Suprematism = Super? Maybe not...

The Russian Suprematists definitely had a new vision towards art. Though the movement saw its roots dug into controversial grounds, Malevich's ideas were so audacious and novel that despite the initial distress and alarm, Suprematism quickly became a dominant style. Malevich's white square on a white ground embodied the movement's principles. As we can see, Malevich stresses almost endlessly that the name of the new style refers to the supremacy of pure feeling in art over art's objectivity. The simplest geometric forms -- a square, a triangle, a circle, and intersecting lines – composed into dynamic arrangements on the flat surface of the canvas or into spatial constructions (architektons) – are to express the sensation of speed, flight, and rhythm.

Suprematism, through its propagation by the Bauhaus, profoundly influenced the development of modern European art, architecture, and industrial design. The theory of abstraction was probably best realized through suprematism, and its ripples can be seen in the modern art of our times. In my opinion, suprematism and modern art share a streak of lightening that bolts through both these ideologies – they are almost indiscernible by the ordinary eye. By ordinary, I mean people like me, my family, my friends, and almost all the people I interact with. How do you expect me to know that a white square on a white background is a piece of art, and not a discoloration of the paper? And along the same lines, how are blobs of paint smacked on a canvas art, when the paintings give me vibes of a kid gone berserk with his paint brushes?

Suprematism, along with Cubism and Futurism, was successful in taking a peak into what the future had in store for the world of art. But I feel they tried too hard to differentiate themselves from other artists around the world. The idea of creating something from scratch is a strong one, but the mechanisms that they used were still the same as those that have existed for as long as one can remember. There is a very thin boundary between invention and innovation, and in fact, one cannot exist without the other. It is this delicate relationship that makes me dubious about the ideologies of the Suprematists.