This series covers individual titles from the 14-volume Bauhausbücher collection from Lars Müller Publishers. More information on the books discussed and overall project can be found at the end of the article.
Like Kandinsky before him, Kasimir Malevich arrived at the Bauhaus already wielding an impressive international reputation. His trip to Germany in the spring of 1927 saw him visit both Dessau and Berlin; while in the former he met with Gropius and was able to arrange for the publication of what would be the eleventh book in the Bauhausbücher series: The Non-objective World (Die gegenstandslose Welt).
Though Malevich was well-known in the Soviet Union, the book’s contents were such that publishing in his native country would have been difficult-to-impossible. The book takes a bold and at times prickly stance toward traditional art, lumping it together with broader societal biases against progress and innovation, and associating it with the rural and uneducated. On the other side are Cubism, Futurism, and Suprematism (the latter of which he was founder), associated with the city, technology, and “industrial labor”. Adherents of “the idyllic art of the provinces” are not inferior, but simply a few steps behind: “…for otherwise they already lean toward ‘futuromachinology,’ for life itself is indeed already futurist.”
While Gropius was happy to add such a renowned figure as Malevich to the Bauhaus publishing roster, he too found parts of the author’s argument problematic enough to warrant an unusual Foreword:
We are delighted to be able to publish this book by the renowned Russian painter Malevich in our Bauhaus book series, although it does deviate from our position on some key questions. Be that as it may, this publication sheds light on a new, previously unknown side of modern Russian painting as well as the art and outlook on life of its representatives.
Malevich’s insistence that true art does not concern itself at all with the world of things—the “objective” world—puts him at odds with the broad Bauhaus project, in which art and design are deeply intertwined, not just with one another, but with society as a whole. In contrast to Gropius’ more iterative and measured views on progress and modernity, Malevich suggests a more radical view, where progress is a reaction to new and sometimes threatening elements, as a body adapts to bacteria:
An investigation of painting carried out in this manner could be likened to a bacteriological study. The (additional) element—the bacterium or bacillus (e.g. the tubercular bacillus)—brings about certain changes in the organism.
In this model, movements like Futurism or Cubism trigger what could be called an immune response from the more traditional elements of society; it is only through adapting to new ideas that the “body” of society can change and evolve.
The book’s shorter second part, “Suprematism”, was written in Berlin during the same trip. Perhaps suggested by Gropius to give the book a broader scope and appeal, it also serves as a document and manifesto of the movement Malevich had founded. The brief essay, supported with dozens of illustrations, takes a lighter tone, and is wonderfully untethered from both the world of objects and from the more combative tone of the book’s first half. In it, Malevich argues passionately for the Suprematist worldview via uniquely poetic logic: in one case Suprematism is a “desert” in which objects shimmer into unreality, leaving only feelings and impressions; in another it is a radio, broadcasting emotions to human “receivers”. It is a deeply utopian movement, seeking to untether not just art but humanity from the shackles of the objective world:
And moreover, the efficiently mechanized world could truly serve a purpose if only it would see to it that we (every one of us) gained the greatest possible amount of ‘free time’ to enable us to meet the only obligation to nature which mankind has taken upon itself—namely to create art.
As the book comes to its finale, both the text and the accompanying Suprematist works take on an increasingly spiritual and mystical tone, culminating in two of his “arkhitektons”—models of “Suprematist architecture” that serve to beautifully re-merge the book with the core discipline of the Bauhaus. The buildings, like so much utopian architecture, are only models, but they nonetheless offer a glimpse of the future (which would be manifested at scale by architects such as Zaha Hadid), and remain, a century later, strikingly modern and unique.
The Non-objective World
Kasimir Malevich
Lars Müller Publishers
Hardcover, 104 pages, CHF 45.00
About the series:
The Bauhausbücher (Bauhaus Books) from Lars Müller Publishers are modern editions of books originally published from 1925-1930 by Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, which served as both documentation and platform for the ideas behind the Bauhaus school. Originally planned as an ambitious 54-book collection, the series faced financial challenges, and after the editors’ departure from the Bauhaus, it was discontinued. Despite its reduced scope, the 14 volumes that were published stand as major works of design, architecture, and art theory by artists and thinkers whose work would define the following century, including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Piet Mondrian. The modern editions recreate the design, typography, and images of the originals with English translations, while correcting typographical and printing errors.
