Kazimir Malevich: The World as Objectlessness

In 1927, Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935)--the creator of the modernist icon "Black Square on a White Ground"--published The World as Objectlessness, his vision of a "world of non-representation," through the Bauhaus publishing arm. For a long time this book was Malevich’s only publication in a Western language, and the title then, somewhat imprecisely translated, was Die gegenstandslose Welt (The Non-Objective World). Malevich described his theory as "the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts," and emphasized the "feeling" of a work, rather than the depiction of objects, advancing a philosophy that was both anti-material and non-utilitarian, focusing on geometric forms--lines, squares and circles--within a limited chromatic range. This volume offers a new translation of the artist’s illustrated text, along with important research on the preliminary drawings made for the Bauhaus publication, which are now in the possession of the Kunstmuseum Basel. The intensive research on these works of art provides new insights into the history of this creation: when and where were the illustrations done, and what stage in Malevich’s artistic development do they reflect? Malevich’s The World as Objectlessness is a snapshot of a moment in a boundless artistic universe.