From today’s point of view, nonobjectivity as the highest form of representation would be a utopian concept, since, by implication, it would assert the existence of meaningless things without attribution and concept. With Malevich’s Architectons, this thesis is undermined, since pure objectlessness, insofar as it could exist, can consequently only function without bodies. The visualization of the disembodied idea would be the ideal here. Time and again, models serve as aids for artists. Even if the Gota Architecton was not intentionally intended as a model of a larger realization, its inherent model-like aesthetic is unmistakable.
Kazimir Malevich began producing his Architectons – architectural sculptures made from a number of geometric plaster blocks – in 1923. According to Malevich, the “architectural Suprematism” depicted in these models was the ultimate form of this style. It even surpassed painterly Suprematism, with which the artist had defined the end point of painting in 1919, on the basis of a white square on a white background (his White on White). What is interesting here is that, contrary to the convictions of Suprematism, according to which nonobjectivity is the highest principle of all, the Architectons can be understood as a template for modern functional architecture. By making objectlessness an object again through architecture, it is demonstrated that the deconstruction of signs also often leads to the emergence of new signs.
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