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Lot 33
MALEVICH, KAZIMIR SEVERINOVICH. 1879-1935. Autograph Manuscript, in purple ink with title in pencil and corrections in green ink, 4 pp, 4to, Vitebsk, 1920,
4 June 2014, 13:00 EDT
New YorkUS$200,000 - US$300,000
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MALEVICH, KAZIMIR SEVERINOVICH. 1879-1935.
Autograph Manuscript, in purple ink with title in pencil and corrections in green ink, 4 pp, 4to, Vitebsk, 1920, titled "K chistomu deistvu" [Toward Pure Action], being the complete manuscript of an art tract published in the first number of the UNOVIS almanac (1920), toned with folds and an unobtrusive water stain at top of the pages.
IMPORTANT MANIFESTO ON MODERN ART BY THE FATHER OF SUPREMATISM. In 1920 the group of artists known as Unovis (Affirmers of the New Art) issued their almanac containing this essay in an edition of just five copies. Only two are known to have survived. Malevich proposed publishing this "chronicle" of the group's five months of activities to Narkompros (People's Commissariat of Enlightenment), but he was turned down. Then the group thought of issuing it themselves, but as Marc Chagall wrote a friend in April, "At present they are preparing a school anthology, although there is a problem with paper here." El Lissitsky, as head of the studio of graphics and printing at Vitebsk Art School and a fellow Suprematist, was instrumental in getting it printed by Vitsvomas (Vitebsk Free Workshops). According to Tatyana Goryacheva in Tretyakovskaya Galeriya (No 3, 2013), "The almanac was fated to be the only significant collection of articles in which Unovis managed to speak openly and in full" (p 38).
Just as Ezra Pound demanded that modern artists "make it new," Malevich declares in K chistomu deistvu, "We can't lock the new meaning into the catacombs of old things." New forms had to be created to express the new art. "Long live the life of the machinery of new creative thought," he declares: "long live the pilot who learns the plane of modernity after he has thrown the Roman-Greek chariots to the cemetery of time." In his critical writing, Malevich created a highly distinctive, often poetic literary style of his own. "His contemporaries very frequently criticized him severely for his barbarous, wild illiteracy, the overwhelming number of neologisms, 'polonisms' (a result of his Polish origin), inversions and grammatical mistakes, as well as his awful spelling and punctuation," Goryacheva observes. "All these, as well as the inarticulateness and incorrectness of his speech allow us to speak of Malevich's distinctly original linguistic phenomenon. He never cared for eloquence or exact and precise formulations. What he did care for was content, thought or the idea to be perceived; as for stylistic devices Malevich made them serve him in building up an image, and stressing the rhythmical expressiveness of his speech. Thus his language, together with its rather vague and uncertain definitions and notions, coming close to a prophetic, almost biblical pathos, evoked absolutely different attitudes and reactions from his readers" (p 39). This is all evident in this carefully composed manuscript. "Well, I'm illiterate, it's true," Malevich confessed to a colleague, "but it is impossible to say that grammar is everything, or that if I knew grammar, I would have been cleverer." The final paragraph of the manuscript differs from the printed version. See V. A. Shishanov Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo Vitebska 1918-1923 gg. Minsk: Medisont 2010 pp 154-55.
IMPORTANT MANIFESTO ON MODERN ART BY THE FATHER OF SUPREMATISM. In 1920 the group of artists known as Unovis (Affirmers of the New Art) issued their almanac containing this essay in an edition of just five copies. Only two are known to have survived. Malevich proposed publishing this "chronicle" of the group's five months of activities to Narkompros (People's Commissariat of Enlightenment), but he was turned down. Then the group thought of issuing it themselves, but as Marc Chagall wrote a friend in April, "At present they are preparing a school anthology, although there is a problem with paper here." El Lissitsky, as head of the studio of graphics and printing at Vitebsk Art School and a fellow Suprematist, was instrumental in getting it printed by Vitsvomas (Vitebsk Free Workshops). According to Tatyana Goryacheva in Tretyakovskaya Galeriya (No 3, 2013), "The almanac was fated to be the only significant collection of articles in which Unovis managed to speak openly and in full" (p 38).
Just as Ezra Pound demanded that modern artists "make it new," Malevich declares in K chistomu deistvu, "We can't lock the new meaning into the catacombs of old things." New forms had to be created to express the new art. "Long live the life of the machinery of new creative thought," he declares: "long live the pilot who learns the plane of modernity after he has thrown the Roman-Greek chariots to the cemetery of time." In his critical writing, Malevich created a highly distinctive, often poetic literary style of his own. "His contemporaries very frequently criticized him severely for his barbarous, wild illiteracy, the overwhelming number of neologisms, 'polonisms' (a result of his Polish origin), inversions and grammatical mistakes, as well as his awful spelling and punctuation," Goryacheva observes. "All these, as well as the inarticulateness and incorrectness of his speech allow us to speak of Malevich's distinctly original linguistic phenomenon. He never cared for eloquence or exact and precise formulations. What he did care for was content, thought or the idea to be perceived; as for stylistic devices Malevich made them serve him in building up an image, and stressing the rhythmical expressiveness of his speech. Thus his language, together with its rather vague and uncertain definitions and notions, coming close to a prophetic, almost biblical pathos, evoked absolutely different attitudes and reactions from his readers" (p 39). This is all evident in this carefully composed manuscript. "Well, I'm illiterate, it's true," Malevich confessed to a colleague, "but it is impossible to say that grammar is everything, or that if I knew grammar, I would have been cleverer." The final paragraph of the manuscript differs from the printed version. See V. A. Shishanov Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo Vitebska 1918-1923 gg. Minsk: Medisont 2010 pp 154-55.