‘ANote on the English Translation of Kazimir Malevich's Futurism-Suprematism Kazimir Malevich was an extremely copious writer, and it seems that for him the act of writing was no less artistic and inventive than the act of painting Many of his toxts have already been translated into English in the four-volume series edited by Troels ‘Andersen between 1968 and 1978 (see Bibliogra~ phy), but a number of key essays still exist only in ‘manuscript form. The text translated below is from along work, titled “Futurism-Supromatism,” that Malevich wrote on various occasions in 1921. It exists in atleast two versions: part of one version is inthe archive of the Stedelik Museum, Amster- dam; part of another, formerly in the collection of @ student of Malevich, Efim Raiak, in Moscow, is now ina private collection in that city. The translation below is from the second version. “Futurism ‘Suprematism’ is one of many examinations that Malevich made of the evolution of Cubism and Futurism into Suprematism, Malevich was fiot a master of elegant prose, and his style abounds with oblique phrases, ecoenttic punctuation, and grammatical errors. In the interest of accessibility, however, an attempt has been made to clarify the more obscure passages of this extremely tense and complex treatise. FUTURISM-SUPREMATISM, 1924 AN EXTRACT Kazimir Malevich In the future not a single ‘grounded structure will remain on Earth, Nothing will be fastened or tied down. This is the true nature of the universe. But while each unit of ‘matter is a singular part of nature, it will soon ‘merge with the whole. ‘This is what Suprematism means to me—the dawn of an era in which the nucleus will move as a single force of atomized energy and will expand within new, orbiting, spatial systems. Synthesis, therefore, is the one-dimensional condition of the ‘two- and three-dimensional world. Since primeval times our awareness of the natural world has become increasingly dynamic. Today we have advanced into a new fourth dimension of motion. ‘We have pulled up our consciousness by its roots from the Earth. Itis free now to revolve in the infinity of space. Go forward, art workers—in your movement you wil find the new Realism of the world. ‘Suprematism as a great dynamism, a violent change, an era of dynamism triumphant over material ‘Surface and volumetric Suprematism—colored, black, and white, In my notes on art, | almost always connect, Cubism, Futurism, and Suprematism. While Cubism and Futurism are directly linked, it might seem at first glance that there is no such link between Futurism and Suprematism. Indeed, there is none either in terms of composition or the handling of paint. But if we try to penetrate this creative act philosophically, the link manifests itsett in the notion of atornization—the freedom of units regardless of their makeup. In other words, with the atomization of the old organism and its liber- ated units, a violent change is imminent. | think that freedom can be attained only after our ideas about the organization of solids have been com- pletely smashed. This liberates each unit from the single, complex mass made up of units of energy. In reality, everything exists within the world; nothing ‘can exist independently. Nature’s perfection lies in1 the absolute, blind freedom of units within it—units that are at the same time absolutely interdependent, Consequently, every sold is a unity of absolutely free units, and what we see in nature is simply the mass integration of free units and the various amal- gams of steel and stone. This apparent amalgam, infact, contains units of many kinds, including space. In other words, the fusion is not total, and thus solid matter does not exist in nature. There is only energy. Therefore, everything is linked and at the same time separate in its own motion. Much has been written about this in scholarly treatises by ‘eminent people, and I need not elaborate on this idea. | want only to point out that this notion was the impetus for breaking up the visual complexity of a solid and dividing its mass into the separate energies of the colors of Suprematism, My research has shown that color in its basic state is autonomous; that is, each ray has its own energy and characteristics. When colors are mixed, they produce different hues and release new color energies. This results from different color intensi- ties and temperatures. The radiating colors gener- ate the strengths of the different hues. This raw energy of color has been the painter's strongest stimulus. Aroused by color in nature, the painter began to express this stimulus in canvases that we call pictorial acts. From this, various forms of pictorial activity emerged, which we categorize as landscape, genre, and so forth, Painting has always expressed materiality, impressions, density, transparency, weight, and so on, but never abso- lute cotor. ‘Thus painting used to represent the objective ‘world of nature and to a degree the nonobjective world. In this way, stimulated by different colored materials or textures, the arlist—the painter— began to reproduce them. But he did not realize that this stimulus also introduced pure nonobjec- tive, pictorial composition—something that Cubism discovered later and expressed as its highest, pictorial achievement. This is true of all the funda- mental natural laws that | have discussed in my atticles on Cubism, and according to my research, painting has attained its highest expression in this development. Moreover, in Suprematism the mass of energy breaks down into individual color constructs on the two-dimensional plane—with the result that each plane or volume becomes an independent unit Powered by its own motion. Thus, in expressing pure colored form, the colored period of Suprema: tism discovered the very essence of color. This * became the departure point from which the new movement continued to evolve, forced to integrate and produce a new pictorial form or concentration of forces. These powerful articulations of form constituted the painted picture. But did it really make sense to extrapolate color in order to destroy these forms? or to relate the pictorial energy to a ‘new level of color? What was understood here was the conscious rejection of material, or the atomi- zation of the picture as it approached a new articu- lation of energy. ‘Asa result, Suprematist atomization of the picture and the reduction to a single color has released the action of atomization—like a multichambered cartridge —onto the individual elements of color energy, which were not interconnected before. This process of isolation has created the form of the black or colorless square, a form that in its atomi- zation offered all kinds of other forms, and these in tum were painted many different colors. The result is that, as planes, all the Suprematist forms are units of the Suprematist square. Most of them fall into fine along diagonal and vertical axes and inter- act within a dynamic field of expression. They also attain their maximum intensity when the Suprema- tist forms are positioned horizontally. Such forms, of course, do not express anything related to the objective world, and in the viewer's mind they are onobjective. Consciousness now begins to oper- ate with supremes [transiator’s italics), with individ~ val units—the signs of dynamic mathematical connections. Expressing this dynamic functioning is the primary purpose of consciousness. The forms are built exclusively on white, which is intended to signify infinite space. The tactlty of this dynamism, however, begins to assume importance in this kind of composition. A picture does not require painted forms. But this nonnecessity for color and paint now acquires another meaning—color becomes redundant not because itis superfluous aesthetically but because ‘something even more fundamental has been hid- den. Like color, this dynamism is achieved through materials, and it emerges only when the compo- sition attains perfection. Such perfection generates a new atomization, Traslated by John E. Bout,