Juliet Clark, in: Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive: ART & FILM NOTES, November/December, 2002
The book edited by Stanfordprofessor OksanaBulgakowa allows to discover the visionary artist/theorist's idiosyncratic take on the most objective art: cinema.

Book Description
What did Kazimir Malevich (1878 - 1935), the proponent of pure abstraction in painting, have to do with film, that mechanical repository of everything that is banal and worthless? It was only in 1924 that Malevich described film as a system that fixed reality beyond the cultural idea. Nonetheless, between 1925 and 1929, he wrote several articles on film as well as a script. These texts, by the man who created the 'black square', which are assembled in this volume and translated into English for the first time, lead us to the heart of the debate about movement and acceleration as central metaphors for modernity in the international avant-garde. His contradictory reflections on this new medium document the friction between the metaphysical program of Suprematist abstraction and the mediatic attributes of film. Malevich arranges the melodramas of Mary Pickford, the comedies of Monty Banks, the films of Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Walter Ruttmann, and Yakov Protazanov within his historical model of the rise of Modernism from Cezanne through Cubism and Futurism, to Suprematism. In this process, almost all of his essays deal with the ‘missed encounter’ between film and art, because Malevich perceives film as the perfected form, not of Naturalism but of the principles of the new painting - dynamism and abstraction.

Language Notes
Text: English, Russian (translation)
Original Language: Russian

From the Publisher
[Paperback: 248 pages, ca. 47 illustrations] [Edited, and with an introduction by Oksana Bulgakowa] PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN - WITH DISTINCT NOTES!

From the Author
"So long as the screen remains a site where philistines deposit their everyday junk, film will not become an independent art: it is but a new trash can, invented by the technical power of science, in which the philistine displays his tripe, or a camel burdened with the junk of a Kirghiz nomad." [Kazimir Malevich, 1928]

About the Author
b. 1878, near Kiev; d. 1935, Leningrad Kazimir Malevich was born February 26, 1878, near Kiev. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1903. During the early years of his career, he experimented with various Modernist styles and participated in avant-garde exhibitions, such as those of the Moscow Artists’ Association, which included Vasily Kandinsky and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds exhibition of 1910 in Moscow. Malevich showed his Primitivist paintings of peasants at the exhibition Donkey’s Tail in 1912. After this exhibition, he broke with Larionov’s group. In 1913, with composer Mikhail Matiushin and writer Alexei Kruchenykh, Malevich drafted a manifesto for the First Futurist Congress. That same year, he designed the sets and costumes for the opera "Victory over the Sun" by Matiushin and Kruchenykh. Malevich showed at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1914. At the "0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition in Petrograd in 1915" Malevich introduced his non-objective, geometric Suprematist paintings. In 1919, he began to explore the three-dimensional applications of Suprematism in architectural models. Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Malevich and other advanced artists were encouraged by the Soviet government and attained prominent administrative and teaching positions. Malevich began teaching at the Vitebsk Art School in 1919; he soon became its director. In 1919–1920, he was given a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in Moscow, which focused on Suprematism and other non-objective styles. Malevich and his students at Vitebsk formed the Suprematist group Unovis. From 1922 to 1927, he taught at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Petrograd/Leningrad, and between 1924 and 1926 he worked primarily on architectural models with his students. In 1927, Malevich traveled with an exhibition of his paintings to Warsaw and also went to Berlin, where his work was shown at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung. In Germany, he met Jean Arp, Naum Gabo, Le Corbusier, and Kurt Schwitters and visited the Bauhaus, where he met Walter Gropius. The Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow gave Malevich a solo exhibition in 1929. Because of his connections with German artists, he was arrested in 1930 and many of his manuscripts were destroyed. In his final period, he painted in a representational style. Malevich died May 15, 1935, in Leningrad; in poverty and oblivion.

Excerpted from The White Rectangle: Writings on Film by Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, Oksana Bulgakowa, S. A. Vengerov. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"Art constructs elements and their relationships in space-time; in art, everything is futurized, everything is in motion. In painting, this has been brilliantly resolved by Futurism, but film has failed to grasp it and busied itself with garbage. Cinema is a practical, convenient, cheap way of disseminating knowledge, wherein lies its usefulness and, perhaps, its purpose; but in the field of visual culture, film is adestructive phenomenon. It is behind [all arts] because its artistic form is obscured by garbage and kissing. Compared to the works of vis­ual arts, it is not even worthy of criticism. It is a deaf and mute Lovelace, drifting from one boudoir to the next." [Kazimir Malevich: CINEMA, GRAMOPHONE, RADIO, AND ARTISTIC CULTURE, 1928] "Cinema spins in a charmed circle of concreteness, having thoroughly convinced itself that the concrete can only bemanifested in rubbery, pneumaticcine-kisses. And should someone dare to show a screen without kisses, societywould label him a crazy utopian, an abstract-minded degenerate offspring of aconcrete-minded society. The way out of this circle of concrete kisses liesthrough new art, a new dynamic-kinetic structure, a pure abstraction." [Kazimir Malevich: THE ARTIST AND THE CINEMA, 1926]

SYNOPSIS

What did Kazimir Malevich (1878 - 1935), the proponent of pure abstraction in painting, have to do with film, that mechanical repository of everything that is banal and worthless? It was only in 1924 that Malevich described film as a system that fixed reality beyond the cultural idea. Nonetheless, between 1925 and 1929, he wrote several articles on film as well as a script.

These texts, by the man who created the 'black square', which are assembled in this volume and translated into English for the first time, lead us to the heart of the debate about movement and acceleration as central metaphors for modernity in the international avant-garde. His contradictory reflections on this new medium document the friction between the metaphysical program of Suprematist abstraction and the mediatic attributes of film.

Malevich arranges the melodramas of Mary Pickford, the comedies of Monty Banks, the films of Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Walter Ruttmann, and Yakov Protazanov within his historical model of the rise of Modernism from Cezanne through Cubism and Futurism, to Suprematism. In this process, almost all of his essays deal with the ￯﾿ﾽmissed encounter￯﾿ﾽ between film and art, because Malevich perceives film as the perfected form, not of Naturalism but of the principles of the new painting - dynamism and abstraction.

About the Author

Kazimir Malevich was born February 26, 1878, near Kiev. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1903.

During the early years of his career, he experimented with various Modernist styles and participated in avant-garde exhibitions, such as those of the Moscow Artists￯﾿ﾽ Association, which included Vasily Kandinsky and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds exhibition of 1910 in Moscow.

Malevich showed his Primitivist paintings of peasants at the exhibition Donkey￯﾿ﾽs Tail in 1912. After this exhibition, he broke with Larionov￯﾿ﾽs group.

In 1913, with composer Mikhail Matiushin and writer Alexei Kruchenykh, Malevich drafted a manifesto for the First Futurist Congress. That same year, he designed the sets and costumes for the opera "Victory over the Sun" by Matiushin and Kruchenykh. Malevich showed at the Salon des Ind￯﾿ﾽpendants in Paris in 1914. At the "0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition in Petrograd in 1915" Malevich introduced his non-objective, geometric Suprematist paintings.

In 1919, he began to explore the three-dimensional applications of Suprematism in architectural models. Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Malevich and other advanced artists were encouraged by the Soviet government and attained prominent administrative and teaching positions.

Malevich began teaching at the Vitebsk Art School in 1919; he soon became its director. In 1919￯﾿ﾽ1920, he was given a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in Moscow, which focused on Suprematism and other non-objective styles. Malevich and his students at Vitebsk formed the Suprematist group Unovis. >From 1922 to 1927, he taught at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Petrograd/Leningrad, and between 1924 and 1926 he worked primarily on architectural models with his students.

In 1927, Malevich traveled with an exhibition of his paintings to Warsaw and also went to Berlin, where his work was shown at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung. In Germany, he met Jean Arp, Naum Gabo, Le Corbusier, and Kurt Schwitters and visited the Bauhaus, where he met Walter Gropius.

The Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow gave Malevich a solo exhibition in 1929. Because of his connections with German artists, he was arrested in 1930 and many of his manuscripts were destroyed. In his final period, he painted in a representational style. Malevich died May 15, 1935, in Leningrad; in poverty and oblivion.

FROM THE CRITICS

Clark - Art & Film Notes Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive

With his stark geometric compositions, the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich (1878 - 1935), founder of Suprematism, strove "to free art from the ballast of the objective world.

A new book edited by Stanford professor Oksana Bulgakowa, Kazimir Malevich: "The White Rectangle. Writings on Film", allows English-speaking readers to discover the visionary artist and theorist's idiosyncratic take on one of the most objective of arts: the cinema. Malevich's views on film are rich in apparent contradictions: the artist painted iconic images of peasants but derided Soviet films' glorification of rural life; he found many avant-garde films unsatisfactory, yet was impressed by the painterly images in the Mary Pickford vehicle Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall.