The (Non)Objective of Nonobjectivity: The Anti-Teleological Objects of the Russian Avant-Garde

Kazimir Malevich's coinage of the term "objectlessness" (bespredmetnost') has been translated by many artists and art historians as a synonym for abstraction or non-representational painting. Yet, unlike a great deal of the scholarship on the Russian avant-garde, my work argues that a more literal and material interpretation is foundational to the abstraction of the period (1915-1918). Malevich made sure his objects would degrade from the beginning in two senses: one material and one conceptual. Black Square for example was painted with an idiosyncratic, burnt bone and carbon-based pigment that he knew would disintegrate almost immediately on an untreated, previously used canvas. This is evidence of his non-teleological approach to the art object, which he believed should never be complete. Completeness, monumentality, and permanence are ‘Western’ values placed on explicitly Russian objects that were never meant to express the ideals of capital-p Progress. Instead, and as is shown by Malevich's later Suprematist works, his abstractions were intentionally precarious: the forms of his compositions became less solid as he dissolved the previously distinct figure/ground relations through gradations in color, softer geometries, or with near monochromes. In sum, this paper suggests that the concept of "objecthood" advanced by the Russian avant-garde is incompatible with contemporaneous Western ideals insofar as it valued the pragmatism of decay over the transcendence of the so-called masterpiece.