That the field openly becomes the ground and locates-if not exclusively-within the closed form, exemplifies Malevich’s belief that pure feeling is formed in and echoes an existential situation of void. That is, what the form acquires from the field becomes more decisive for its existence than what it is in itself. No longer simply the site of the form, the field, rather than the innate geometrical nature of the form itself, gives the figure decisive presence. The field converts, from the backdrop or setting of the form, explicitly into its ground. It rids simple Suprematism of its intense contrast of form and field, giving form a power dependent on its “community” with field-indicated by their shared whiteness-rather than their geometry (e.g., White on White). Monumental Suprematism is a successful, if momentary attempt to unite simple and constructive Suprematism. In the last analysis Malevich’s ambition, in his manifestoes as well as his art, is to communicate as directly as possible the fundamentality of feeling, rather than of action or intellect, in human existence. Such forms are usually disguised by the world-signifying content of the picture, much as, for Malevich, private emotions are usually hidden by public actions. Simple Suprematism uncovers the subliminal world of human feeling, making sensuously explicit what is emotionally implicit, while constructive Suprematism uncovers the subliminal world of pictorial forms, which interrelate to ground the sense of plastic movement. Thus, there is continuity between the Suprematist phases, but nonetheless a conflict of motivation, for while simple-straightforward-Suprematism aims to communicate pure feeling, constructive Suprematism with its obvious complication of figural forms aims to communicate pictorial-plastic feeling. The perpetual possibility of their unity gives their conflict a poignant, subtly dynamic edge, telling of Suprematism’s ultimate goal-the communication of pure feeling. The Suprematist conflict between figure and field becomes strongly dialectical in the brief but pointed phase of monumental Suprematism, in which figure and field tend to, but never do fuse. Simple Suprematism might also be called axiomatic Suprematism, in the sense that in it Malevich first presents the terms of his Suprematist statement, or more precisely, argument, viz., the geometrical figure and neutral field, presented in a conflict which initially takes the tame, dialectical form of juxtaposition. These are: (1) colorism (2) depiction of the eternal peasant (3) estheticism (4) simple Suprematism (5) constructive Suprematism (6) monumental Suprematism and (7) depiction of the cross form.
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