It’s a stroke of irony that Suprematism is a departure from convention made manifest as a return to form. A return to faktura: the visual emancipation of essential, rudimentary pieces from their cumulative whole. In most situations, faktura is reduced to an origin or a conclusion only in completeness. But the Suprematists, taking off from the Futurists, believed their “return to form” as more of a transcendence than a regression. Indeed, the pure simplicity of constituent objects was held up as “supreme,” suprematism itself referring to and reminding us of the "supremacy of pure artistic feeling." 

But what makes pure, artistic feeling supreme? What has distracted us from this purity of form, and how are we returning to it? These are questions the suprematists answered in their own ways and work. There were many commonalities in the answers, made evident intuitively through the work. Many efforts to  communicate the point, through art and speech and manifesto. 

I found my own answer through akobson, a contemporary of theirs: Roman Jakobson. Though the point was more inferred than obligatory, it exists through someone very much immersed in the time, in order to maintain authenticity. Jakobson himself worked personally with the Russian avant garde, as a teenager. And it preoccupied much of his later work. He first heard Mayakobsky speak about Khlebnikov, and absorbed everything the man wrote. Jakobson later sought him out, and befriended both Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh. He was even invited to contribute his own zaum poetry to Zaumnaiga gniga of 1914/1915, which he did so under the pen name Aliagrov. He spent much the the rest of his life ruminating on and directly commenting on this association.
But its his indirect commentary that most interests me. Especially his commentary, stemming from his linguistic forebearers, about Poetry. “All poetry, according to Jakobson, is characterized by ‘a structural and functional dependence upon the material, non-signifying elements of language’ – indeed, ‘poetry is indifferent to the referent of the utterance’ (Bradford, Roman Jakobson, 26-27. )


A return to form in transcendence of function

The subjective grammatical implications free the work of the shackles of representation, of objective meaning. Through removing its grammar, poetry can restore its materiality, freeing it from any signification save from that of its pure relation to the subject. It is my belief that through non-signification and a removal of grammatical elements, Suprematism becomes a visual embodiment of Jakobson’s conception of poetry. 

Jakobson further explores this conception of Poetry in his essay “the grammar of poetry and the poetry of grammar,” wherein Roman Jakobson continues the work of his linguistic forbearers, carrying them on into the world of poet analysis. In the essay, he starts by confirming Franz Boas’ point that there are “two classes of expressed concepts” in language: “material and relational.” When this material is lexical, the relationality is grammatical. This makes up the “objective structural dichotomy” of language, as boas had noted. Grammar, to this extent, reflects “not so much our intuitive analysis of reality as our ability to compose that reality into a variety of formal patterns,” according to Sapir. 

Jakobson goes on to make an all-important observation: Without changing the lexical material, and only shifting the grammar, you allow for a multitude of subjective understandings. To define these subjectivities, Jakobson turns to bentham, who wrote about them as “linguistic fictions” that should not be “‘mistaken for realities’ nor ascribed to the creative fancy of linguists.”

Jakobson, with much creative fancy, then notes that the problem of this “linguistic fiction,” conflicts with grammar’s “indispensable, mandatory role” within the language’s “objective structural dichotomy,” raising a few key concerns. Primary of which, concerns about a “pressure” grammatical patterns put on science and other disciplines that rely on objective “realities” Bentham says grammatical structures should “not be mistaken for.” That is to say, the subjectivity of meaning brings into question Boas’s “obligatory” nature of Grammar. For while grammar is “obligatory” in its “objective, structural” relationship with vocabulary, so too is its subjective understanding with vocabulary’s apparent objectivity. 

Herein Jakobson makes his fundamental point: In light of this discrepancy, the “domain of verbal activities” is fully realized “in fiction, in verbal art.” Grammatical concepts “find their widest applications in poetry.”  Indeed, near the end of his essay, Jakobson notes that his analysis is simply the deconstructed experience of the phenomenon of reading poetry itself. Jakobson quotes Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Worf in his note that the reader of poetry “Feels instinctively the poetic effect and the semantic load of these grammatical appliances ‘without the slightest attempt at conscious analysis.’” When reading poetry, we unconsciously sacrifice our objective understanding of language through grammar, gaining instead an understanding of poetic grammar and the plurality of it’s subjective meanings. 


Visual Poetry

Suprematism is a visual expression of subjective freedom through poetic grammar. Visual language is a language like any other, with unique and obligatory aspects of communication:  “while for us definiteness, number, and time are obligatory aspects, we find in other language, location, source of information, as obligatory aspects.” These aspects vary fundamentally from language to language, but, “in defiance of the neogrammarian aversion [to univerals]” there is a universal grammar between languages, our of necessity. “Thus the true difference between languages is not in what may or may bot be expressed but in what must or must not be conveyed by the speakers” (492) Like all systems of language, visual expression is characterized by universal syntagmatic traits that define its meaning-making. Visual art (and any visual signage) has its own inherent linguistic qualities, made manifest in lexical and relational elements. Obligatory, as Jakobson and Boas explain. 

If visual language has inherent grammar, than visual language must have an inherent poetry. This poetry is what I believe Suprematism to reveal. Through the dissection of the painterly language into its constitute lexical pieces, these molecules gain new autonomy and expression revealed in and exploding into the negative space left by the crumbling object of meaning. 

When seen through the parallel comparisons that Jakobson himself was such a fan of, we can begin to answer these questions by revealing the Jakobsonian poetry inherent to suprematist art. Suprematism versus Constructivism is at its core as primordial as the question of form versus function. And by comparing Suprematist pieces to Constructivist art, it becomes evident that visual art contains material and relational elements comparable to those studied by Jakobson. 

While the two movements are visually mistakable, the differences were rooted so deeply that it ended up driving the two movements apart. And while the material, lexical nature of the pieces compared are similar, the differing relationally grants Suprematist art a poetic return-to-form due to a freedom from visual grammar. This is true of suprematism as a movement, regardless of the exact artistic medium employed. But for the sake of exploring this poetry of the visual form, we are going to be comparing works of painting, sculpture, and architecture.

1. Painting
El Lissitzky - Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge
Lyubov Popova - Painterly Architectonic

At first glance, these two pieces have similar shapes, shades and apparent style. They both have a predominant red triangle, along with grayscale circles and blocks that make up a sort of backdrop. But after a moment’s considering the parts, you see that they are ordered so as to portray different meanings. 

Lissitsky’s painting shows clear orientation, directionality between the shapes, even so far as momentum and violence. The captions tell you what direction to view the painting, and give it contextual meaning. Meaning that is implied even in the shapes before you know what the captions say. Its political, and has to do with the red/whites of the Russian Civil War. 

Popova's work shares the predominant red triangle, the abstracted geometry, the striking colors. Yet they are placed on top of each other as disparate pieces. They are all stuck, shoved together, with less obvious relation. The exact relation between the objects is ambiguous, as is the angle of observation, the painting’s orientation, and other mediation. Even symbolism is escaped and subverted. And thus, more attention payed simply to the shape, the line, the layering.

2. Sculpture  
Vladimir Tatlin - Counter Relief
El Lissitzky - Proun 19d

Both pieces present projections of depth, three dimensional form and perspective. They work with similar shapes and colors. 

Counter Relief has plenty of vested meanings and intentions, despite its apparent abstraction. It maintains itself on a wall, its parts working in tandem to keep it fixed up on the wall. Its proportioned in a corner, and remains the center of attention, with a fixed angle of perspective. In light of this physicality, there’s an emphasis on functional materials, and their collective physicality, and industrialized sources.

In Proun 19d, like any piece of suprematism, one's perspective is a matter of variable orientation. Its about the use of depth and structure not distracted, by prescribed perspective, or orientation, by symbolism, and most distinctly, by physical space.

3. Architecture
Vladimir Tatlin - Monument to the Third International  
Lazar Khidekel - Floating City

Both of these pieces are speculative works of architecture, never to actually be constructed. However they were both conceived to use architectural structure, physical space and environmental integration as their means of expression. To this extent, they both have similar usage of negative space, and stark, geometric forms. However, that’s where their similarities end.  

Tatlin’s sculpture was called Monument to the 3rd international, and even from the name, there is a hint of politics that only grows stronger. The political nature of the piece is evident even in its structure and material, the tower made up of steel, glass, etc. Rising, phallic.So too did it have an incredibly detailed political intention and purpose, complete with megaphones and cameras. 

Lissitsky’s was different. It’s called a floating city, but only in name. Does this look like a city? Its not burdened with political purpose, or even by purpose at all. More interested in idea than actuality. No focus on materials or their source. Instead, Khidekel’s buildings existing as forms in nature. Not surpassing them, but incorporating them. All was organic, more interest in aesthetic than purpose.
So, what’s going on here? Three examples of Supremitist and Constructivast art with similar constituent parts. Similar lexicality. But, different relationally. Differing grammar. Whereas the Constructivist pieces tended toward constructing representation, both political and symbolic, the Suprematist pieces leaves relationally mostly up to the interpreter. A return to form, away from symbols and objectivity. And towards Poetry, if you ask Roman Jakobson. 

That’s what Jakobson’s call is. Poetry is the utterance for the purpose of expression alone, without need for the mediator of grammar. Suprematism, in contrast to Constructivism, is a return to poetry based on a subversion of visual relationally. Visual grammar. A grammar that doesn’t act as a mediator, so far as it invites multiple subjectivities.  In Suprematist art, these subjectivities are invited by a lack of clear relationality involving object priority, orientation, visual perspective, etc. “Suprematism is about Supremacy of pure artistic feeling.”