thats not bleedin art! my kid could do that

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― ambrose, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's all subjective, I understand but... "The Samara "Black Square" has taken the art world by surprise." give me a break. The suprise is that people actually call this crap art. I'm a little more partial to man ray, but that's just me.

― Deadman, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I love how simple MAlevichs stuff is, how rigid and uncomprmising and how well it fits into his philosphy

― anthony, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I love the fact that Malevich used to design his own film posters - there's a great one he did for 'Dr. Mabuse' in the Amsterdam Museum of Modern Art (or whatever it's called...)

― Andrew L, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The suprise is that people actually call this crap art.

I think that there are a lot of people out there who would call "Black Square" Crap Art.

― Dan Perry, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Woo fucking hoo. I'd quite like it hanging in my front room, actually, but this "claiming" of a black square sounds almost laughably childish. BUT if people are willing to pay lots of money for it, its contextual, historical value blah blah is all that matters.

― Mark C, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

this painting made a lot of sense when i studied it in my art class. malevich is pretty cool i reckon. i like all the different stages in his work, like all the suprematism stuff. it seems people are asuming that by by painting a black square (not actually a square, in fact), he was trying to do something duchamp-esque and 'claim' that an ordinary black square is in fact art, and moreover, 'his' art.

but as far as i can work out from what he said about it (not that i can remember much), that wasn't really the point at all.

i guess a modern assumption would be that he was trying to shock by painting...well, just a black square, but i think the most shocking thing about that to the public at the time was the fact that it was hung in the top corner of the room, the traditional place of the icon, ie the most sacred place in a traditional russian house.

― ambrose, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Seems to me that with the suprematist stuff he was just developing a personal iconography (a black square on his coffin, jeezus!), perhaps in relation to the state of russian culture/civilization at the time. Seems a pretty noble and sane thing to me. Paying a million bucks for it is really weird; anyone can paint their own black square.

― Kris, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

that's fine, it has historical value and philospophically speaking, must be considered and in fact is art, but as far as shock value, it really doesn't do much for me. I am not properly schooled in art, but it's not aesthetically pleasing to me and doesn't really do much for me in the shock value sense either. No sir...don't like it. " I don't know about art, but I know what I like" -Lux Interior

― Deadman, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I realize, that might have been a bit redundant.

― Deadman, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"...anyone can paint their own black square"

Any else getting a Homer-esque bright idea?

― Mark C, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I guess, it's an okay idea, not worth a million (in any currency)...Some of his other stuff is much better.

― jel --, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Anyone could paint a black square...but do you have his technique? I mean, you probably haven't even seen it up close. You might want to do your homework before passing snap judgements. What a dull world we live in, where people speak on which they know nothing. Yawn...is there a more interesting thread on this board somewhere

― Art S. Long, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Anyone could paint a black square...but do you have his technique?

Fear my Black Square Technique! KI-YAAAH!

― Dan Perry, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually, it was in the San Jose art museum the one time I went there.

― Kris, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And by personal iconography I mean he's basically developed his own symbol or logo.

― Kris, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

you can do it yourself = it is art
you need training = it is science
you need genius = it is mathematics

― mark s, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

you need instructions = it's furniture!

― jel --, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

conversely, "it is art" = you need help

― Jeff W, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I say, "The ratio of the length of one side of the of a black square to that of its diagonal is 1:square root of 2". Does this make me a greater artist than Malevich, a greater genius than Archimedes, a a greater scientist than either of them, or none of the above? The taxpayers of California are dying to know.

― Kris, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Malevich is one of my favourite painters. As for this "It doesn't shock me" stuff, it is almost a century late to even be discussing the black square in those terms. A lot of my favourite 20th Century painters can easily be copied - Rothko and Mondrian and Barnett Newman, most obviously - but belittling their work on this basis is to believe that craft and technique are what count, above anything else. I don't believe that art can or should be limited in such a way - and again, I can hardly believe that this hasn't been settled by now, after a century where craft vanished from the work of many of the best artists, following on most significantly from Duchamp's wonderful ready-mades.

The technique and craft argument always seems to me to be directly parallel to the progressive vs punk argument and indeed the complaints some people make against electronic music.

― Martin Skidmore, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Um...I haven't seen too many Mondrians up close, but one thing one of my professors pointed out is that it's actually 'a bitch to copy one of those things.' Apparently he tried as an undergraduate. There's a lot more to applying paint than you think. Believe me, if you hadn't studied art, you couldn't do it. This is not the same thing as making some elitist, conservative argument. But romantic, 'punk rock', 'anyone can do it' theories are equally bullshit.

Notions like 'craft' or 'discipline' are not elitist : elitism is about social exclusion. You still have to work at it like you do at writing. Also, technical proficiency is being confused with craft and discipline. You could be a primitive punk rocker and still have craft. Sometimes the work is in the head, sometimes it's in the technique, and sometimes it's in both.

Also, the values you apply to music (i.e., punk) shouldn't necessarily be the same ones you apply to visual art.

― Art Long, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i.e., DIY != 'easy'

― Art Long, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mondrian's technique of applying paint is not terribly hard or sophisticated, and I don't think that would tell us anything about his worth as an artist anyway, either way. I know Picasso had considerable technical skill, whereas I have no idea about, say, Barnett Newman. How would it make Newman better if he could paint like Titian?

There's an interesting study that was done around his work. An academic produced a programme that produced fake Mondrians (obviously referencing his prime period when they followed very rigid rules). I think there was some human selection, but they ended up with sets of three computer-generated Mondrians and one real one. They did two surveys: they grabbed people on the streets of London and asked which they liked best; and they did the same with art students. The real Mondrians were by far the most popular among 'ordinary people', while the students' choices showed no significant preference - the guess was that they were trying to guess which was really by the great artist.

What this tells us, I don't know. I just thought it was worth mentioning...

― Martin Skidmore, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The problem here is that you're holding 'painting like Titian' as the standard for technique, when it's kind of irrelevant. You're comparing apples and oranges, really. Good thing Barnett Newman didn't try - it doesn't say anything about the technique. If the fact that they were painted is not important, then why didn't they simply make prints? My point is that those things would not look as good were they executed by someone who didn't have the technique. Believe me, I've seen plenty of bad student art - bad paintings of squares and lines - that backs this up. We need to get away from this notion that craft is 'elitist'. Art education may be, the art world may be, but those so-called 'ordinary' folks would be more likely to respect discipline if they realized what went into it. Nothing elitist about it.

― Art Long, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Another problem is that Mondrian et al. are being equated with democratization a la punk. This simply isn't true - these people came out of the same bourgeois culture, so it doesn't hold. Interestingly, Renaissance Italy may have been less elitist in this regard.

― Art Long, Friday, 12 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I can understand how a black square could be beautiful without hearing anything about Malevich. It's just like after you've played lots of computer games, you know that Pong is the most beautiful. I bet if you were around art a lot, eventually you would love a black square the most. But I understand that he did it to shock? That seems strange.

Also I disagree that mathematics requires genius. I can do maths well and I'm definitely not a genius.

― maryann, Saturday, 13 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oooh, knife drawer, twat etc.

If art is only appreciable by the educated, then by extension there is one person who will appreciate a work of art more than anyone else, i.e. the person who "knows" the most about it. Thjisnwill, presumably, be the artist himself. Art therefore = masturbation?

― Mark C, Saturday, 13 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one month passes...

The black square's worth a million or more to a collector, but tha art market and art itself are two different matters. The market value is not about art, it's about commercial value, determined by ahost of art-critical factors. But value is really determined with every new viewer...you have a use for it or you don't...Eno talked about how this one piece of art may work for 3 million people for 50 years, or a pop hit may work for 500,000 people for 6 months....how can we expect to have the same needs/aesthetics as a Russian in the 19102, 1920s? Appreciating it because of its history is a student effect, not a visceral confrontation.

― Nicholas J K, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hey, guys-

I'm as skeptical as anyone about the content of supposed modern art/suprematism/etc, but if you spend a little bit of time with Black Square under the right lighting, you can really get an interesting geometric experience out of it. Just relax your eyes and concentrate on the piece almost like you would a "Magic Eye" poster, but not defocusing. Eventually, as your eyes adjust to the black color, you will begin to see other shades of black, countless in number, comprising dozens of sub-shapes and movements. Kinda neat.

― Kelly Warner, Saturday, 1 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But I can do that by SQUISHING my eyeballs with them closed.

― Graham, Saturday, 1 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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