Kazimir Malevich

 

Kazimir Malevich was born on the 23rd of February 1879 and died on the 15th May 1935 was a Russian painter and art theoretician. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde, Supremacists movement.

KAZIMIR MALEVICH BIOGRAPHY


Malevich was born in Ukraine to parents of Polish origin, who moved continuously within the Russian Empire in search of work.

Kazimir was the first of fourteen children.

His father took jobs in a sugar factory and in railway construction, where young Kazimir was also employed in his early teenage years.

He spent most of his childhood in the villages of Ukraine, amidst sugar-beet plantations, far from centers of culture. Until age twelve he knew nothing of professional artists, although art had surrounded him in childhood. He was happy in village, and in decorated walls and stoves

Without any particular encouragement from his family, Malevich started to draw around the age of 12. With his mind set firmly on an artistic career, Malevich attended a number of art schools in his youth, starting at the Kiev School of Art in 1895.


KAZIMIR MALEVICH KEY IDEAS:

Malevich worked in a variety of styles, but he is mostly known for his contribution to the formation of a true Russian avant-garde post-World War I through his own unique attitude of observation and painting, which he termed Supremacist. He invented this term because he believed that art should transcend subject matter the truth of shape and color should reign 'supreme' over the image or narrative.

More radical than the Cubists or Futurists, at the same time that his Supremacist compositions proclaimed that paintings were composed of flat, abstract areas of paint, they also served up powerful and multi-layered symbols and mystical feelings of time and space.  

 


DEATH

Malevich died of cancer in Leningrad on 15 May 1935. On his deathbed he was exhibited with the black square above him, and mourners at his funeral people carried a black square.

His ashes were sent to Nemchinovka, and buried in a field near his dacha. Nikolai Suetin, a friend of Malevich’s and a fellow artist, designed a white cube with a black square to mark the burial site.

BLACK & WHITE Squares

 

In terms of his black and white squares, he overlaps them and this inspired me to increase my flexibility of ideas by adjusting the size and scale of my own boxes. I rotated some of the black and white boxes, experimenting with size too to create what I feel is a kite shape. This meant my work took on the feel of an optical illusion, particularly with the inclusion of black  and white squares round the outside which act as helping the viewer to feel as if they're stepping into the kite. These squares also act as a border and help the focus of the eye towards the centre of the kite squares, making the image more exciting.

Evaluation - Chair Project

At first, I found it difficult about what I needed to do for my chair design, but then I found it clear that I had to produce a range of design ideas on my Gerrit Rietveld red and blue chair and my art nouveau chairand Art Deco chair, the ergonomics quiz helps us develop the measured scale of each chair by deciding to estimate to scale 1:4 on both style chairs that I create. 

My first thoughts on receiving this assignment brief was quite boring in my opinion. This is because I was given a task to create a chair, which isn't really being creative, but it is anyway because for one chair I have to create a wid range of design ideas. I collected some information from different artistic views and I put it in my own words. Some of the researches I took for e.g. Frank Gehry's chair designs were quite dynamic, the properties and materials that he uses is carved wood and in terms of his fluid lines, which he used to create his actual chair.

I found that seeking and handling the information was quite difficult because when I needed to find the specific information for each one especially from William van Alen, his work that he has done has mostly produced a lot of beautiful geometric buildings which he designed, it took me quite a long time to find some of the information I needed. I think that the elements of my research that inspired my designs were the shape and form and the line drawings and the 3D Art Deco chair design’s I done.

To be honest, before I didn't think my designs would be high quality, but then at the end, I was more than satisfied with some of my designs which I put more quality into. On the other hand, I do feel that I could have improve some of my work to a high standard like improving every single mistake that I have committed on my Gerrit Rietveld Red and Blue Chair, if I could do more design ideas from isometric view and from perspective, that way I would have got more marks on my assignment, instead It could be the other way round. 

Before we started our task, I was finding it difficult to pick my designs because some of them were simply not good enough, then I had to create better new designs for my final piece. I planned out each of my designs and I picked out the best six planned out drawings which I used for my chair design. The techniques, process and materials I use are three primary colours and those three colours to produce secondary and tertiary colours by using acrylic paint which I used to paint the Red & Blue chair.

I think during my time at GCSE level, it was easier because if you didn't understand what you needed to do, you will be provided with a lot of help from your teachers. However, at the moment BTEC Art and design Level 3, it's much harder because there is a lot more work given to you by more than one teacher, mostly I have to work independently on my assignments that are given to me to do. 

If I had Extra time, the changes that I would make would be to spend a lot on each drawing at a time. I just completed my work on time. To me, I think I rushed one of the planned drawings for the Art Nouveau chair and Art Deco.

William Van Alen

Brooklyn-born architect William Van Alen, who had a reputation for progressive, colorful design, met Chrysler’s challenge with a seventy-seven-story building, the first in the world to surpass a height of one thousand feet.

Instead of the tall, bland, rectangular boxes that had begun to colonize the city, inventive and dynamic forms began to lend interest and variety to the Manhattan skyline.

The ordinance also focused attention on the summit of a building.

The Chrysler Building (1930) surpassed the Eiffel Tower to become the world's tallest structure.

Today it represents the finest of the Art Deco style and indeed is probably the most beautiful Art Deco building in the world. 

 
The skyscraper no longer a copied gothic architecture (more common in Downtown Manhattan), but incorporated a current architecture style appropriate for its time of design and construction.

As if mocking the ancient gothic style of other skyscrapers, the Chrysler Building adds in gargoyles and decorative top that ends in a spire reaching towards the sky.

The tower ends in a beautiful, tapered stainless steel crown that supports the famous spire at its peak.