There are careers in the arts that epitomize the spirit of their time in so many salient respects that they attain a kind of mythological status in the eyes of posterity. The life and work of the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935), whose art is currently the subject of an extraordinary exhibition, constitute a career of this sort.¹ In every aspect of his endeavors—in his downfall as much as in his triumphs—Malevich was the very archetype of the avant-garde artist in the age of revolution. Embracing without qualm or limit every extreme of belief and aspiration offered up by the tumultuous era in which he pursued his radical ideals, Malevich looked upon art as at once an absolute and an instrument—as pure spirit, on the one hand, and a means of imposing a new social order, on the other. In this view of art and its functions, the work of art was thought to encompass and affect every sphere of life and thought—and to do so, moreover, through the suppression of all visual reference to earthly existence. So total was the mission of art to be in Malevich’s conception of it that it was only through the most complete abstraction that both its transcendent and its earthly goals were believed to be fully realizable. Upon abstract art there was thus conferred a burden and a status that in more traditional societies were considered the province of religion, politics, education, philosophy, and culture itself. No wonder Malevich called the