One of my favorite artists is Kasimir Malevich. He started a movement in 1913 that he dubbed Suprematism. It was an effort, on his part, to recapture what he considered to be the key purpose of art. The key purpose of art, according to Malevich, is to evoke a feeling using visual medium.
In Malevich's mind, however, the art of painting and art itself had been too over-crowded by "things." Artists, in his mind, should "cast aside (ideas, concepts, and objective structures) in order to heed pure feeling." The way that Malevich proposed to accomplish this was by removing objectivity, the conscious mind, and recognizable structures from his paintings.
One of the reasons that Malevich became so obsessed with this artistic campaign to recapture "pure feeling" was because he felt that for too many people the "thing" and the "concept" were substituted for feeling. For example, he wrote - "Is a milk bottle, then, the symbol of milk? Suprematism is the rediscovery of pure art which, in the course of time, had become obscured by the accumulation of "things."
So why does all this stuff even matter? It matters because Malevich sensed that there had been a loss of this 'feeling' in art. The goal of many artists had become to paint an approximation of something. It was not concerned with evoking a feeling in the observer but in recording a moment in time or a "thing" through the medium of paint. A good example of how this perspective of art has continued to this day can be found in every new movie that comes out. The goal of every digital effects artist is to create a seamless digital effect. They don't want you to notice that it is there. They want to create such a perfect representation of "things" that we can't notice the difference between the real and the digital.
Malevich realized that art in its purest form was to be creative. Mankind had a desire and a "bubbling up" within him to create something. G.K. Chesterton, in his book, "The Everlasting Man" talks about this first desire and how we have records of it in cave paintings. Chesterton observed that every cave painting we have ever seen is not an "objective" representation of a horse or of the animals we so often find on ancient cave walls. Instead it is an artistic expression of those animals.
Many scholars speculate that this is because they were primitive men uncapable of approximating a real horse on a cave wall using handmade paints. Chesterton argued that in fact all we can derive from these cave paintings, in terms of meaning and significance, is that these so called "primitive" men were motivated from something within to be creative. He posited that these cavemen were in fact artists and painted the animals in the manner they did because they were being creative. Malevich would say that they were trying to capture and evoke that feeling of awe and wonder they experienced when they observed these amazing animals.
(to be continued in Part 2)
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Suprematism, Art, and Feeling (Part 1)
Suprematism, Art, and Feeling (Part 2)
. . . continued from Suprematism, Art, and Feeling (Part 1)
Malevich wrote, "The general public is still convinced today that art is bound to perish if it gives up the imitation of 'dearly loved reality' . . . but the nature and meaning of artistic creation continue to be misunderstood, as does the nature of creative work in general, because feeling, after all, is always everywhere the one and only source of every creation."
Now Malevich was not a believer. He lived in what would become the Soviet Union before the revolution which created that communist government. He did, however, recognize that everything that is created (particularly nature) evokes a feeling in us when we see it. He naturally concluded that whoever created it, did so because they felt something within them.
(a song for you to listen to while you read the rest of the article - to evoke a feeling in you. From the new Glory Revealed 2 Album, called "Since the World Began").
I think that Malevich, while not completely accurate, was on the right track when it came to creating art and feeling. In Proverbs, Solomon wrote of the virtues of wisdom. One of the ways he did this was by personifying Wisdom itself, as if it was alive. In chapter 8:22-31 we read,
"The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old;
I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning,
before the world began.
When there were no oceans, I was given birth,
when there were no springs abounding with water;
before the mountains were settled in place,
before the hills, I was given birth,
before he made the earth or its fields
or any dust of the world.
I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
Then I was the craftsman at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind."
Now, I have always sought wisdom from God, but the way that Wisdom personified responds when seeing the completed creation of the world struck me when I first read these verses. Wisdom was "filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence." Wisdom was filled with delight when he viewed creation. Creation was the single greatest act of artistic expression ever. While God used wisdom and his omniscience to execute the act of creating the universe and everything in it - the result was so amazing it delighted wisdom.
The contrast of that statement may not be readily visible. Consider though the type of people who we consider to be "wise." They are not the type to use words like 'delight,' 'rejoice,' and 'day after day.' Instead they focus on intellectual pursuits which will ultimately be mentally rewarding. Here we see Wisdom personified "filled with delight" at the sight of the completed creation.
If God Himself sought this sort of outcome when He created the world, why do we so often stray from His example? I believe that just as God created man in His image - He created within us a desire to create, to express our innermost feelings. Feelings are difficult to communicate using words. So, instead, we often use facial expressions, symbols, and actions. Art, to me, is the highest form of communicating these innermost feelings. Because we can't create mountain ranges out of thin air - we paint them on a canvas, seeking to evoke in others the feelings that we experienced when we first saw those mountains. We can't knit together the human form in the womb of a mother so we paint it and study it because it creates within us feelings that we want to reproduce.
We sing, we dance, we paint, we play, and we praise - not because it is intellectually satisfying but because it satisfies us deep within - in our innermost being.
So the next time you sing a song, you see a painting, you read a scripture, or you see the wonderful vistas of God's creation - let it bring up feelings within you and then praise God for those feelings. Praise Him because He created you with the ability to both create and feel - so that you could experience His Creation with Him.
When you look at the beauty of His Creation - think of what He must have felt when He completed it. That's right, God has feelings and He experienced them as He created the stars in the sky and rivers below.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
A Long Time Coming . . .
