절대주의 회화: 여덟 개의 붉은 직사각형

In December 1915, in wartime Petrograd, Malevich opened a room of paintings that showed nothing at all, no people, no objects, no horizon line. This is one of them, eight red bars of different sizes tilted across a bare white field, seeming to drift as if there were no up or down to hold them. He called the new art Suprematism, meaning the supremacy of pure feeling in painting over any duty to picture the world. The exhibition carried a curious name, 0.10, and in one corner he hung his black square high on the wall, in the spot where a Russian household would place its holy icon. The country was two years from revolution and losing a war. There is nothing here to decode, no figure and no event. The weight and spacing of the shapes are the whole subject, red forms held in balance against empty white.