“White on White” and “The Large Glass”, Suprematism and Dada, Malevich and Duchamp; although they have different angles of approach, they both manage to escape from the conventional circle of interpretation of art and to explore new realities of mathematical considerations, new pictorial formulations, and new orders of art which where never done before. Another parallel between them is that the artists in their early stage both studied Cubism. These cubist roots benefit and effect their later artistic contributions.

When comparing “Suprematist Composition” (White on White) and “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even” (The Large Glass), we notice that Malevich and Duchamp are very reluctant to show off brushstroke, limiting the act of painting and the amount of pigment on the canvas or flat surface. Starting with this point of view, Malevich eliminates all shapes and colors but “an acutely tilted square of white within the canvas square of a somewhat different value of white”. Here, conventional representation of subject matter and colors are swept away and replaced by total abstraction and “the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art”. The same phenomenon of elimination also occurs in Duchamp’s “The Large Glass” and became more sophisticated. “Is this a painting or sculpture?” I ask my self, but could come to no conclusion. The two immense glasses are put together as a panel instead of canvas. The “canvas” becomes transparent and seems to disappear, so people can see the illusion of sculptural machine based forms both on and through it.

Both artworks sum up each artist’s previous few years of experimentation. Between 1913 and 1918, Malevich explored spiritual and expressive possibilities of placement of non-objective shapes. Starting in 1913 also, Duchamp begun to accumulate a vocabulary of sexual and mechanical symbols with ambiguous meanings ordered by his personal mathematics and physics which he puts into “The Large Glass”. “The bride can be said to recapitulate his work, limited in quantity but concentrated, compact, of primary importance”.

In the process of painting, Malevich is very deliberate. Before executing on the canvas, the concept is already in his mind. The pure monochrome and the ultimate geometric simplification are the result of energy and spiritual fulfillment moving along the interior of Malevich’s life. On the contrary, Duchamp allows accident in process of “The Large Glass”. It is reported that in transit, the Glass was accidentally broken and webbed with a network of cracks. When Duchamp knew that, he said, “Now it is complete”. This interaction of intention and chance makes “The Large Glass” more symbolic. This final touch in “The Large Glass” not only introduces some unexpected marks, but also far more complex meanings. Chinese accidental brushstroke in Zen Buddhist Painting is as uncontrollable as the spider web pattern of the broken glass. At some degree, they have the similar aesthetic value.

Lastly, Duchamp’s approach to accident was used by American Abstract Expressionists. His manner also inspired Pop artists such as Robert Rauschenberg. However, Malevich’s painting is more like conceptual art and hard edge abstraction in the middle of the 20 th century.

Yu Gan 1989 Fall

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<1> Arnason, H. H. History of Modern Art: painting sculpture architecture, photography. Page 188. Ibid. Page 187

<2> Barr, H. Jr. Fantastic Art: Dada, Surrealism. Page 19-20

<3> Arnason, H. H. History of Modern Art: painting sculpture architecture, photography. Page 230

<4> Tomkins, Calvin. The Bride and The Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde