A new favorite artist

So, my absolute favorite class this semester is my 20th Century Art and Architectural History class hands down!!!  First of all my teacher has got this style that is totally lawyer/art historian (which is awesome cuz that's exactly what she is) but she's also one of the coolest, smartest people I've ever met, and she's got the most amazing personality...I pretty much want to grow up to be exactly her!!!  She is sooooo my hero!!!

Other than that, I have totally rediscovered my intensely insane passion for all things modern art!!!  It's probably my favorite thing in the world!  I love all the movements, experimentation, emotion, politics, ideas...EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!  I love it ALL!!!  I eat it up and absorb it like a sponge!  I have totally remembered why I originally wanted to be an art historian...but I think I've discovered that I want to focus on the modern stuff. It's just so fascinating.  I start reading and studying and all it leads me to is wanting more and becoming completely and utterly obsessed!!!  (Like me with TV...I'm a junkie for modern art...only I actually really want to pursue a legit career in it and that idea doesn't scare me in the least.)  I've already decided that my heart isn't in performing and music.  I've always enjoyed it, and I still do, but I have a fiery passion for modern art.  I'd love to be a curator and design exhibits (cuz that's EXACTLY what curators do!!)  Plus, curators are hard to come by so once a museum finds one and gets them, they kind of hold onto them for dear life.  And just imagine all the knowledge a curator must have?!  Typically an exhibit is all done being planned FIVE YEARS before it ever goes up.  And there is so much research involved and even artistic interpretation...it's like the coolest job in existence!!!  I mean, sure there must be downsides, but I honestly don't see any...but to the point of this blog (I kind of just went on an extreme tangent...sorry.)

So, in class I discovered a new artist that I've just fallen in love with.  I'm gonna give you a little background into my favorite kinds of art to help you understand before I explain Malevich (Russian, properly pronounced kind of like Mah-yeh-vich...but the "ch" more like the "h" in the word "hue") to you.  I love minimalism, Dada, Pop Art (Lichtenstein only though), synthetic and analytical cubism among other things.  I mention these specifically due to their simplicity, ideas of how to treat space, and the way they all seemed to have become simpler and more abstracted through the run of their movement.  Ok, so with that rather uninformative and not well written preface...Malevich.  He invented Suprematism which he believed to be the most supreme (hence the name, imagine that) form of art.  He would take images and break them down into the simplest shapes possible.  Originally he would take the parts and break them down.  As his style progressed he began to break those down even further.  By the end they were so simple that the color would be gone and you got a lot of black and white (and even the occasional white on white).  When my teacher started teaching about him she said that there would be people who loved him and thought him to be a genius and those who would believe him to be a joke and a total disgrace on the art community, and everyone else wouldn't care a whole lot.  From the minute I saw his first pieces and saw how he could simplify to the extreme I believed he was a complete genius!!!  So yeah...what do you think?  Genius or crazy?  My opinion isn't ever gonna change (just like with Lichtenstein...I couldn't care less about Warhol, but Lichtenstein is a hero of mine!!!)

So yeah...Malevich...obsessively LOVE his work!!!  You might see it and think "Ok, looks minimalist...looks like the stupid, random modern art that a kid could do" or whatever...but just hear me out for a minute.  He was in Russia where the traditional art hadn't changed too much since the Byzantine empire (that's way old!)  So when modern art started reaching Russia it wasn't due to too much Western Europe influence (which was pretty much the hub of the art world at the turn of the century).  Art was still extremely conservative in Russia.  You saw a little influence from impression/expression and a little bit of cubism, but not heavy influence and super fast paced change (the Russians liked to keep to themselves...still do...Russian art collectors like all of a Russian artist's work to stay in Russia.)  So, when Malevich started doing this it was not only extreme for the entire Western world, but über extreme for Russia.  It also seems like a lot of minimalist pieces of art...but get this: it was done about 40 years BEFORE the minimalist movement!!!!  (Blows your mind, I know!)  Unfortunately when the Soviet Union came about they didn't like Malevich's "art for art's sake" type stuff.  They wanted all art to have a purpose so implemented a lot of his ideas into graphic design and stuff just so the idea wouldn't be lost and it could have reason and purpose (too bad).

So yeah, new fave!  Isn't art fun?!  :)

~Manda