Fig. 09.09.01
Unknown Photographer, The UNOVIS Delegation to the First All-Russian Conference of Teachers and Students of Art, 1920.
The text and photographs in this post were taken from the highly-recommended book: T.J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1999). 264-5, 247.
[…] The most evocative of all UNOVIS documents [fig. 09.09.01] shows them setting off by train in June 1920 to a Conference of Teachers and Art Students in the capital. Malevich holds center stage. He grasps a Suprematist plate under his left arm and makes a clenched-fist salute with the other. One of his followers (or is it his wife?) puts a restraining hand on his sleeve. Black Squares are much in evidence: pinned up on the carriage door, worn in his lapel by a man in the foreground, stuck in the impish Iudin’s hair (?) top left, and, by the looks of it, sewn onto El Lissitzky’s sleeve—El Lissitzky is the character in the soft felt hat and light-colored jacket, directly under Malevich’s fist. They are a wild-looking bunch. […]
Fig. 09.09.02
El Lissitzky, cover for Booklet of Vitebsk Committee for the Struggle against Unemployment, lithograph on paper, 1919.
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1 comment:
Great post. We should all revive the Black Square. Really.
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