Kazimir Malevich’s Negative Theology and Mystical Suprematism

Irina Sakhno

doi:10.3390/rel12070542

Abstract

This article examines Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist art in the context of negative (apophatic) theology, as a crucial tool in analyzing both the artist’s theoretical conclusions and his new visual optics. Our analysis rests on the point that the artist intuitively moved towards recognizing the ineffability of the multidimensional universe and perceiving God as the Spiritual Absolute. In his attempt to see the invisible in the formulas of Emptiness and Nothingness, Malevich turned to the primary forms of geometric abstraction—the square, circle and cross—which he endows with symbolic concepts and meanings. Malevich treats his Suprematism as a method of perceiving the ineffability of the Absolute. With the Black Square seen as a face of God, the patterns of negative theology rise to become the philosophical formula of primary importance. Malevich’s Mystical Suprematism series (1920–1922) confirms the presence of complex metaphysical reflection and apophatic thought in his art. Not only does the series contain icon paraphrases and the Christian symbolism of the cross and mandorla, but it also advances the formulas of the apophatic faith of the modern times, since Suprematism presents primary forms as the universals of “the face of the future” and the energy of the non-objective art.

Highlights

Knowledge and the religious experience of God as the basic matrices of Christian selfcognition are the philosophical and theological codes which have always shaped the nature of religion and the foundations of centuries-old liturgical traditions
Sergii Bulgakov refers us to the tradition of negative theology, first1 developed in the books ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, a Christian saint and the first bishop of Athens who lived in the 1st century
Art historians currently interpret The Savior Enthroned in Glory in the context of early Christian iconography: Jesus is seated against the background of the Universe, and the earth is represented by a large red square, with its four corners standing for North, South, East and West

Summary

Introduction

Knowledge and the religious experience of God as the basic matrices of Christian selfcognition are the philosophical and theological codes which have always shaped the nature of religion and the foundations of centuries-old liturgical traditions. Unachievable through individual effort, this grace is “from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Holy 2010, James 1, 17) In his treatises, St. Gregory Palamas further expands many ideas of the Areopagite’s negative theology: The divine nature is incomprehensible, as He is above all existence and any particular image, and inexpressible in words. Malevich presents the Universe as the world of human difference, borderless, the one where God, the soul, religion, science and art equal nothing This level zero of the crucial meanings of life aimed to illustrate another of Malevich’s iconic assumptions—“there is nothing knowable, and the eternal Nothingness does exist”

Sacred Mysteries of Suprematist Primary Forms

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Conclusions