The Pathology of Painting: Tuberculosis as a Metaphor in the Art Theory of Kazimir Malevich

In 1922, Kazimir Malevich began work on what was to become his major theoretical text—Suprematizm: Mir kak Bezpredmetnost’ (Suprematism: The world as non-objectivity), in which he developed an interpretation of art solely in terms of its formal qualities. This theory had developed through his teaching at the Vitebsk Popular Art Institute, and after three years of writing, he submitted a draft for publication. ¹ It was rejected by the Chief Science Administrator to whom the Institute was subordinate. ² Two years later, in 1927, Malevich left the Soviet Union, where critics and authorities were increasingly hostile to both his ideas and his visionary abstract paintings, and searched for a more accepting audience in Poland and Germany. This trip was profitable, for at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Moholy-Nagy agreed to publish a condensation and German translation of his theory of art as volume 11 of the Bauhausbücher. ³ The complete Russian text, with explanatory charts, he entrusted to Gustav von Riesen, his host in Berlin. ⁴ When Malevich returned to the Soviet Union later in 1927, he persisted, despite adverse criticism, in his attempt to publicize his interpretations. Between April 1928 and October 1930 he managed to publish in Nova Generatsiya, a Ukrainian perodical, a series of twelve articles that applied his formal theory in the analysis of a number of modern paintings. ⁵

While it is clear that there was much resistance to Malevich’s work in the Soviet Union, his ideas were not completely isolated. For example, his formalist theory relies on the concept of an elementary particle to explain stylistic evolution and transformation, much as other Russian artists of the period were using genetic metaphors in their art and theories. ⁶ A number of Russian artists and theoreticians also anticipated the formal analytical approach of Malevich. In its reaction against the biographical, emotional, and anecdotal interpretations of painting that dominated Russian art criticism, ⁷ the theory of Malevich is similar to the literary criticism of the Moscow and Leningrad formalist circles that formed in 1915 and 1916. ⁸ Attention to the formal qualities of art was also a priority of the futurist poets, and many avant-garde painters showed a marked interest in such formal discussions, most notably, David Burliuk, Olga Rozanova, and Liubov Popova were making forays into formalism before 1920. ⁹ It is likely that the ideas of these artists stimulated Malevich in his thinking about the formal elements of art.

The World as Non-Objectivity, however, remains an original work. Not only does it articulate concepts drawn from Malevich’s own artistic experience, but it is carefully crafted to have relevance to its time. The text can thus be seen as an important resource for understanding the cultural history of early twentieth-century Russia. It is within this context that I propose to explore a prominent and seemingly bizarre series of organic metaphors found in The World as Non-Objectivity—namely, the use of the bacterium, and specifically the tuberculosis bacillus, as a metaphor for the forming element in painting. If this metaphor appears peculiar, it is largely because tuberculosis has been until recently a rare disease in the West. At the time Malevich was composing his text, however, not only was tuberculosis a daily reality with a complicated history of cultural associations, but its eradication was a politically charged issue. In this paper, I shall suggest that the particular political and cultural associations of tuberculosis in the early twentieth-century Soviet Union made the use of the tuberculosis bacterium by Malevich a rich metaphor, which not only differentiated his art theory from personal, biographical interpretations, but also forged a modern “scientific” model of artistic genius.

Although the formal theory of Malevich is an important part of The World as Non-Objectivity, it is articulated in only one chapter of the book. The bulk of the text is devoted to an explication and defense of suprematism within a broad metaphysical framework. Like many other writings of Malevich, this work views suprematist painting as the culmination of...