March 13 History of GD Chapter 15

In chapter 15 we learn about the new language of form, being the visual arts and the invention of pure form. Kasimir Malevich from Russia founded a new painting style called suprematism. he created a construction of concrete elements of color and shape. It wasn't until 1922 that the terms Tectonics, which represented the unification of communist ideology with visual form, and construction, which is the process and search for laws of visual organization. One other famous designer was El Lissitzky who developed a painting style called PROUNS, which was a new way of creating three dimensional illusions that receded and projected forward. This was a new way of creating designs and paintings. Some characteristics of this new form of design include asymmetrical balance, silhouette halftones, and white space. They also experimented with bold san-serif fonts. Other designers, such as Rodchenko and Vladimir Lebedev, produced designs with geometric shapes with large areas of pure color. The De Stijl movement of 1917 focused on equilibrium and harmony in artwork. They reduced their visual aid to red, blues, and yellows focusing on a mathematical structure. Curved lines were eliminated in fonts, which were often composed in tight rectangular blocks.

One aspect from this reading that I thought was really interesting was the architecture of Gerrit Rietveld who created the Schroeder House. Neighbors thought that this house was so radical and crazy that they would often throw rocks at the house. Not only that but they taunted the Schroeder children. This is an extreme act for someone who was creating art in architecture. I would have assumed that the people of this time would have been more open to these new ideas since so many other things were changing at the time too.

One thing that I would like to learn more about the reaction to Kasimir Malevich's "Black Square". Did people have a reaction to it? At first when I look at it I see nothing but a normal black square. Did the people react the same way?