Beyond Zero

Peter Wollen

• Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism edited by Matthew Drutt
  Guggenheim, 296 pp, US $65.00, June 2003, ISBN 0 89207 265 2

Kazimir Malevich was the most enigmatic and the most provocative painter of the early Soviet period. He can be seen as a pioneer of abstraction and of the minimalist works produced many years later by such artists as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Yves Klein. Or he can be regarded as a folk artist, or as a visionary who proposed to launch his Suprematist constructions and artworks into outer space, where they would circle the earth as satellites. He was also deeply interested in the theoretical relationship between painting, on the one hand, and poetry, music, film and architecture, on the other, an association which inspired him to get involved in the design and staging of his extraordinary opera, Victory over the Sun.