The presentation was the most stressful of the three, as it was worth the most marks, and if I failed, I would fail in front of the class.
I did not meet my presentation partner in person until the day of. A list hard circulated around class, I'd written my name down in one of the slots, and someone wrote their's down next to mine. They contacted me over email and we sent emails back and forth as our method of communication.
Our topic was Abstract Art in Russia, with a focus on Kandinsky and Malevich. My partner had taken the initiative in starting the Powerpoint, and had begun the section on Kandinsky. So, I offered to cover Malevich as a way of dividing the workload.
This was Kandinksy's key contribution:
This was Malevich's:
Titled: "Black Square". Let's check how much a reproduction of this image might cost...
...$590 to $1950 depending on what size you want.
I felt like I'd gotten the more difficult pitch for the audience.
And my instructor was a big fan of Malevich. When she showed us part of "Victory Over the Sun", an opera that was a collaborative work between Russian artists, she indicated that the backdrop was Malevich's "famous painting". It was Black Square, and I don't think most of the people in the class even perceived it as a painting.
She showed another one of Malevich's paintings, "Yellow and Black", which is a series of overlapping yellow and black geometric shapes. She showed it from three different angles, saying that when you observe it in person, it takes a long time to analyze, because it looks correct no matter which way you view it.
I was lost. But I knew that if she felt strongly about it, I had to sell it.
I was ranting to someone about how I'd have to fill ten minutes (it was a twenty minute presentation, so assuming I took half). She said, "You've already been talking about this for over ten minutes" and suggested I just speak as I had been.
"It's just a black square! A BLACK SQUAAAAARE!"
No, that wouldn't do.
Even though me and my partner never met in person, they claimed to know who I was, as we had been grouped together in our first class. Because this person's name was something traditionally male in Canadian culture, I envisioned a guy in that group that never again returned to class. There are some people who just don't go to class, read the online notes and submit assignments online. A few weeks previous we had a presentation by someone that nobody recognized. I assumed it was a similar situation, especially because I said that we'd meet in class and they said it was impossible because they had a class directly after.
Day of, we're supposed to meet in the library. I can't find the guy, but I notice the shy girl from the back of the class. "Uh... Gryphon?"
Yup, my partner. I'd felt bad because I hadn't been too responsive with my emails (a frustration I'm sure many of my readers associate with me), but it turns out she was in every class and had not approached me. Whatever.
We get into class. Our instructor is sick and says she's "just trying to stay conscious". Not good. You don't want the person in charge of your grade to be in a negative headspace, even if it has nothing to do with you. She says that we have a "Very interesting topic". Again, not good. She's invested in this presentation, so if we step wrong, she's going to know. Each presentation before us has been at the end of the class, and she's cut into their time, but she offers us the opportunity to open the class, so that she doesn't cut into our time. So we'll have to do the full 20 minutes, and she's clearly invested in a topic I have no confidence in.
At first, we can't get the projector to work. It's just showing a blue screen despite the Powerpoint showing up on the computer. She has to call for tech support. Nobody gets why it won't work. I have to choke back jokes about this being Malevich's famous work, "Blue Square".
Eventually it clicks on for no reason and we can present. I start off with a definition of abstract art and it's influence on Russia, then hand it over to my partner to cover Kandinsky. She's short, and so I have to cover the bulk of the time with Malevich.
We start in with his early works:
At this time he used bold strokes and usually conveyed one or two people.
Then we went into his inspiration from cubism and futurism:
That's the Knife Grinder. We then go into his collaborative work, the opera, "Victory Over the Sun"
And the style he developed with his colleagues, "Alogism".
The "log" in "Alogism" stands for "logic", and the "A", is similar to "Asymmetrical" which means "Not symetrical". So "Alogism" means "Not logical".
The point of Alogism was to contradict all conventional aspects of art so that it challenged viewers to understand how their own minds work.
However, Malevich felt that by simply rebelling against artistic trends, was still allowing for artists to be defined by those trends.
He felt that God had given humanity talent to create, and that immitating God's creations was theft.
So he rejected form, including his own human form. He strove to reduce everything to zero, which would reveal a void. But he wasn't satisfied with the void, he wanted to arrive on the other side, and create the first truly original human creation.
And thus he created Black Square, which was bringing "Zero to one"
He began his own art movement, "Suprematism", which meant "Supremacy over form". He said that Black Square was the face of Suprematism, and it was his "Royal infant" that would grow into the rest of Suprematism.
Having to call a black square a royal infant in front of a crowd of colleagues has to be one of my most humiliating moments.
After this I showed another one of his works:
That's "White on White", two slightly differently off-coloured white squares set atop one another. I explained this as the tilted white square representing motion. I said that when I first looked at this image, I thought that if I wanted to represent motion, I might draw a bird or a train, but then I realized that with those images came all the perceptions and biases associated with them With a neutral image such as White on White, we can observe the concept of motion in its purest form, without any attached biases.
Then we looked at Yellow and Black
This was the class example where our instructor said it took a long time to analyze because it looked correct no matter which angle you observed it from.
I said that because it looked correct no matter the orientation, this gave the impression of a lack of gravity, and a sense of motion, where you could easily imagine it "tripping through space" which emphasized Malevich's "Cosmic reality" which opposed and earthly one.
At the end of the presentation she thanked us for a very interesting presentation. At the end of class, she repeated that she would like to thank today's presenters. Felt that was a good sign
Got our grade back today. Unfortunately, it was the worst grade that I have received in this class to date.
That means we only got 97%! So far my grades are:
Test 1: 100%
Test 2: 100%
Abstract: 100%
Presentation: 97%
I should just move to Russia.
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