Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1990 - 13

design at the California Institute of ArtS,
who recreated Malevich's costumes for
the 1980 reconstruction. "His costume
was a large, round shell with a huge neck
and large arm openings. In the story, he is
scared about the future and the costume
allows him to withdraw his head and
arms like a turtle-it permits the performer to explore what the character is
feeling."
Ms. Ferrara, who worked from snapshots of Malevich's original drawings,
noted that they show only one side of the
body. "You have to try to figure out what
the other three sides look like," she said.
"But for me, his work is so powerful that
in drawing JUSt that one profile side of the
body, he told me what the other three
sides looked like. He brought the interior
human skeletal anatomy to the outside."
Alma Law, a specialist in the twentieth-century Russian theater who produced the American and European tour
after it left Los Angeles, noted, "The most
remarkable aspect of the costumes is the
way in which Malevich's designs determined the movement of the characters.
The Strongman can only flex his muscles;
the Old Man can only walk with an elderly gait because his right leg is bound in
cardboard; and the Fat Man cannot bend
over."

Malevich's "Suprematist" art was not
exhibited until 1915, but his backdrops
for Victory Over the Sun and his use of
geometric forms in the costumes point
toward a rejection of the imitation of
nature in favor of "the supremacy of pure
feeling" and an attempt to change consciousness, to reach a higher, fourth plane
of psychic life. In fact, it was the curtain
design of the second act-a square divided diagonally into black and white-that
Malevich designated as representing the
birth of "Suprematism."
"Malevich threw caution to the
wind," said Ferrara. "That's how an
expressive work of art happens. I honor
him today by holding him up as an example of someone who gOt into social and
political hot water because of his personal
expression. He took risks."
Also recognized as one of the seminal
figures of modern arr, Malevich is best
known in fine arts circles for his abstract
"Suprematist" works. He worked in styles
as diverse as impressionism, symbolism,
neo-primitivism and cubo-futurism. All
phases of his artistic career, including his
late return to figurative painting, will be
featured in the exhibition Kazimir
MaLevich, 1878-1935 at the National
Gallery.
"Like Kandinsky and Mondrian,

Malevich created a new abstract language," said]. Carter Brown, director of
the ational Gallery. "His signature
work, 'Black Square of 1915,' was at the
time the most uncompromisingly nonobjective painting ever produced."
Malevich has been bener known to
the public through publications rather
than firsthand. In 1988-1989 an internationally heralded exhibition held in
Leningrad, Moscow and Amsterdam
assembled the widest range of Malevich's
art work ever shown. Drawn from the
holdings of the State Russian Museum in
Leningrad, the Tretiakov Gallery in
Moscow and the Stedelijk Museum in
Amsterdam, it marked the first occasion
in neatly six decades that an exhibition of
Malevich's work had been seen in his own
land. In addition to generous loans from
these three collections, the ational
Gallery exhibition offers a significantly
altered selection, including several major
works from American museums and
important additions from Soviet sources.
Like the art of other members of the
Russian avant-garde, Malevich's abstract
idiom was increasingly regarded as ideologically alien in the political climate of
the 1920s and early 1930s. After his
death in 1935, his work was relegated to
storage in Soviet museums. The inacces-

TD&T

1990 FALL

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1990