| Rochelle Kainer, PhD, will give an illustrated lecture featuring the
THE ART OF KAZIMIR MALEVITCH
(With a touch of Shostakovich)
Why do some works of art– be they visual or literary, or musical- compel our love for them? Why are we drawn to certain works and not to others? I first asked this question upon reading the The Makioka Sisters by the great Japanese writer, Junichero Tanazaki, and gave my answer in The Collapse of the Self and its Therapeutic Restoration. Then came Kazimir Malevich, the seminal Russian avant-garde artist who, having never lived abroad in exile, may not be as familiar to us as Picasso, or Chagall, or the many other artists who fled the fire of their native lands. Time has since caught up with Malevich, and is reflected in the sale of his work valued in the millions in the international art market.
Malevich, a great teacher as well as an artist, is known as the father of “Suprematism,” a geometic form of abstaction that took the circle and the square to a fourth dimension. His mischievious response to the Soviet prohibition of abstract art (in favor of patriotic art) produced masterpieces that have outlived the Cold War. They are now forever ours.
At a major exhibition of his work at the National Gallery of Art in 1991, I immediately fell in love with his work-not having seen any of it before, indeed having never known of him. He was brought to my attention by Jane Livingston, the former curator of the Corcoran. Knowing my art interests well, she told me I had better get down to the NGA, “right away.” In a later analysis of this powerful draw, I found that the dynamic at work was my unconscious identification with the ideals that were projected into his work, and that resonated with my ideal self. The lecture will illustrate the nature of those ideals and the seminal psychological role of projection and identification in a variety of his work.
- Rochelle Kainer
No Charge – Light Refreshments
No Continuing Education Credits
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