This painting shows a bearded man running along a path in front of two houses, a cross, and a bloodied sword. One cannot distinguish his identity or whereabouts, because his facial features have been removed, the natural landscape has been transformed into an unearthly series of colorful stripes, and there are no other symbols or markers. However, there is a wide selection of colors utilized - Reds, greens, yellows, and blues are found throughout. The Painting’s provenance is necessary for understanding the meaning behind its subtle symbolism.
The artist, Kazimir Malevich, was a radical avant-garde artist and teacher. Being born in 1879 and dying in 1935, he experienced, firsthand, the revolution, the civil war, collectivization, and the transfer of power to Stalin. He had already created pioneering work before the Revolution, most famously the Black Square (painted in 1915) and his manifesto, called From Cubism to Supremacism (published in 1915).
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When reading his book, one gets a sense of his radical ideology. He writes favorably about speed, dynamism, and upheaval whilst calling for the abandonment of aestheticism, the idealization of the human form, and the enslavement of utilitarian reason. He writes “Hurry up and shed the hardened skin of centuries so that you can catch up with us more easily.” (Malevich 1915)
Because of his basic affinity to leftism and because Anatolii Lunacharsky, head of the newly formed Narkompros (Peoples commissariat for Enlightenment) was sympathetic enough to artistic and literary radicals, like Malevich, he was formally and immediately recognized with the revolution. He became active on many levels of the Narkompos, being a part of the first collegium, until 1919 and then taught at the Vitebsk Art School in Belarus until 1922.
Like his art students, Malevich agreed with the independence of artists from the state; outlined in their conference’s resolution in Petrograd in April 1918 which said that “art and artists must be absolutely free in every manifestation of their creativity ... and art affairs are the affairs of artists themselves.” Generally, Malevich did very well during this period, despite the governmental control of Russian art, also leading parts of the Inkhuk (Institute of Artistic Culture), which during its short autonomy attracted many important artists and critics.
However, with Stalin’s seizure of power, the state began to promote what they called Socialist Realism – “an idealized, propagandistic style of art” (Encyclopedia Britannica) They considered forms of abstraction a type of bourgeois art that was too far removed from the socialist Utopian Stalin wished to portray. This was Malevich’s antithesis and he did not temper his energies in the “promotion of Supremacism.” (Router 2008)
As a result, he was prohibited from producing similar art and many of his works were appropriated. The Petrograd State Institute of Artistic Culture, where Malevich was appointed Director, was also forced to close in 1926 after a Communist party newspaper called it 'a government-supported monastery' rife with 'counterrevolutionary sermonizing and artistic debauchery.” So, in 1927 Malevich left Russia and traveled to Warsaw, then Berlin, and then Munich, where he left most of the paintings with his friend and architect Hugo Häring. It was these paintings that would pass to the Stedelijk Museum some twenty-five years later.
As Stalin had scrapped Bukharin's New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed peasants to keep their surplus production, during the Fifteenth Communist Congress in October 1926, all agricultural production was to belong to the state. With his first Five-Year Plan, Stalin set in motion a quota system of agricultural collectivization and modernization that would be enforced by the army if necessary. Malevich, therefore, had no illusions about what awaited him in the Soviet Union, knowing that his own investment in the peasant culture, having lived with them, painted them, and absorbed their ways in the context of nature and work, was no longer in favor with “the government's desire to use the peasant as a crude and disposable production machine.” (Router 2008)
When Malevich returned in the autumn of 1930, he was arrested and interrogated by the KGB in Leningrad. He was accused of Polish espionage, and threatened with execution, but was eventually released in December. Returning from Germany, having experienced the liberated, fresh, and creative style of the Bauhaus, returning to the increasingly repressive Russian State saddened Malevich. He saw the quality of life continues to slide precipitously into decline as bureaucrats struggled for power. With the political purges in full swing, “the cries for reform and renunciation of Stalin's isolationist policies became only disjointed muffled whispers from outside the government's core.” (Router 2008)
This artwork comes from this epoch in his life when the Communists distrusted symbolism and they distrusted the intelligentsia who might interpret the hidden meanings locked in oil paint. His work had lost its precision and he had adopted a very brushy Expressionist style. He continued to write and also to paint but backdated all his newest paintings to earlier in his career in order to avoid suspicion of continuing to follow a semi-abstract or 'formalist' style. The only revolt he was able to make “against the government and lockstep art groups' efforts to make him a non-person” lay in his use of symbolism. (Router 2008)
Malevich had to become very subtle with every symbol used. Because the man’s face has been removed, somewhat hauntingly, we can argue the artist is conveying the message that he has lost his identity. His anonymity marks him as any Russian or Ukrainian Farmer and his positioning can be interpreted as defending the government's seizure of grain behind him.
Furthermore, on the horizon, there are two houses before a blue sky, and between them is a bloodied, silver sword with the tip pointing down. This can be said to represent the break and destruction of the Church, which had been so important to Russians; the big red cross behind the running man's outstretched arm reinforces this idea, and Malevich’s maintained piety reinforces this idea.
Also, the fact that the runner, or the peasant, or even Malevich, is running left and in the direction away from the red house, as though to some sanctuary beyond the edge of the frame, perhaps indicates he wants to go back in time.
It can also be interpreted that he has been worked to the bone because his face resembles a polished black prolate spheroid. It is as if he has been gradually and forcibly weathered down with work so much so that his identifying features have faded away and he resembles something robotic and inhuman.
Finally, the running figure is also interpreted to be the Soviet government itself. Its humanoid figure runs across the canvas, evoking panic and fear, from its crimes: the persecution and murder of peasants. A bloodied sword, showing the violence towards them, can be said to be the very killing that they have done.
Sources Cited;
- The Running Man, Kazimir Malevich, c.1932-33, The Georges Pompidou Center, Paris, France
- “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism, 1915” Kazimir Malevich from Bowlt, John E., editor. Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934. New edition., Thames & Hudson, 2017.
- 'Socialist Realism | art'. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2018-10-15.
- Souter, Gerry, and Kazimir Severinovich Malevich. Malevich: Journey to Infinity. Parkstone Press International, 2008.
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