Blue Space 1917

Kazimir Malevich made this drawing called Blue Space, with what looks like ink on paper, at some point in his career. It’s all about reduction: a rectangle, some circles, and a dashed line. A kind of a minimalist language that he’s developing. The materials here are super simple, but it’s the arrangement that gets me. The way those circles decrease in size, almost like they’re receding into the distance, and that dashed line cutting across the top, pushing back against the circles. It's like he's trying to flatten the space and make it deeper at the same time. Look at the way the ink pools a little in the circles, so simple, yet so evocative. It reminds me a bit of some of Agnes Martin's drawings, that same quietness, that same search for the essential, but with a kind of playful, Suprematist twist. It’s like he’s saying, “What more do you need?” and maybe, he’s right.