportions, others still see it as a square that could be drawn by any kindergarten student.

Art has always been defined as an expression of skill and imagination that could be appreciated only by the feelings it evokes. The Black Square intends to do just that. Malevich believed that the visual was never important and that the only significant thing was the feeling that was brought about.

He believed that Suprematism art was pure and didn’t need to be embodied in bright colors. A simple object, in his opinion, could bring forth emotions that the conscious mind would not allow.

If that is the case and if art is really more about what you “feel” rather than what you “see”, then I too have my own interpretation of the Black Square.

My first thought, when I saw the painting, was that it was a dark square contained within a white frame. I didn’t like it and I couldn’t understand why. Every time I came across it on a website or search results, I would look away from it. It gave off an ominous feeling that I couldn’t comprehend.

Eventually, I stopped myself from turning away from this piece and made myself look at it and explain to myself why I didn’t like it. What came to my mind was the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde wherein the doctor truly believed that there was good and evil inside all of us and his experiment was to separate the two from himself. Obviously that didn’t go too well and I’m digressing….

The reason it made me think of that classic was that The Black Square represented the human soul to me wherein the Black square symbolized the evil and the white was the good part of the soul that was trying to contain the evil growing within it.

I turned away from that idea and tried to look at the painting differently. But nope, that ominous feeling refused to be shrugged off. My second thought was that it was the soul of a person with not very nice intentions who had put on a façade oh “white” to deceive people into thinking that he was trustworthy.

Quite a story I wrote in my mind about a painting, but that thought made more and more sense to me. The painting showed what we could all become if we didn’t “box” our evil side.

I can’t quite imagine what Malevich must have thought when he painted that. Perhaps he wanted to show a different side of the abstract movement or perhaps he wanted to show that art could be simple and still arouse emotions from the viewer.

Regardless of his intentions, it is definitely one of those pieces whose meaning perplexes everyone till today.