Aetherial Worlds

by Tatyana Tolstaya

  After completing this simple task, Malevich became the author of the most famous, most enigmatic, and most frightening painting known to man: The Black Square. With an easy flick of the wrist, he once and for all drew an untraversable line between old art and new art, between a man and his shadow, between a rose and a casket, between life and death, between God and the Devil. In his own words, he had reduced everything to “the zero of form.” Zero, for some reason, turned out to be a square, and this simple discovery is one of the most frightening events in all of art’s history.

  Malevich knew what he had done. A year or so before this significant event, he, along with some friends and like-minded peers, participated in the first All-Russian Congress of Futurists. It was held at a dacha, in a bucolic, wooded area north of Saint Petersburg. Deciding to write an opera called Victory over the Sun, right there, at the dacha, they immediately got to work carrying out their plan. Malevich was in charge of scenic design. One of the set pieces was black-and-white, and it somehow resembled the future, still-unborn Square; it was used as a backdrop for one of the scenes. What would later spill out from his wrist, impulsively and with inspiration, in his Saint Petersburg studio would be recognized as a fundamental achievement of theory, an apex of accomplishment—a discovery of that critical, mysterious, coveted point after which, because of which, and beyond which nothing exists and nothing can exist.

  Groping about in the dark with the brilliant intuition of an artist and the prophetic insight of a Creator, he found the forbidden figure of a forbidden color—so simple that thousands had walked past it, stepping over it, ignoring it, not noticing it….To be fair, not many before him had dared to plan a Victory over the Sun; not many had dared to challenge the Prince of Darkness. Malevich did—and, just as is supposed to happen in tales of yearning Fausts bargaining with the Devil—the Master gladly, and without delay, whispered in the artist’s ear the simple formula of nothingness.

  By the end of 1915—the First World War was already in full swing—the sinister canvas was displayed alongside others at a Futurist exhibition. All his other works Malevich displayed on the walls in the traditional manner, but The Black Square was afforded a special place. As can be seen in one of the surviving photographs, the painting is displayed in the corner, under the ceiling—right where it is customary to hang Russian Orthodox icons. It’s doubtful it eluded Malevich—a man well versed in color—that this paramount, sacral spot is called “the red corner,” the word “red” here, in the original Russian, having the additional meaning of “beautiful.” Malevich quite purposefully displayed a black hole in a sacred spot, calling this work of his “an icon of our times.” Instead of red, black (zero color); instead of a face, a hollow chasm (zero lines); instead of an icon—that is, instead of a window into the heavens, into the light, into eternal life—gloom, a cellar, a trapdoor to the underworld, eternal darkness.

  Alexandre Benois, a contemporary of Malevich and an excellent artist in his own right, as well as an art critic, wrote this about the painting: “This black square in a white frame—this is not a simple joke, not a simple dare, not a simple little episode which happened at the house at the Field of Mars. Rather, it’s an act of self-assertion of that entity called ‘the abomination of desolation,’ which boasts that through pride, through arrogance, through trampling of all that is loving and gentle it will lead all beings to death.”

  Many years before that, in September of 1869, Leo Tolstoy had a strange experience that would have a powerful effect on the rest of his life, one that would be, it appears, a turning point in his entire outlook. He left his house in high spirits to make an important and profitable purchase: a new estate. He and his servant were riding in a horse-drawn carriage, happily chatting. Night fell. “I dozed off but then suddenly awoke: for some reason I felt afraid….I suddenly felt that I don’t need any of this, that there is no need to ride this far, that I’ll die right here, away from home. And I felt frightened.” They decided to spend the night in a little town called Arzamas:

  We finally approached some lodge with a hitching post. The house was white, but it seemed horribly sad to me. And so I felt a great sense of dread….There was a hallway; a sleepy man with a spot on his check—that spot seemed awful to me—showed me to my room. Gloomy was that room. I entered it and felt even more dread….

  A whitewashed square room. As I remember, it was particularly painful to me that this room was square. There was one window with a red curtain….I grabbed a pillow and lay down on the sofa. When I came to, the room was empty and it was dark….I could feel that falling asleep again would be impossible. Why had I decided to stop here? Where am I taking myself? From what and where to am I running? I’m running from something frightful that I can’t escape….I stepped out into the hallway, hoping to leave behind that which was tormenting me. But it came out after me and marred everything. I was just as scared, more scared even.

  —What nonsense, I said to myself. Why do I feel anguish, what am I scared of?

  —Of me, came the soundless voice of death. I am here….

  I tried to lie down but as soon as I did, I jumped up in horror. The anguish, the anguish—the same dread as comes before nausea, but only spiritual. Frightening, terrifying. Seemingly it’s fear of death, but if you recollect, think about life, then it’s actually a fear of a life dying. Life and death were merging into one. Something was trying to tear my soul to pieces but was unable to do it. I went to look once again at those who were sleeping; I tried to fall asleep, too; same kind of dread—red, white, square. Something being torn apart but not tearing. Painful, painfully dry and malicious; not a drop of kindness could I sense within myself. Only an even, calm anger with myself and with that which had made me.

  This famous and mysterious event in Tolstoy’s life—which was not simply a sudden, major depressive episode but an unforeseen kind of meeting with death, with evil—was named “the Arzamas horror.” Red, white, square. Sounds like a description of one of Malevich’s paintings.

  Leo Tolstoy, who personally experienced the red-white Square, couldn’t foresee, or control, what happened. It appeared before him and it attacked him, and under its influence—not right away, but steadily—he renounced the life that he’d led before; he renounced his family, love, the understanding of those close to him, the foundations of life around him; he renounced art. This “truth” that was revealed to him led him into nothingness, into the zero of form, into self-destruction. On a “spiritual quest,” toward the end of his life, he found only a handful of banalities—a version of early Christianity, nothing more. His followers, too, walked away from civilization, and likewise didn’t arrive anywhere. Drinking tea instead of vodka, abstaining from meat, rejecting family ties, making one’s own boots—poorly, crookedly—that, essentially, is the result of this personal spiritual quest that passed through the Square. “I’m here” came the soundless voice of death, and life went downhill from there. The struggle went on; Anna Karenina (mercilessly killed off by the author, punished for her desire to live) was still ahead of him. Still before him were several literary masterpieces, but the Square had won.

  Tolstoy banished from within himself the life-giving power of art, moving on to primitive parables and cheap moralizing. He let his light go out of him before his physical death, in the end astonishing the world not with the artistry of his later works but with the magnitude of his genuine anguish, his individual protest and public self-flagellation on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

  Malevich also wasn’t expecting the Square, although he was searching for it. In the period before the invention of Suprematism (Malevich’s term), he preached “alogism,” an attempt to escape the boundaries of common sense; preached “the struggle against logism, naturalness, philistine sensibilities, and prejudices.” His call to action was heard, and the Square appeared before him, absorbing him within it. Malevich had every right to be proud of the celebrity afforded
him by his deal with the Devil. And proud he was. I don’t know if he noticed the paradox of this celebrity status. “The painter’s most famous work” meant that his other works were less famous, less important, less enigmatic; in other words, they were less worthy. And it’s true—alongside The Black Square, all his other works lose luster. He has a series of canvases of geometric, brightly colored peasants with empty ovals for faces that look like transparent, unfertilized eggs. They are colorful, decorative paintings, but they come across as a tiny and insignificant stew of rainbow colors, finally swirling into a colorful funnel before they disappear into the bottomless pit that is The Black Square. He has landscapes—pinkish, impressionistic, very run-of-the-mill—the kind painted by many, and often better. Toward the end of his life, he tried to return to figurative art, and those attempts look predictably bad: these aren’t people but, rather, embalmed corpses and wax dolls, tensely peering out from the frames of their clothing, as if they’ve been cut out of colorful bits of fabric, scraps and leftovers from the “peasants” series. Of course, when one reaches the top, the only way is down. The terrible truth was that, at the top, there was nothingness.

  Art critics write lovingly about Malevich: “The Black Square absorbed all painting styles that had existed before it; it blocks the way for naturalistic imitation, it exists as absolute form, and it heralds art in which free forms—those that are interconnected and those that are not—make up the meaning of the painting.”

  It’s true that the Square “blocks the way,” including the way for the artist. “It exists as absolute form”—that’s true as well, but it also means that all other forms are unnecessary by comparison, since they are, by definition, not absolute. “It heralds art”—this bit turned out to be false. It heralds the end of art, its impossibility, its lack of necessity; it represents the furnace in which art burns, the pit into which art falls, because the Square (to quote Benois again) is “an act of self-assertion of that entity called ‘the abomination of desolation,’ which boasts that through pride, through arrogance, through trampling of all that is loving and gentle, it will lead all beings to death.”

  A “pre-Square” artist studies his craft his entire life, struggling with dead, inert, chaotic matter, trying to breathe life into it; as if fanning a fire, as if praying, he tries to ignite a light within a stone; he stands on his tippy toes, craning his neck in an attempt to peek where the human eye cannot see. Sometimes his efforts and prayers, his caresses, are rewarded: for a brief moment, or maybe for a long while, “it” happens, “it” “appears.” God (an angel, a ghost, a muse, or sometimes a demon) steps back and acquiesces, letting go from his hands those very things, those volatile feelings, those wisps of celestial fire—what should we call them?—that they have reserved for themselves, for their wondrous abode that is hidden from us. Having solicited this divine gift, the artist experiences a moment of acute gratitude, unhumiliating humility, unshameful pride, a moment of distinct, pure, and purifying tears—both seen and unseen—a moment of catharsis. But “it” surges, and “it” retreats, like a wave. The artist becomes superstitious. He wants to repeat this moment, he knows that, next time, he may not be granted a divine audience, and so his spiritual eyesight opens up, he can sense with deep inner foreknowledge what exactly—avarice, selfishness, arrogance, conceit—may close the pearly gates in front of him. He tries to wield his inner foreknowledge in such a way as not to sin before his angelic guides; he fully understands that he’s a co-author at best, or an apprentice—but a crowned co-author, a beloved apprentice. The artist knows that the Spirit blows wherever it pleases. He knows that he, the artist, has done nothing in his earthly life to deserve being singled out by the Spirit, and so if that should happen he ought to joyfully give thanks for this wonder.

  A “post-Square” artist, an artist who has prayed to the Square, who has peeked inside the black hole without recoiling in horror, doesn’t trust muses and angels; he has his own black angels, with short metallic wings—pragmatic and smug beings who know the value of earthly glory and know how to bite off its most satisfying and multilayered chunks. Craft is unnecessary, what you need is a brain; inspiration is unnecessary, what’s needed is calculation. People love innovation, you need to come up with something new; people love to fume, you need to give them something to fume about; people are indifferent, you need to shock them: shove something smelly in their face, something offensive, something repugnant. If you strike a person’s back with a stick, they’ll turn around; that’s when you spit in their face and then, obviously, charge them for it—otherwise, it’s not art. If this person starts yelling indignantly, you must call them an idiot and explain that art now consists solely of the message that art is dead—repeat after me: dead, dead, dead. God is dead, God was never born, God needs to be trod upon, God hates you, God is a blind idiot, God is a wheeler-dealer, God is the Devil. Art is dead and so are you, ha-ha, now pay up! Here is a piece of excrement for it; it’s real, it’s dark, it’s dense, it’s locally sourced, so hold it tight and don’t let it go. There is nothing “loving and gentle” out there and there never was, no light, no flight, no sunbeam through a cloud, no glimmer in the dark, no dreams, and no promises. Life is death; death is here; death is immediate.

  “Somehow life and death have merged into one,” Leo Tolstoy wrote in horror, and from this moment on, and till the end, he fought back as best he could—it was a colossal battle of biblical proportions. “And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.” It’s terrifying to witness the battle of a genius with the Devil: first one seems to overcome, then the other.

  The Death of Ivan Ilyich is such a battlefield, and it’s difficult to say who won. In this novella, Tolstoy says—tells us, repeats it, assures us, hammers it into our brains—that life is death. But, in the end, his dying hero is born into death as if into a new life; he’s freed, turned around. Enlightened, he leaves us for a place where, seemingly, he’ll be given consolation. “New art” derides the very idea of consolation, of enlightenment, of rising above—it derides it while taking pride in that derision, as it dances and celebrates.

  Conversations about God are so endlessly complicated that it’s scary even to engage in them, or, on the contrary, very simple: if you want God to exist, He does; if you don’t, He doesn’t. If He is everybody, ourselves included, then for us He is, first and foremost, ourselves. God does not impose himself on us. Rather, it’s His distorted, falsified image that’s imposed upon us by other people, while God simply and quietly exists within us, like still water in a well. While searching for Him, we search for ourselves; while refuting Him, we refute ourselves; while mocking Him, we mock ourselves—the choice is ours. Dehumanization and “desacralization” are one and the same.

  “Desacralization” was the slogan of the twentieth century; it’s the slogan of ignoramuses, of mediocrity and incompetence. It’s a free pass doled out by one dimwit to another bonehead while trying to convince the third nincompoop that everything should be meaningless and base (allegedly democratic, allegedly accessible), and that everyone has the right to judge everyone else; or no one does—that authority can’t exist in principle, that a hierarchy of values is obscene (since everyone’s equal), and that art’s worth is determined solely by cost and demand. Novelties and fashionable scandals are surprisingly not that novel and not that scandalous: fans of the Square keep presenting various bodily fluids and objects created from them as evidence of art’s accomplishments. It’s as if Adam and Eve—one suffering from amnesia, the other from Alzheimer’s—were attempting to convince each other and their children that they are clay, only clay, and nothing but clay.

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  —

  I’m considered an “expert” in contemporary art by an arts fund in Russia that’s subsidized by foreign money. Artists come to us with projects and we decide if they should get funding or not. There are actual experts working alongside me on this
panel, true connoisseurs—old art, “pre-Square.” We all can’t stand The Black Square and the “self-assertion of that entity called ‘the abomination of desolation.’ ” Yet they keep submitting projects that consist of “the abomination of desolation,” solely of the abomination, and nothing else. We are obligated to spend the money allocated to the fund or else it will be closed. We try our best to fund those who come up with the least pointless and annoying ideas. One year, we funded an artist who placed empty picture frames along a riverbank, and another who wrote “ME” in big letters that cast a beautiful shadow, as well as a group of creators who organized a campaign to clean up dog feces in Saint Petersburg’s parks. Another year, it was a woman who affixed stamps to rocks and mailed them to various cities in Russia, as well as a group that made a pool of blood in a submarine—visitors had to step over the blood while listening to the letters of Abelard and Heloise via headphones. After our meetings, we members of the panel step out for a silent smoke, trying to avoid eye contact with one another. We then silently shake hands and hurriedly walk home.

  Judith with the Sword

  Toward the end of the 1980s—when everything seemed possible, in bloom, and promising—I was interviewed by some newspaper. They asked about literature and history, and I said that, if I could, I’d publish a book portraying twentieth-century Russia in letters, with each missive corresponding to a single year.

  This would have been nearly impossible because there were whole decades when letters lied; you couldn’t write down anything truthful. People even lied in their personal diaries, fearing searches and arrests, and so, of course, lying in one’s letters was natural. But perhaps with a massive effort it would still be possible to put together such a book, said I. There are literary archives and attics with trunks, aren’t there? And how simultaneously wonderful and disquieting it is to read other people’s letters. It’s like peering into a stranger’s window: you feel awkward, you feel curious, it’s better than the movies. Inside there is somebody else’s singular, sui generis life.