Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/81

73 described as "the destruction of art" if by "art" is meant what Mayakovsky calls "dessert“——an "extra", a postscript to life, a commentary on it or a "reflection".

We have noted already the statement of Larionov and Zdanevich justifying their face-painting in which they explain that while it is good that life should invade art (i.e. that art should reflect contemporary themes, the machine—age etc), even this is not enough: what is needed is that art should invade life. Malevich made the point even more expressively when he justified his "destruction of content" in his paintings. Writing of the post—revolutionary period and its requirements, he insisted:


 * Our contemporaries must understand that life will not be the content of art. but rather that art must become the content of life, since only thus can life be beautiful.

In other words, in the new life, art will be the way of living, the form of cities and of the entire earth. Malevich insisted that his art was a starting-point of this new life. Identifying his painting with the creative work of the revolution, he insisted that it should be regarded as a manifestation of this new life of human creativity. To look into it for some other "content"-—as if in the hope of seeing "through" it into the old and familiar world——was completely to misconstrue his aims. Those, on the other hand, who had been able to appreciate the form of his art, wrote Malevich,


 * have also seen a new world for their life.

Thus Malevich's "destruction" was much more than merely the destruction of a particular form or school of art. It was intend—