The Cognitive Line in Russian Avant-Garde Art

Abstract

The painter’s artistic tools are color and line—with them, perception and sensation of the world are transformed into objects. These objects reveal a transition from sensation to knowing, from creation to cognition. Kandinsky, Rodchenko and Malevich wrote about the functions of color and line in art—as a grammar of the soul and as rational instruments used to “name” the world. For Malevich, the line was also a sign, the indicator of a cognitive process and a historical marker.