Russian Art
Malevich, K. S.
"Half-Length Figure in a Yellow Shirt". 1928 - 1932
Notes: Half-Length Figure in a Yellow Shirt (A Complex Presentiment).
On the verso of this canvas is inscribed: "A Complex Presentiment 1928-32. The composition is made up of the sensation of emptiness, loneliness, and the futility of life in 1913 in Kuntsevo." Clearly, Malevich has left us with no doubt about the meaning of this and other figurative works of this period. Moved by the traumatic conditions of the times, he manipulated the physiognomy and gesture of the figure to convey suffering.
The faceless face and the arms without hands communicate the shocking anonymity of a large-scale catastrophe -- in this case, the horrible famine that swept the Russian countryside at this time. Though faceless and anonymous, Malevich's figures nonetheless convey a sense of pride and stature. Portrayed as types rather than individuals, they pose the tragedy of the times as a collective rather than personal experience and thus become a lens through which the viewer can conceive the greater world.
In his draft of 1924 entitled "Through My Experience as a Painter," Malevich argued that a painted portrait was not a portrait of a specific person in the sense that a snapshot was, but only a portrait of a painting. Like formalist critics, Malevich contended that the subject was secondary to the way paint was applied and the forms set down.
