In anticipation of June 8 we bring you one of the great moments in the history of the color that is all colors or the absence of…
Kazimir Malevich. Suprematist Composition: White on White. 1918. Oil on canvas, 31 1/4 x 31 1/4″ (79.4 x 79.4 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In 1918, Kasimir Malevich painted White on White. It is the supreme painting of Suprematism, the art movement Malevich founded in 1913. Suprematism, an early push to the outer edges of painting, was meant to “to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world,” aiming toward the “supremacy of forms,” toward “pure sensation in creative art.” In other words, painters were freed from having to paint a picture of something, from having to invest form with content.
On June 8, nineteen of Portland’s finest fashion designers will remove color from the design equation in the Little White Dress Show at Disjecta (230 E. Burnside).
I have transformed myself IN THE ZERO OF FORM and dragged myself out of the rubbish-filled pool of academic art. I have torn through the blue lampshade of colour limitations, and come out into the white. I have conquered the lining of the Heavenly, have torn it down and making a bag, put in colours and tied it with a knot. Sail forth! The white, free chasm, infinity is before us.
- Kasimir Malevich, Essays on Art
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