{"id":755,"date":"2026-07-26T18:13:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T23:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/?p=755"},"modified":"2026-08-03T16:13:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T21:13:39","slug":"little-red-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/26\/little-red-square\/","title":{"rendered":"Little red square"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Black Square and Red Square<\/em>, 1915 <\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Looking at Kazimir Malevich\u2019s Black Square and Red Square<\/em> it is profoundly tempting to slip into art historian mode with Malevich\u2019s philosophy of color as a psychic non-objective experience and the square as the universal form of painting. Just don\u2019t use the \u2018A\u2019-word: abstraction<\/em>. Malevich hated it. These are \u201cnon-objective\u201d paintings. Let\u2019s bracket that for now. \u00a0I\u2019m interested in a strictly perceptual visual analysis.\u00a0 This painting\u2019s elements and reduction of form are not cold nor stoic. It is not a painting of stillness. To the contrary, Black Square and Red Square<\/em> is teeming with relationships governing the formal elements of the work (geometry of form, coordinates of composition, color, scale, figure\/ground, texture). I adore this painting because of its bustling visual economy, an economy in which the value is my attention. There is a constant system of exchange going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before getting into those exchanges, I must acknowledge a personal passion for a rich, textured \u201cwhite.\u201d I put \u201cwhite\u201d is quotation marks here because in this (and in another favorite Malevich painting, Suprematist Composition: White on White <\/em>1918) the white field is an optical white<\/strong>, a shimmering white that demonstrates its role as a common denominator of the color wheel. At the same time, this is one of many whites.  It\u2019s actually a bit of a surprise to me that the title of this painting is not called Black Square and Red Square on White<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the visual economy: the black square\u2019s monolithic presence is one of its compositional privileges. Another is its size. The black square is 1.8 times the size of the red square. This is what\u2019s key: for every advantage the large black square has, the small red square compensates.<\/strong> Because the black square is larger, the small square is a more saturated color. The red has more of what Malevich would call \u201cretinal intensity.\u201d What the smaller square lacks in size, it makes up for with color. Another compositional privilege is positioning. Because of the eye movement in play, the black square appears \u201cfirst\u201d because it is on top of the red square. The red square makes its most dramatic compensation yet: it breaks the grid in its rotation. The red square\u2019s angle speaks volumes.  What I love most of all about this painting is how the little red square exposes the vulnerability of the entire grid.<\/strong> The little red square wins. I always root for the underdog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Square and Red Square, 1915 Looking at Kazimir Malevich\u2019s Black Square and Red Square it is profoundly tempting to slip into art historian mode with Malevich\u2019s philosophy of color as a psychic non-objective experience and the square as the universal form of painting. Just don\u2019t use the \u2018A\u2019-word: abstraction. Malevich hated it. These are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,1],"tags":[50,48,51,45,47,46,49],"class_list":["post-755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-history","category-visual-culture","tag-abstraction","tag-color-fields","tag-early-20th-century","tag-malevich","tag-painting","tag-suprematism","tag-visual-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2445,"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/revisions\/2445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mammothpearl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}