Saturday, April 16, 2016


Haydn: Quartet in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5







I. Allegro moderato
II. Menuetto - Trio
III. Adagio
IV. Finale: Fugue a due Soggeto

Roth Quartet

Feri Roth, 1st Violin / Jeno Antal, 2nd Violin
Ferenc Molnár, Viola / Janos Scholz, Violoncello

(78rpm transfer; US Columbia, issued 1935)



















Monday, April 11, 2016

Franz Schubert: String Quintet in C major, Op. posth. 163, D. 956 (1828)











I. Allegro ma non troppo
II. Adagio
III. Scherzo. Presto - Trio. Andante sostenuto
IV. Allegretto

Pro Arte Quartet
Alphonse Onnou, 1st violin / Laurent Halleux, 2nd violin
Germain Prevost, viola / Robert Maas, cello
Anthony Pini, 2nd cello


(78 rpm transfers; HMV, recorded 1935)



Saturday, April 9, 2016

Brahms

Sextet No. 1 in B flat major, Op. 18 (1860) 
for Two Violins, Two Violas and Two Cellos

















I. Allegro ma non troppo
II. Andante, ma moderato
III. Scherzo. Allegro molto
IV. Rondo. Poco Allegretto e grazioso

Pro Arte Quartet
Alphonse Onnou, 1st violin / Laurent Halleux, 2nd violin
Germain Prevost, viola / Alfred Hobday, 2nd viola
Robert Maas, cello / Anthony Pini, 2nd cello

(78rpm transfers; HMV, recorded March 8 - 9, 1935)





Thursday, March 24, 2016

Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 6, 7 & 8 - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Václav Talich



Václav Talich (1930's)







Symphony No. 6 in D major, Op. 60
(formerly No. 1)

I. Allegro non tanto
II. Adagio
III. Scherzo (Furiant)
IV. Finale: Allegro con spirito

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Václav Talich






Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70
(formerly No. 2) 

I. Allegro maestoso
II. Poco adagio
III. Scherzo: Vivace - poco meno mosso
IV. Allegro

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Václav Talich








Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 
(formerly No. 4)

I. Allegro con brio
II. Adagio
III. Allegretto grazioso
IV. Allegro ma non troppo


Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Václav Talich

(78 rpm transfers; all originally recorded by HMV, 1938)



Wednesday, March 23, 2016





Antonín Dvořák

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 "From the New World"
(formerly No. 5) 

I. Adagio allegro molto
II. Largo
III. Scherzo
IV. Allegro con fuoco

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / George Szell
(78 rpm transfer; recorded 1937)


George Szell's tight, straightforwardly "simple," unsentimental approach to the "New World Symphony" from 1937 - especially regarding the celebrated Largo - preserves a sense of distance and mystery throughout the entire work. I've found these exact qualities in no other recorded performance of this symphony.  But then, Szell was a lifelong master of Schumann's characteristic device of projecting the illusion of a narrative "speaking voice" directly addressed to the listener as though a story is being told - but a story which is never revealed by a written program (or doesn't exist in written form to begin with). This is the sort of illusion, however, which often gets lost in the kind of emotionally effusive treatment of Schubert, Schumann, Dvořák, et al in the conducting practice which eventually tended to dominate after Szell made this recording (especially with the advent of stereo). When one takes this view into account, other works of Dvořák come to mind - those with a story-telling quality - such as the three Slavonic Rhapsodies, Op. 45. It's a different perspective on an otherwise over-played, over-familiar work - and another musical dimension made available by the 78 rpm disc. 


_______________________________________




Antonín Dvořák

Slavonic Rhapsody No. 1 in D major, Op. 45

Slavonic Rhapsody No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45

Slavonic Rhapsody No. 3 in A flat major, Op. 45

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Václav Neumann
(LP transfer; issued 1972)

Monday, March 21, 2016

J. S. Bach: Six Sonatas for Harpsichord & Violin - Alexander Schneider, Violin & Ralph Kirkpatrick, Harpsichord













J. S. Bach
Sonata No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1014

I. Adagio  
II. Allegro  
III. Andante  
IV. Allegro


J. S. Bach
Sonata No. 2 in A major, BWV 1015

I. Without tempo indication 
II. Allegro assai  
III. Andante  
IV. Presto


J. S. Bach 
Sonata No. 3 in E major, BWV 1016

I. Adagio  
II. Allegro  
III. Adagio ma non tanto  
IV. Allegro


J. S. Bach
Sonata No. 4 in C minor, BWV 1017

I. Siciliano, largo  
II. Allegro  
III. Adagio  
IV. Allegro


J. S. Bach 
Sonata No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1018

I. Largo  
II. Allegro  
III. Adagio  
IV. Vivace


J. S. Bach
Sonata No. 6 in G major, BWV 1019

I. Allegro  
II. Largo  
III. Allegro  
IV. Adagio  
V. Allegro  



(78 rpm transfers; Sonatas Nos. 1 - 5 recorded between Jan. 13 and Feb. 3, 1947
Sonata No. 6 recorded Nov. 26, 1945)


Thursday, March 17, 2016


Richard Strauss

Don Juan, Op. 20 
Symphonic Poem
__________


Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28
Symphonic Poem

Fritz Busch (1930's)







Don Juan, Op. 20
Symphonic Poem

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Fritz Busch

(78 rpm transfer; Victor; recorded 1936 by HMV)








Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28 
(Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks)
Symphonic Poem

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Erich Kleiber

(78 rpm transfer; recorded by Telefunken, 1930)

Roth Quartet



Roy Harris (1898-1979)






Roy Harris

String Quartet No. 3 (1937)
 (first recording)

I. Prelude (Dorian Mode) - side 1
   Fugue (Dorian and Aeolian Modes) - side 2
II. Prelude (Lydian Mode) - side 3
    Fugue (Lydian and Ionian Modes) - side 4
III. Fugue (Locrian Mode) - side 5
    Fugue (Locrian and Phrygian Modes) - side 6
IV. Prelude (Ionian Mode) - side 7
     Fugue (Ionian and Mixolydian Modes) - side 8


Roth Quartet
Feri Roth, 1st Violin / Rachmael Weinstock, 2nd Violin
Julius Schaier, Viola / Oliver Edel, Violoncello 

________________________________


Library of Congress entry:

LC control no.: 2001577644
Type of material: Music Sound Recording
Personal name: Harris, Roy, 1898-1979.
Uniform title: Quartets, strings, no. 3
Main title: Quartet no. 3 [sound recording] / Harris.
Published/Created: [New York?] : Columbia Masterworks, [1941?]
Description: 4 sound discs : analog, 78 rpm ; 12 in.
Publisher no.: MM 450 Columbia Masterworks
71054-D Columbia Masterworks
71055-D Columbia Masterworks
71056-D Columbia Masterworks
71057-D Columbia Masterworks

___________________________________

(78 rpm transfer; issued 1948)

Wednesday, March 16, 2016


Mozart - Six Quartets Dedicated to Haydn

Roth Quartet 

(LP debut c. 1951)


Feri Roth, 1st Violin / Jeno Antal, 2nd Violin
Nicolas Harsanyi, Viola / Janos Starker, Cello










No. 14 in G major, KV 387

I. Allegro vivace assai  
II. Menuetto: Allegro  
III. Andante cantabile  
IV. Molto allegro




No. 15 in D minor, KV 421

I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Menuetto: Allegretto
IV. Allegretto ma non troppo






No. 16 in E-flat, KV 428

I. Allegro ma non troppo
II. Andante con moto
III. Menuetto: Allegretto
IV. Allegro vivace






No. 17 in B-flat, KV 458 ("Hunting")

I. Allegro vivace assai
II. Menuetto: Moderato
III. Adagio
IV. Allegro assai







No. 18 in A major, KV 464

I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Menuetto
IV. Allegro non troppo





No. 19 in in C major, KV 465 ("Dissonant")

I. Adagio; Allegro
II. Andante cantabile
III. Menuetto: Allegro
IV. Allegro molto

(LP transfers; recorded c. 1951)



Roth Quartet

Haydn: Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5
Schumann: Quartet No. 1 in A minor, Op. 41, No. 1

_______





Haydn: Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5

I. Allegretto
II. Largo cantabile e mesto
III. Menuetto. Allegro
IV. Finale. Presto

Roth Quartet
Feri Roth, 1st Violin / Rachmael Weinstock, 2nd Violin
Julius Schaier, Viola / Oliver Edel, Violoncello 
(78 rpm transfer; issued c. 1940) 






Schumann: Quartet No. 1 in A minor, Op. 41, No. 1

I. Introduzione - Andante Espressivo - Allegro
II. Scherzo - Presto - Intermezzo
III. Adagio
IV. Presto

Roth Quartet
Feri Roth, 1st Violin / Rachmael Weinstock, 2nd Violin
Julius Schaier, Viola / Oliver Edel, Violoncello 
(78 rpm transfer; recorded Oct. 28, 1940, Liederkranz Hall, 
New York City)


Tuesday, March 15, 2016



Mozart: Quartet No. 18 in A major, KV 464

Roth Quartet



"If I ever write another string quartet, it will be dedicated to the Roth Quartet." 

- Maurice Ravel






I. Allegro
II. Menuetto
III. Andante
IV. Allegro non troppo

Roth Quartet
Feri Roth, 1st Violin / Jeno Antal, 2nd Violin
Ferenc Molnár, Viola / Janos Scholz, Violoncello
(78 rpm transfer; Columbia UK, recorded July 5, 10, 31; Aug. 7, 1935)

______________________



Feri Roth, Music: Los Angeles


1899-1969

Professor Emeritus

Feri Roth, emeritus professor of music at UCLA, died on May 7, 1969, after devoting almost five decades to the performance of string quartet literature. Born July 18, 1899, at Zvolen, Czechoslovakia, Feri received his musical training at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music in Budapest where he graduated in 1917. His first position was the concertmastership of the Budapest Opera from 1919-1920; a year later he joined the Berlin Volksoper in the same capacity. In 1922, he founded the string quartet which bore his name for forty-seven years. Two years later, the quartet made a successful debut in Paris, then embarked on a tour of Europe and Africa. On an invitation from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge in 1928, the quartet, reorganized to include Jeno Antal, Ferenc Molnar, and Janos Scholz, made its first appearance in the United States at the Pittsfield (Massachusetts) Music Festival. Subsequently, the quartet concertized throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico, participating in concerts at the Library of Congress, giving many concerts of modern works in New York City and Washington, and performing all of Beethoven's string quartets including his Grosse Fuge.

In 1937, the quartet joined the faculty of Westminster Choir College at Princeton University. Resigning from the college in 1939, Mr. Roth assembled a new group consisting of former members of the Manhattan String Quartet: Rachmael Weinstock, Julius Shaier, and Oliver Edel. In 1947, Roth began his long association with UCLA, joining the Department of Music as Lecturer. In 1960, he was named full professor. During his years at the University, he made further changes in the personnel of the quartet. The group that was most familiar to concert goers included Thomas Marrocco, professor of music at UCLA; Irving Weinstein; and Cesare Pascarella, UCLA lecturer in music. It was principally this combination that Professor Roth led in his yearly festivals of Beethoven's chamber music. He made many other important contributions. Occasionally he would exchange his violin and bow for the conductor's baton and lead larger chamber music ensembles in performances of concertos by Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach, and of Bach's The Art of Fugue. For more than ten years, he organized the Tuesday Noon Concerts, a weekly production of the Department of Music in Schoenberg Hall Auditorium. His authoritative and stimulating teaching found expression in a continuing series of chamber music classes, and his course on the music of Bach and Beethoven attracted thousands of students.

A champion of modern music, Professor Roth's quartet performed in concert many works by composer-colleagues in the department, and gave public readings of newly composed works by graduate students. This service was invaluable. In its off-campus appearances, the Roth Quartet concertized widely, not only on the west coast, where it gave many performances each year, but also on the east coast, in Canada, and in Great Britain. During 1963 and again in 1966, the quartet played a series of concerts in London; and in the spring of 1968, it presented the entire cycle of Beethoven's quartets in New York City's Lincoln Center. A further presentation of the cycle, scheduled for Elizabeth Hall, London, in the spring of 1969 had to be cancelled because of Professor Roth's death.

During its long history, the Roth Quartet recorded thirty-five albums for Columbia Masterworks and five for the Society for Forgotten Masterpieces. Especially important is the quartet's recording of Bach's Art of the Fugue, in the Harris-North transcription. In 1966, the Roth Quartet was televised at UCLA during performances of two Beethoven quartets: Opus 74 (The Harp) and Opus 95 (Serioso). The video tapes are valuable to students, and also to amateurs, for their visual clues to the secret of successful quartet performances.

Professor Roth was the recipient of the Award of Merit from the National Association of American Composers and Conductors in 1942 for outstanding service to American music, and he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from the New York College of Music in 1949. He was a member of the Beethoven Association of New York, the International Society for Contemporary Music of London, the Mozart Society of Salzburg, and the Triton Music Society of Paris.

Professor Roth's death will be long felt by the music department. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and a sister, Mrs. Erzsike Tropp living in Hungary.

Roy Harris Robert U. Nelson W. Thomas Marrocco William Young 



___________________________________


As far as I know, only one recording of the Roth Quartet has ever appeared in the compact disc format:



There exist a considerable number of other recordings from the Roth Quartet which are not mentioned directly in the above UCLA article.



Sunday, March 13, 2016

WHAT IS SUPREMATISM? Jean-Claude Marcadé



These few notes are only intended to deal with certain problems which have arisen in the field of art criticism from the observation that one cannot speak of 20th Century art without mentioning the Suprematist revolution. A Malevich fashion is currently to be seen which, just as much as the Kandinsky fashion in its time, provokes much emotional discourse carrying with it a mixture of snobbery and sensationalism to the detriment of rigour. In fact, many people are nowadays convinced that 'wishful thinking' is more interesting than rigour.

We are still a long way from having all the information needed to form definite conclusions about the meaning of Suprematism. Many events from the story of Russian art in the tens' and twenties' remain hidden in shadow. The greater part of the writings of Malevich are not published in Russian and the inevitable inaccuracies of translation give rise to ambiguities. Lastly, important works (canvasses, architectones, drawings) remain inaccessible, stored away in Soviet museum reserves or kept in private collections. Mistakes and omissions are the natural outcome of such a lack of information. It would be pointless to blame western researchers for these faults. It should not be forgotten that it is thanks to these same western researchers who have at a great price assembled the diverse elements of a story doomed to mental oblivion, that Russian art from the first quarter of the 20th Century in general, and Malevich in particular has escaped the amnesia of humanity's collective memory. For it has now won back in Russia itself a following, which though still feeble, holds out much promise for the future.

One can understand the errors and omissions arising from such unfavorable conditions. However, it is altogether different when it comes to the distortions and tendentious interpretations made from areas of concrete knowledge. It is here that rigour must intervene and calm the ardours of a wayward imagination. By enquiring: 'What is Suprematism?' we are led to ask questions about ideas often invoked in a vague and confused way concerning this enigmatic 'ism' among the 'Kunstismen' of the 20th Century.

1. Suprematism is anti-constructivist.

Only too often we find Constructivism and Suprematism lumped together. Upon seeing some geometric form, the unwise critic immediately cries Constructivism. Despite superficial similarities between Constructivism and Suprematism, the two movements are nevertheless antagonists and it is very important to distinguish between them. The confusion arises from the fact that several artists, either formerly part of the Suprematist movement like El Lissitzky, or who had once worked under its influence like Liubov Popova and Rodchenko, soon became exponents of the culture of materials. They celebrated this latter in their creations, deliberately opting for the way opened, from 1914, by Tatlin's reliefs. Constructivism aims to employ the material as foundation, it involves the cult of the object. For Constructivism, 'the object is work of art and the work of art is object'. It is firmly based on a materialistic and utilitarian philosophy. Its aim is the functional organisation of life under all its aspects. The easel-painter must give way to the artist-engineer, to the productivist, the painting to the 'shaping' (oformlenie) of life. The principles of Constructivism, though already accepted in practice, were not formulated until 1922 ('Constructivism' by A. Gan, Tver; 'And yet it moves' by I. Ehrenburg, Berlin; two numbers of the Berlin review 'Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet' by El Lissitzky and I. Ehrenburg...).

By contrast, Suprematism, whose first writings date from the end of 1915, was born of an awareness of the insignificance of the object. For Malevich, the object as such does not exist, it dissolves in the energy stimulus (rozbuzhdenie) of non-objective beingness. Suprematism is therefore an active negation of the world of objects. It endeavors to exhibit a world without objects and without objectives, die gegenstandslose Welt, the only one to have a real existence. When Malevich speaks of Suprematist 'utilitarianism' or 'economy', he means neither functionalism nor rational schematisation. Suprematist economy and utilitarianism seek to transform 'this green world of flesh and bones', the world of 'nutrition', into a world of desert, of absence, aimed towards the unveiling of essential beingness. Although Suprematism is both painting in ontological action and meditation on being, it does not, however, neglect the technical problems of construction. The skill (umenie) is very important for Malevich (we should remember his vast pedagogic work in Unovis in Vitebsk and at Inkhuk in Petrograd), but it is neither the major factor nor the aim of creation. Artistic mastery should yield to the demands of the flux of being in the world and should not exhibit the material in its skeleton-like nudity as Constructivism does. It ought to show the non-existence of form and colour. This is why the squares, circles and crosses of Suprematism are quite unrelated to the squares, circles and crosses occuring in nature -- they are the irruption of non-existence, and constitute FORMING and not INFORMING elements.

2. Is Suprematism mystical?

The word 'mystical' has been misused so often in the field of Russian art that one hesitates to apply it to the thought and works of Malevich. In this particular case, there is no question of vague and imprecise religious agendas nor theological states of the soul. But if one accepts that mystical vision bypasses the intermediaries and transforms the ordinary perceptions of the five senses into a contemplation of the world in its total being, then it can be asserted that Malevichian Suprematism is mystical. This does not, however, attribute special status to Malevich since true art has always and will always be linked to this direct penetration of the total beingness of the world. The mysticism of Malevich stands out all the more because of its fundamental antagonism to the dominant postrevolutionary thought of Constructivism and materialism. There are, however, similarities in approach and in thought not only to certain aspects of Buddhism (undoubtedly through the books and articles of P. D. Uspensky) but also with the apophatic theology of the Greek Fathers and with Hesychasm. Though not wishing to overestimate these elements among so many others in Suprematism, one cannot ignore them.

3. Suprematism as absolute Non-objectivity.

There are many ambiguities in the names applied to the different manifestations of the plastic arts which in the 20th Century no longer represent the elements of reality as we see them around us. The most usual term to designate this art which refuses all reference to any known thing in the perceptible world is that of ABSTRACTION. Though this term with its nuances may be appropriate for Kandinsky or even Mondrian, it will not do for Suprematism which is not the triumph of 'abstraction' but of 'bespredmetnos' (non-objectivity).

In abstraction, there is always a RAPPORT WITH THE OBJECT, there is always an interpretation of the world by rapport to a REPRESENTATION (in the sense of the 'Deutung' discussed by Erich Auerbach in his celebrated book on mimesis). But Malevich is clear on this subject: Man CAN NOTHING REPRESENT. The artist must only favour the epiphanic appearance of beings as manifestations of being in the world. Whereas abstraction wants to know the object in its essence such as we intuitively know it and not according to our normal eyesight, Suprematist non-objectivity refuses all reference to the world of objects and only recognises ONE WORLD, that of the abyss of being. Where Kandinsky's abstraction is still dualist-symbolist, where Mondrian's abstraction is a system of pictorial and semiological equivalences, Malevichian non-objectivity is the radical destruction of the bridge by which metaphysics and traditional art spanned this 'great abyss' separating a world accessible to reason or intuition from a world which is not. For Malevich there is but one sole world absolute non-objectivity. It is the SENSATION of this world which consumes all vestige of form at the two poles of Suprematism -- the Black Square and the White Square.

Though Malevich, with pedagogic intentions, wanted to explain in his Bauhaus book in 1927 what conditioned artistic vision in different epochs in terms of the environment, this is not to say that Suprematism is the pictorial reproduction of that environment (an aerial view of the earth). It means that the environment has made possible the Suprematist consciousness. Aerial vision has not given rise to new geometrical forms, abstractly conceived by viewing forms from above. It explains the Suprematist liberation from the terrestial gravity of objects, their annihilation in the 'liberated nothingness'. Malevich calls Suprematism a 'new realism' in so far as it embraces the only true reality of the non-objective world.

4. Suprematism as an All-embracing Philosophy.

The pictorial is for Malevich the privileged site for Suprematist revelation, but the latter is not limited to what is traditionally called the plastic arts. Suprematism reaches out to all branches of human activity. It wants to transform life in its entirety (economical, political, cultural, religious). If the perspective inherited from the Renaissance, or the inverted perspective of iconic art has been radically suppressed, this is because man's place in the universal movement is not totally new. Suprematism is not humanist. It is not the triumph of man as the centre of the universe, the centre of converging or diverging vision, but the triumph of 'liberated nothingness'. Man in general and the artist in particular, is the emitter and transmitter of the energies of the world which pass through him. He himself is this world. He is not the enterpreter but the prophet in the etymological sense of the word. It is by light of this new perspective that the new world must be erected. It will be built out of pain, for the figurative resists, and whenever there is resistance, there is war. Wars and revolutions are inevitable phenomena in the world march towards the liberation from the burden of the figurative, reinforced through the centuries by humanity's anthromorphism and its need of comfort and convenience.

It would be hazardous to identify the ideas of Malevich with any kind of idealism, subjectivism, psychologism or pantheism. Rather they are phenomenological, in Heiddeger's sense and a few years before him in so far as they constitute a 'deciphering of being in its beings'.



From the catalogue for: Kasimir Malewitsch – zum 100. Geburtstag; Galerie Gmurzynska, Köln, Juni – Juli, 1978


_____________________________



In a note for his essay, "Malevich, Painting, and Writing: On the Development of a Suprematist Philosophy" (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 2003), Jean-Claude Marcadé explains: "Bespredmetnost … is usually rendered as 'nonobjectivity' or 'nonobjectivism,' but, for reasons that I will explain, I prefer 'the objectless.' "

Macardé explains: "First and foremost, Malevich was unique in that he gave philosophical significance to the pairing of figuation (predmetnost) and the objectless (bespredmetnost), which emerged in the theory and art criticism of the 1910s as a way to designate a new reality – the rise of nonfiguation and abstraction. In1919, the Polish-Ukrainian-Russian painter stated: 'In mentioning the objectless [in 1913-16], I only wanted to point out clearly that Suprematism does not treat of things, objects, etc., and that's all; the objectless, generally speaking, wasbeside the point.' Thus, the painter clearly distinguished between the objectless as an operative mode in the plastic arts and 'the objectless, generally speaking' – that is, in a philosophical, Suprematist sense. He deliberately did not seek a different word for the philosophical objectless. Malevich could have used objectivity (obektivnost) and nonobjectivity (neobektivnost) to describe both the philosophical objectless and nonfigurative art, which he does elsewhere, but according to my hypothesis, he did not choose to do so because 'objectivity/nonobjectivity' did not acknowledge his project, instead associating his thought with that of various other doctrines. There is almost a certain 'objectivity' in Suprematism, the objectivity of the objectless, of the total absence of the object. Although the painter denies objectivity in terms of picturing an object since 'the human being cannot picture anything,' and although the traditional conflict in philosophy between the subject and object means nothing to him, it is still the case that all is one, that if there is nothing outside, then nothing is what is. It is this nothing that Suprematism wants to release from the weight of the figurative (i.e., of objects [predmetnyi]). This is precisely the crux of the painter's philosophical thought: the impossibility of being able to picture, to picture oneself, to represent, to represent oneself. The 'Suprematist mirror' (Suprematicheskoe zerkalo) is the zero, 'the zero as the ring of all that is with-object [predmetnoe] into the objectless [bespredmetnoe].' It is from zero, in zero, that the true movement of being begins. None of the traditional philosophical oppositions are appropriate in this case, which is why Malevich used vocabulary from the plastic arts in his reflections on being. Suprematism is not a philosophy of negation in a dialectical process; it is a philosophy of ' without,' of absence."


Website of Jean-Claude Marcadé: