THE MERGING OF TIME AND SPACE: “THE FOURTH DIMENSION” IN RUSSIA From The Structurist Nets/ic. Ci995-3¢) FROM OUSPENSKY TO MALEVICH LINDA DALRYMPLE HENDERSON LINDA DALRYMPLE HENDERSON received her PhO. trom Yale UUniversty in May 1975, She has taught courses in 19! and 200% century art ands curently erving as Curator of Modern Art a The Museum of Fie Aris, Houston, Texas. The term “the fourth dimension” first emerged as a problem for art historians in their study of the literature of Cubism. In a number of articles written from the 1940 on, authors at a loss to explain the presence and meaning ofthe idea associated it wth the Relativ- ity Theory of Einstein and Minkowski." The recent es- tablishment of popularizations of nineteenth-century n-dimensional geometry (ie, geometry of more than three dimensions) as the correct source of Cubism's “fourth dimension’, nowever, now provides a factual basis for analysis of the many manifestations of "the fourth dimension” in early twentieth-century art and cfiticism? Cubists such as Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes were, in fact, far from being the only artists fascinated with four-dimensionality in this period. Marcel Duchamp and de Sti founder Theo van Doesburg were major theorists on the subject, and atsts as diverse as the American Max Weber and the italian Futurists Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini were also interested in he idea. While the subjectwas explored in a variety of locales outside of Paris, cer- tainly the most concentrated non-French pursuit of “the fourth dimension” occurred in Russia, in the writ- ings of P. D. Ouspensky? andin the philosophy and art of Russian Futurism and the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich. As an outgrowth of nineteenth-century geometry, the term “the fourth dimension’, which commanded so much attention in the early years of the twentieth cen- tury, generally referred to ahigher dimension of space and had nothing to do with our common interpretation of time as the fourth dimension. The definition of the fourth dimension as time, which had originated as early as the eighteenth century in the writings of d'Alembert and Lagrange, had been largely sup- planted in the nineteenth century by a widespread concer with the possible realty of the higher dimen- sional spaces suggested by n-dimensional geometry It was such a purely spatial, geometrical fourth dimension which intrigued the Cubists and their friend Duchamp.* Yet, after 1919 Einstein's interpretation of time alone as the fourth dimension in the space-time continuum of the General Theory of Relativity gradually replaced tho spatial fourth dimension of the nineteenth and early twentieth century in the public's mind.* Thus, for the artist van Doesburg working in the 1920s, time was the primary definition of “the fourth dimension”, and this Einsteinian view has generally remained in force to the present day.” However, @ unique blending of time with an essentially spatial fourth dimension had occurred in Russian avant-garde art before the Revolution of 1917. Al- though @ precedent for the interaction of time with space existed in the popular “hyperspace philosophy" which developed in the nineteenth cen- tury, only in the writings of the Russian philosopher and mystic P. D. Ouspensky were the spatial and temporal qualities of "the fourth dimension” convinc- ingly reconciled. The works of Ouspensky, as well as, those of his English predecessor in hyperspace philosophy, Charles Howard Hinton, were a major Source for the Russian Futurist theorist Mikhail Matyushin, as wellas for the painter Malevich and the poet Alexei Kruchenykh. With his mystical, idealist belief in the corning of anew era which would reveal true realty as four dimen- sional, Ouspensky added a unique chapter to the history of "the fourth dimension”. The dominance of his philosophy in prewar Russia made it inevitable that Russian artists would interpret the term quite dif- ferently from the French Cubists who were interested in a more geometrical fourth dimension. Thus, to un- derstand the style and content of Malevich's Su- pprematist paintings such as Movement of Painterly Masses in he Fourth Dimension(present whereabouts unknown), one must look to Ouspensky's analysis of the nature of space and time and to certain of the methods of hyperspace philosophy employed in that analysis, In contrast to the large number of French mathemati- cians and philosophers writing about higher dimen: sions at the end of the nineteenth century, Russian mathematicians in this period were much more ac- tively concerned with non-Euclidean geometry than with geometries of more than three dimensions.* Rus- sian artists, on the other hand, were not to become interested in the non-Euclidean geometry of their 97countryman Lobachevsky until after the Revolution."° Instead, they, ike so many Europeans in the prewar era, were intrigued by the idea of higher dimensions of space and the philosophical implications of such a seemingly imperceptible world. Without reacily avail- able mathematical sources, a layman such as, Matyushin logically turned to Russia's foremost author fon the fourth dimension, Peter Demianovich Qus- ppensky. There he found much more than any popular mathematical text might have taught him, James Billington, in The /con and the Axe: An Interpre- tive History of Russian Culture, has identitied "Pro- metheanism’, as one of the major characteristics of the cultural mood of early twentieth-century Russia.” iting the writings of Ouspensky and the abstract artof Malevich as representative of Prometheanism, Billing- ton defines this trend as “the belief that man — when fully aware of his true powers — is capable of totally transforming the world in which he lives"."* The fourth dimension is an integral part of the Promethean philosophy of both Ouspensky and the Russian Futurist and Suprematist Malevich who relied upon his ‘writings. In a fourth dimension of space Ouspensky believed he had found an explanation for the “enig- mas of the world",'* and with. this knowledge he could offer mankind a new truth which would, like the Gift of Prometheus, transform human existence. Although Ouspensky travelled in the east during 1908 and again in 1913-14 to seek the “eternal wisdom’, "* his major sources for information on the fourth dimen- sion were two books by the Englishman Charles How- ard Hinton, A New Era of Thought of 1888 and The Fourth Dimension of 1904."* Ouspensky's first publi- cation on the subject, The Fourth Dimension, ap- peared in 1909" and is basically a recounting of Hinton’s nineteenth-century hyperspace philosophy. Inthis work Ouspensky echoes Hinton’s belief that our present perception of the world as three-dimensional is false and that we must awaken our “higher con- sciousness” in order to discover true four- dimensional reality. Ouspensky also describes in de- ‘ail the method Hinton had proposed for educating the ‘space sense”, a series of complex exercises involv- ing multicolored cubes (Fig. 1) as the components of the four-dimensional hyperoube or tesseract (Fig 2)" Although in 1809 he was still largely dependent upon Hinton, by the time of his 1911 volume Tertium Organum Ouspensky had perfected his unique Promethean system of philosophy. In Tertium ‘Organum Ouspensky even derides Hinton for his ex: tremely personal and difficult system of exercises with the tesseract."* Nevertheless, Ouspensky retained a 98 basic aspect of Hinton’s approach and adopted the most successful popular method discovered in the nineteenth century for explaining the fourth dimen- sion As early as the 1870s in England the idea of a two- dimensional world in a plane unaware of the third dimension had been employed by a number of au- thors to suggest the possibilty of an unknown fourth dimension beyond our three-dimensional existence." Hinton had used the analogy of a two-dimensional universe in hs frst article on the fourth dimension in 1880, and referred to it again in his subsequent treatises on the subject The plane worid example was immortalized in 1884 in the popular tale Flatland: ‘A Romance of Many Dimensions by a Square by the English theologian . A. Abbott ‘An example ofthe penetration ofa lower dimensional ‘world by a higher dimensional sold is shown n Figure 3. This plate from the 1913 A Primer of Higher Space, by the American author Claude Bragdon, specifically illustrates the different shapes created by the pas- sage of a cube through a plane at diferent angies.” Ouspensky was thinking of the action of this type of solid-color cube, as well as multicolored cubes, when hebeganhis analysis ofthe relation of ime to space in Tertium Organum, a discussion far more developed than Hinion’s brief references to the world of two dimensions. According to Ouspensky, when the inhabitant of a ‘two-dimensional plane learns of the third dimension, he must recognize that his two-dimensionality is an illusion, Three-dimensional bodies alone are real and the Flatlander must either possess a small third di mension himself or be only an imaginary section of higher space. But how does the two-dimensional being first perceive @ higher dimension? If a cube, made up of layers of different colors, passes perpen- dicularly through his plane in the shape of a square, it will appear to him as a succession of colored lines. These lines, when viewed from within the plane, will disappear just as suddenly as they appeared, having existed for only a few moments in time. For the two- dimensional being, then, the third dimension will be sensed initially as an experience in time. If the object passing through his plane had been a sphere, or a cube at an angle 10 the plane (Fig. 3), the two- dimensional being would have sensed not only time but also motion. As he observed the two-dimensional form created by sections of the three-dimensional object, that form would seem to move toward him or away irom him, according to its three-dimensional shape. Yet this movement and change of shape ‘would in reality be a mere illusionFor Ouspensky, time and motion as we perceive them in the thied dimension are also illusory: they are the products of an incomplete vision of the fourth dimen- sion of space. With this in mind, he states in Tertium Organum that“... extension in time is extension into unknown space, and therefore time is the fourth di- mension of space”.** But here Ouspensky is suggest ing something quite different from the eighteenth- century understanding of the fourth dimension as time alone, Ouspensky, in fact, is redefining the notion of time in terms of space: ". . . We may say thattime (ast, is usually understood) includes in itselftwo ideas: that of a certain to us unknown space (the fourth dimen- sion), and that of motion upon this space”.** In normal Perception the illusion of motion arises out of our incomplete sensation of time, and the idea of time itself results from our incomplete sense of space. Quspensky posits a true reality that is immobile and constant, with the illusion of change resulting simply from our temporaniy limited powers of perception. ‘The very notion of time is transitional and will recede: ‘as our spatial understanding eniarges.** In Ouspensky's view the seeming three-dimension: ality of the world is a property not of that world but of man’s “psychic apparatus”.*” In the main body of Tertium Organum he works to prove the possi- bility of a higher “space sense" to which a “fourth unit of psychic life", higher intuition,** can be linked, just as sensation, perception, and concepts are as- sociated by Ouspensky with the first, second, and third dimensions. According to Ouspensky, if man can develop an intuitive capability “in which an ele- ment of knowledge or ideas is always united with an emotional element”, the number of dimensions which he can perceive will also increase to four. Inthe four-dimensional world of noumena foreseen by Ouspensky it will become clear that the three- dimensional world of matter is merely an imaginary section of a four-dimensional universe where time exists spatially. The transition to the new knowledge will not be an easy one, however, for true realty con- troverts all the principies of our "three-dimensional logic". On the brink of this new realization, man “will sense a precipice, an abyss everywhere . .. and ex- perience indeed an incredible horror, fear and sad: Ly ‘ness, until this fear and sadness shall transform thom- selves into the joy of the sensing of a new reality".»” These first frightening moments of the “sensation of, infinity will be accompanied by an "impression of {the} utter and never-ending ilogicality” of the new order of things. It was this temporary sense of ilogicality which sug- gested to Ouspensky the one method by which man Could use his reason (with a healthy admixture of emo- tion} to prepare for the revelation of four-dimensional reality. “Tertium Organum” is the name Ouspensky gave his logic of the future: a seemingly contradictory system which by its very violations of our accepted standards of logic foretells conditions in the four- dimensional worid to come. According to Tertiun Or- ganum, “A is both A and Not-A. Everything is both A and Not-A. Everything is All". The logic of Tertium Organum may help mankind in his preparation for the future, but Ouspensky main- tains throughout that the primary route to knowledge of the noumenal world must be through mystical flashes of “cosmic consciousness” in certain "superman of the present generation, The artist, ac- cording to Ouspensky, is one of those most receptive to such visions of higher truth: “Only that fine ap- paratus which is called the soul of the artist can un- derstand and feel the reflection of the noumenon in the phenomenon” * “Artin its highest manifestations is @ path to cosmic consciousness’.** Ouspensky concludes at the end of Tertium Organum. ‘The first reference to “the fourth dimension” by an avant-garde Russian artist apparently occurred in Mikhail Larionov’s Rayonist Manifesto, issued at the time of the Target exhibition held in March and April of 1913, but composed in part as early as June 1912. Larionov uses the term in a very offhand manner, however, and shows no awareness of the contempo- rary Promethean associations of "the fourth dimen- sion” in Russia: 99Fo. 9.6,eRaeDoi ROW A PRMER OF HORER SPACE, ROCHESTER 11 The painting appears to slide, gives the sensa- tion of the extratemporal and spatial. Init arises the sensation of what one may call the fourth dimension, because its length, width and the thickness ofthe layers of color are the only signs of the surrounding world. Although he may have been introduced to the artistic, possibilities ofthe fourth dimension through reports of the French Cubists’ fascination with the idea, his final interpretation is equally independent oftheir view. For Larionov, talk of "the fourth dimension” is simply another means to emphasize the absence in Rayonism of objects from the three-dimensional world In March 1913, however, another member of the Rus- sian avant-garde, the violinist and sometime painter Mikhail Matyushin, succeeded in recasting the French Cubists’ view of the fourth dimension in terms of Ouspensky’s Promethean hyperspace philosophy. This metamorphosis occurred in an article for the third issue of the Union of Youth journal, in which Matyushin translated excerpts from Gleizes’s and Metzinger's Du Cubisme and introduced among these para- graphs quotations from the writings of Ouspensky. Matyushin had discovered Ouspensky's philosophy by the end of 1912, and during that winter he had ‘composed his first discussion of the subject, "The Meaning of the Fourth Dimension” *” Matyushin had met Malevich and the poet Kruchenykh in 1912, and. during 1913 these three friends plus the poet Velimir Khlebnikov worked closely on a number of projects. ‘These members of the avant-garde would thus also have been introduced to Ouspensky’s ideas on the fourth dimension at an early stage. It is a measure of Matyushin's familiarity with ideas about the fourth dimension that he could recognize its underlying presence in Du Cubisme, although Gleizes and Metzinger never use the term explicitly in that work.# Having detected the Cubists’ fascination with a higher reality removed from the three- 100 dimensional sensate world, Matyushin, in his Union of Youth article, augments the philosophical side of Du Cubisme and portrays the Cubists as fellow believers: in a future mystical transformation of man's con- sciousness. Matyushin's introductory paragraph recasts the Cubists as Ouspenskian supermen and bestows upon them an alleged interest in a fourth dimension booth spatial and temporal Anists always have been knights, poets, and prophets of space, in all eras. Sacrificing every- thing, perishing, they opened eyes and taught the crowd to see the great beauty of the world Which was hidden from them. Likewise, Cubism has raised the banner of the New Measure —of the new doctrine of the merging of time and space.” Contrary to Matyushin's assertion, however, the Cubist painter's concern was not with the “merging oftime and space”. Instead, he was interested only in a spatial fourth dimension and thought of tine merely as the means which enabled him to move about his, object and to synthesize information about the fourth dimension of space. Nevertheless, for Metzinger, Gieizes, and Apoliinaire, the most general interpretation of “the fourth dimen- sion" had been as a higher reality to be discovered by the individual artist. In this idealist side of Cubism Matyushin rightly sensed parallels to Russian Futurist philosophy. Yet, because the connection of Cubism's, higher reality with a fourth dimension was never ex- plcitly stated in Du Cubisme, Matyushin evidently fetit necessary to insert into his translation a speeifc refer fence to higher dimensions not present in the French text. In their concluding discussion of profound reality versus conventional reality, Gleizes and Metzinger had stated, “if the arlist has conceded nothing to ‘common standards, his work will inevitably be unintel- ligible to those who cannot, with a single beat of their wings, lift themselves to unknown planes”.** Matyushin, instead, writes of one who cannot “with a single stroke of his wings. lft himself up to unknown dimensions".*' Although Gieizes and Metzinger had used the French word plan which does not involve the idea of dimension, the Russian Matyushin uses iz- merenie (dimension! here nonetheless. For the Cubists “the fourth dimension” had served as rationale for two aspects of Cubist theory: the artist's freedom from perspective and his liberty to deform objects according to a higher aw. Although both Cubism's non-perspective space and deformation were mentioned in Du Cubisme, the artist's license to deform objects is not emphasized by Matyushin in histranslation. This omission undoubtedly occurred be- cause Matyushin, unlike the Cubists, did not have the benefit of Henri Poincaré’s discussions of non Euclidean geometry in such popular books as La Science et Ihypothase.** The evils of perspective, however, are another matter, and Matyushin is well armed with the hyperspace philosophy of Hinton and Ouspensky which supports. artistic freedom from the slavery of three-dimensional perspective. He compares Gleizes's and Metzinger’s idea that "to establish pictorial space, we must have recourse to the sensation of movement and of touclt and to all our faculties” to Hinton’s discussion of the need to educate the “space sense". From Ouspensky’s paraphrase of Hinton in his own 1909 The Fourth Dimension, Matyushin quotes the follow- ing passage: What we call perspective is in realty @ distortion of visible objects which is produced by a badly Constructed optical instrument — the eyo. We see all objects distorted. And we visualize them in the same way. ... But, according to Hinton, there is no necessity to visualize objects of the external world in a distorted form. The power of visualization is not limited by the power of vision. Hinton’s ideas precisely that before thinking of developing the capacity of seeing inthe fourth ‘dimension, we must learn to visualize objects as they would be seen from the fourth dimension, i.e, first of all, not in perspective, but from all sides at once, as they are known to our consciousness. “* The juxtaposition of this belief of Hinton and Ous- ensky with a passage from Du Cubisme based on Poincaré’s La Science et hypothése makes clear an important difference between the method of hyper- ‘space philosophy and that of the Cubists for overcom- ing three-dimensional space and achieving the fourth dimension. For Cubists ike Metzinger and Gleizes itis simply a matter of following Poincaré's dictum and creating what the mathematician terms “motor rg cmruennons oF Saray space", by moving around the object to be portrayed. When these muttiple views are synthesized in the manner of a geometrical drawing by Jouffret, an image of a higher dimensionality will have been created (Figs. 4 and 5). The process for the Russian adherents of hyperspace philosophy is not so direct and straightforward. The development ofthe ability to visualize objects from all sides at once is only the first step toward the desired “higher consciousness”. And this higher conscious- ness with its “fourth unit of psychic life” (higher intu- tion) must be attained before man’s perception will increase to include a fourth dimension of space. In contrast to the Cubists with their matter-of-fact geometric approach, the Russian follower of Ous- Pensky must radically transform his own conscious- ness. In his pretace to the joint Futurist publication of Sep- tember 1913, Troe (The Threel, Matyushin confirms the continuing influence of Ouspensky on Russian Futuristthought. In the manner of the author of Tertium Organum Matyushin writes, The days are not far when the conquered phan toms of three-dimensional space, ofthe illusory, drop-shaped time, and of the coward causality will reveal before everybody what they really have been all the time — the annoying bars of a cage in which the human spintis imprisoned. The poet Kruchenykh in his article in Troe, “The New Ways of the Word”, relies even more directly upon Ouspensky. Introducing the new “transrational" lan- guage, zum, he had developed, Kruchenykh ex- plains that its use is now possible because in adaltion to “sensation, notion, and concept, the fourth unit, ‘highest intuition,’ is being formed'** For those pos sessed of this Ouspenskian intuition the meaning of the irational zaum words will be immediately appar- ent Kruchenykh also reflects Ouspensky’s philosophy in his belief that a new intuitive language is essential for 101the future and that the use of this language can actu- ally help to usher in the new era, Ouspensky had prophesied that the primary impressionto be felt upon first glimpsing four-dimensional reality would be one of “utter and never-ending illogicalty”. With this in mind he had created his contradictory system of logic, Tertium Organurn, which was intended to shake ‘man outot his complacent, incorrect perception of the ‘world, By breaking the chains of “three-dimensional logic" once and far all, Tertium Organum would bring mankind one step closer to future reality For Kruchenykh the transition to a new understanding of the world can be brought about in literature by the use of "transrational” zaumm and the conscious pursuit of absurd, illogical meaning. Kruchenykh explains: that just as the new painters have discovered that "incorrect perspective creates the fourth dimension”, writers have found that "incorrect structure of sen: tences brings about movement and the new percep tion of the world". Malevich worked in two major styles before the emergence of Suprematism: Cubo-Futurism during 1913 and “Trangrational Realism” or “Alogism” dur- ing 1914. Just as the first of these, Cubo-Futurism, is, the counterpart of Cubism’s method for avoiding three-dimensionality, the second, "Alogism”, paral- lels Kruchenykh’s literary attempts to induce a “new perception of the world”. A Cubist style, whose con- nection with the fourth dimension had been spelled out by Matyushin in March of 1913, was logically the first method with which Malevich and other Russian Futurists would attempt to free themselves from the “phantoms of three-dimensional space” (Fig. 6). However, Malevich cannot have felt that Cubism's connection with the fourth dimension was very con- vincing, He and his fellow Russian painters lacked the geometrical justification of Poincaré's writings on tac~ tile and motor space and Joutfret's diagrams of multi- ple views of four-dimensional figures, which the French Cubists enjoyed. Moreover, by the end of 4913 the Russian Fulurist’'s adoption of the Pro methean philosophy of Ouspensky must have made the imported Cubist technique seem even more inade- quate as a vehicle for pursuing higher dimensions.** When the last Union of Youth exhibit opened in St Petersburg in November 1913, among Malevich's submissions were his first works entitled “Transra- tional Realism’. It would seem that in these Alogist paintings, which dominated his art in 1914, Malevich turned temporarily to content as a route to the fourth dimension, adopting Kruchenykh's Ouspenskian 102 literary philosophy for painting. The absurd juxtapos- tions of strange objects and the illogical size ditferen- tiations in @ painting like An Englishman in Moscow of 1919-14 (Fig. 7) can be seen as a painterly attempt to produce the sense of ilogicality Ouspensky had de- ‘scribed as the first impression of the noumenal world of four dimensions. In a completely nonsensical man- rer, a fish hides half of a man’s face and, in turn, the body of the fish is overlapped by a tiny church, a ladder, a candle and a saber. With these disparate images as well as the partial recombinations of letters from familiar words scattered across the painting, itis clear that Malevich, like Kruchenykh, was seeking to induce a transformation of consciousness resulting in a “new perception of the world”, But Malevich's Alogist style had a definite drawback, Unlike Kruchenykh’szaum words andiillogical syntax, which had moved one step beyond recognizable lan- guage, Malevich's Transrational Realism was very much dependent upon familiar objects for its absurd meaning.** Malevich must have realized that his 1914 style was hopelessly bound to the world of three di- mensions, despite whatever future-inducing shock value it might possess. By the end of 1915, however, Malevich had de- veloped a method for painting higher dimensions which enabled himte refer to "the fourth dimension’ in the subtitles of five of his thirty-nine canvases at the 0.10 Last Futurist Exhibition”. The titles of those works were as follows: Painterly Realism of a Football Player — Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension; Paint- erly Realism, Boy with Knapsack — Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension; Movement of Painterly Masses in the Fourth Dimension; Automobile and Lady —> BHCTABKA @VTYPHOTONE: 030 coranme sepstond Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension; and Lady — Color Masses in the Fourth and Second Dimension.*° photograph froma contemporary periodical (Fig. 8) shows Malevich's comer of the exhibition, but un- fortunately titles cannot be linked to specitic works. ‘The critic who wrote the caption under the photograph of the "0.10" exhibition was obviously somewhat skeptical of Malevich's use of "the fourth dimension” in his Suprematist tities: Mr. Malevich "crossed over" the white elephants and “arrived” in his own mind, of course, at the fourth dimension. How much attention the Su- prematist quests of Mr. Malevich merits obvious from his “Movement of Painterly Masses in the Fourth Dimension’ This writer undoubtedly believed that the subiitles of most of the remainder of Malevich’s works, which located them “in two dimensions”, were far more ap- propriate for such geometrical canvases. It is clear, however, that Malevich believed he was evoking the fourth dimension in at least five of his Suprematist works. What had occurred during late 1914 and 1915 to make such a breakthrough possible? Malevich's sets and costume for the December 1913, ‘opera Victory over the Sun have been recognized for some time as a major step in his evolution of the geometric language of Suprematism. His black ‘Square of 1915 has been linked to the close-up view of the edge of the captured sun in the famous “ab- stract” backcloth for Victory (Fig. 9). Other geometric elements were also produced during the perfor- ‘mance when lights played across the cuboid cos- tumes and freestanding geometric forms he had designed." From the end of 1913 on, such geometric shapes appeared increasingly in Malevich’s Alogist works. With the possible exception of one design, Malevich's geometrical experiments at this time do not seem to have had any specific connection with the fourth di- mension. A visual means to signify the fourth dimen- sion would certainly have been desirable for the ‘opera, since the entire project, with its zaum libretto by Kruchenykh, was seen as an opportunity to shock an audience out of its complacent, three-dimensional perception of the world. At this stage, however, Malevich seems to have had no new insights into the, problem except, perhaps, for an experiment with the nineteenth-century image of the hypercube Popularized in the writings of Hinton and others. ‘Susan Compton has detected this popular symbol in bboth the backcloth representing the house in the second act of Victory over the Sun (Fig. 10) and ina Malevich painting of 1913, Musical Instrument / Lamp.* If the form in Figure 10 is indeed a hypercube, its presence in the second act of Victory over the Sun would have been particularly appro- priate. Although “the fourth dimension” as such is ever mentioned in the opera, the second act takes place in a future era after the defeat of the rational, three-dimensional sun, and the four-dimensionality of existence is necessarily implied. Atter Victory over the Sun Malevich did no more with the rather inflexible motif of the hypercube. During 1914, however, he may have received a new impetus to look again at Hinton, this time at the Englishman's use of the two-dimensional analogy employed in hyperspace philosophy to explain the fourth dimen- sion. The Russian Futurists must certainly have been sur- prised in 1914 when the second edition of Ouspensky's The Fourth Dimension appeared with a new final chapter attacking them for their “falsfica- tion” of ideas about the fourth dimension.* uspensky's taste was, infact, quite conservative, so that Cubo-Futurist paintings such as those created by Malevich in 1913 could hardly have appealed to him visually. But the adopting of his hallowed fourth ai- mension fora radical artistic philosophy was simply too much for Ouspensky to bear silently. Thus, in The Fourth Dimension of 1914 he asserts that none of the works by these artists begin to qually as true four- dimensional representation, He accuses the Futurists of falsely claiming that they already possess a new vision of the world and harshly scolds them for not going through the slow and difficult process of study which Hinton had indicated would be necessary in order to develop one's “space sense’ 103PERSONALITIES TRACINGS OF | PTFE INDIVIDUAL Cb) ATLANE| e 4)» ‘ou 7 Through his negative criticism Ouspensky may have actually offered a constructive suggestion to the Futurists. The formal characteristics associated with the hyperspace philosophy to which he turned their attention may well have reinforced the direction of Malevich's art during late 1914 and 1915. As a result, the form Suprematism would take was assured and its connection with the fourth dimension established, Hinton’s detailed analysis of the multicolored tes- seract and the movement of its component cubes: through our space was an extension to three dimen- sions ofthe effects created by the passage of cubes with differentiy colored sides and edges through a plane."* Ouspensky had similarly employed the anal ‘ogy of a two-dimensional world with geometric figures. passing through ito explain a lower being's first per- ception of a higher dimension as time and motion ® Discussion of the sections produced by figures pass- ing through a plane had long been a standard fea- ture of explanations of the fourth dimension, Occa- sionally the visual results of such experiments had been illustrated, as in Claude Bragdon’s 1913 A Primer of Higher Space (Fig. 3). Ouspensky, in fact, has recorded that a copy of another of Bragdon’s books, Man the Square (1912), reached him in St Petersburg in the years before the Revolution * Other such illustrations may certainly have been known in Russia, orthe depiction of two-dimensional cross sec- tions could simply have been developed from the de- scriptions of the process in Hinton and Ouspensky. Nevertheless, itis intriguing to speculate that more than one copy of Bragdon’'s book reached St. Peters- burg and to compare Bragdon’s "proto-Suprematist” elements with Malevich's work. 104 One of the drawings from Bragdon's Man the Square is enlarged and illustrated in Figure 11. Here Bragdon represents the manifestations in a plane (the “indi vidual personalities”) of cubic men, most of whom are not “square with the world”. Just as one plate of A Primer of Higher Space (Fig. 3) explains the manner in which cubes intersecting a plane at different angles can produce a variety of shapes, Man the Square also included a diagram illustrating the figures produced by @ cube passing through a plane in the three posi- tions, A,B, C, indicated at the upper right-hand corner of Figure 3. A comparison of Figure 11 with the photograph of Malevich's paintings at the "0.10" exhibition (Fig. 8) reveals an interesting formal similarity. Although the idea for his Suprematist geometry may have origi- nated in the sets and costumes of Victory over the Sun, simple geometrical forms would certainly have taken on a new meaning for Malevich in the light of such illustrations from hyperspace philosophy. Moreover, the artistic possibilities of the two- dimensional analogy were not limited to mono: chromatic forms. Color had been an important feature of Hinton’s work with the tesseract as well as of Ouspensky's analysis of time and motion. For both authors, color was essential for the lower being’s de- tection of the movement of a higher dimensional solid in an unknown direction. “If a multi-colored cube passes through the plane, the plane being will per- ceive the entire cube andits motion as achangeincolor oflines lying in the plane" *” Ouspensky had explained in Tertium Organum. Although the simpler, monochromatic Suprematist ‘works like Eight Red Rectangles (Fig. 12) can be read as the.cross sections of figures in a single plane, more: complex paintings involving color, such as the Stedelijk Museum's untitled Suprematist Painting (Fig. 13) encourage a reading which includes a definite sense of process. The overlapping colored forms of Figure 13 cannot be confined to the picture plane and hencemust be read as moving through a space which extends backward and forward from that plane. Here Ouspensky's explanation of the plane being's perception of the motion of a cube through his plane can be applied to space. The passage of higher di- mensional bodies through this space will be per- ceived as “a change in color of forms} lying in the (space! Motion in the direction of the fourth ¢imen- sion would be indicated by these color changes, just as color had marked the passage of sections of Hinton’s four-dimensional tesseract through three- dimensional space I Malevich's Suprematist paintings are indeed related| | to hyperspace philosophy in this manner, motion, in time is an essential feature of their higher dimen- sionality. Suprematism and the hyper-space phil- osophy of Hinton and Ouspensky stand as middle ground between Cubism's spatial fourth dimension and the tradition of time itself as the fourth dimension. In Cubism time had only been a means to the end of gathering multiple views of an object which were then juxtaposed in a single overall image. No such summation can occur in the method of hyper-space philosophy, where higher dimensional figures are created by the motion of an object into a new, higher dimension. Although time itself is not thought of as the fourth dimension, it is recognized as the man- ner in which movement in a fourth direction is sensed by a three-dimensional observer. The passage of time, with its implication of mation in a new dimension, is thus a vital aspect of any representation of the fourth dimension in hyperspace philosophy as well as in Suprematism, Malevich's predominantly two-dimensional Su- prematist canvases, such as the Square or Eight Red Rectangles, only imply the possible motion of three- dimensional objects through a two-dimensional plane. The representation of movement is much more direct in dynamic, multicolored works like the untitled Suprematist Painting in the Stedelijk Museum (Fig, 19), In these latter works Malevich may have reversed the process of dealing with higher dimensional figures by means of their sections of one less dimension. Instead, he may have thought of his colored forms as symbols for three-dimensional bodies movingin anew direction and thus creating both four-dimensional solids and four-dimensional space. This was the way Hinton had originally generated his tesseract, which was based on the movement of a cube into the fourth dimension. Whatever the dimensional- ity of these figures, however, Malevich in the end chose to portray his colored forms in partial, two- dimensional views. Malevich's “0.10” exhibition subtitles, "Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension” and "Color Masses in the Second Dimension’, indicate that he did think of his Suprematist pictorial space in terms of either two or four dimensions. This distinction would agree with the definite difference in effect of his clearly two- dimensional planar works and the more spatial, multicolored Suprematist paintings, Certainly, three. dimensionality was to be avoided at all costs, and simply by creating the nebulous white space of Su- prematist Malevich did escape the illusory world of three dimensions. In addition to Suprematism’s possible associations with the techniques of hyperspace philosophy, Male- vvich may have connected his Suprematist style with ‘one of the Promethean aspects of Ouspensky's phi osophy. Malevich's Alogist works and Kruchenykh's, zaum had embodied the sense of illogicality Quspen- ‘sky describedas the firstimpression of four-dimension- al reality, In Tertium Organum, however, Quspensky had described an additional phase in the transition to “cosmic consciousness", the "sensation ot infinity”. 105This temporary sense of emptiness is given visual form in the nebulous space of Suprematism which Malevich later described as “the white, free chasm, infinity” * in Tertium Organum Ouspensky writes of the experi ence of leaving the three-dimensional world The sense of the infinite is the first and most terrible trial before initiation. Nothing exists! A Ile miserable soul feels itself suspended in an infinite void. Then even this void disappears! Nothing exists. There is only infinity, a constant and continuous division and dissolution of everything.” Malevich not only thought of the space of Suprema- tism as infinite, but also talked of it as @ void in his aphorism for Suprematism, "The square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling.”** The infiu- ‘ence of Ouspensky seems present too in Malevich's 1915 declaration, “I have transformed myself [into] the zero of form" * Ouspensky's description of the moment of passage from the phenomenal world is also remarkably close tothe famous statements by Kandinsky and Malevich on the frightening nature of the artistic move toward total absiraction. In his “Suprematism” essay Malevich almost echoes Quspensky in his deseription of the process: The ascent to the heights of non-objective art is arduous and painful ... but it is nevertheless ‘rewarding. The familiar recedes ever further and further into the background. No more “likenesses of reality”, no idealistic im- ages —nothing but a desert! But this desert is filled with the spirit of non- ‘objective sensation which pervades everything. Even | was gripped by a kind of timidity border- ing on fear when it came to leaving “the world of will and idea”, in which | had lived and worked and in the reality of which | had believed. Inthe Suprematist works of 1915 Malevich developed a unique kind of “four-dimensional” art, a style far more suited to the prevailing Promethean philosophy of Ouspensky than the Cubist art with which he had ‘experimented in 1913. Although both the Cubists and the Russians were interested in a fourth dimension of space, in Malevich's art, as in hyperspace philosophy, time plays an essential and active role in the depiction of higher dimensions. Ouspensky had declared time and motion to be illusions which result from our lack of four-dimensional perception and 106 which in the end will ade away as higher dimensions of space are revealed. In the meantime, according to Ouspensky, man must visualize higher dimensions by means of time and motion in time, a method which can now be seen to underlie the Suprematist creations of Malevich. Had he been less conservative in matters of art, Ouspensky would have realized the tribute to his philosophy of the four-dimensional merging of time and space embodied in Suprematism. C] FOOTNOTES: 1. Fora sampling ofthese “relativistic” inerpretations of Gubiam and for prof that the Cubist use of fe terme. “ine fourth dimension’ and non-Eustvean geomety actually haa nothing {ordo win Einstein Special Thedry of Relatty or Nerkowsht Spacertme continuum, see my artee, ANew Facet of Cubism fre Fourth Dension’ana Non Euclidean Geometry Reit= terpreted The Art Quarter, $4 (Winter 1971), pp. 410-3. 2, The development ofa popula’ radon of the fourth cimer- Slo" out of rratuorih cory ndmenslonal peomaty was frtanaly2ed ny winter 1971 at uarteny arte. There te Sirar popularization of the ofher major Mneteent-cortury {eometry important tothe Cubits,non-Eucldean geomet, tins also discussed, athough non Euclidean geometry does Tot igre i tho presert arte, (Soe n- 10 bolow,) Game rtry St ese nelson carry geometios ang question of the popularization of Relatvty Theory are SW in Gr greater Geta say Ph.D. canartaton (Yale University May 1975) ented "the Arist, The Fourth Dimen- Son anc Nor-cueldean Geometry 1900-1990: AFtomace of ‘Manj‘Dimensions" In that study the eater analysts of the Caius concem wits fours émension and ner-eucidean Pome sorned ans aiona caplet coven a farce Gusharnp esly werteth cerry Russian ary an the ‘post Word War period (primary fe Ge Sif att of Theo van Beesburo) 3, Throughout the article | have employed the transiteration of Guspenkys name which he hinge adopted, except nib ‘graphical rerencestoheRuneaanguage books, where pense" must be use 4, This statement fs bated on my reading of a variety of ‘ineteentn-century sources on the fourth dime Alomar and Lagrange’srelerences to the fou ‘Son, See Henry Parr Mating, Georety ofFourDimensions {New York: The Macmitan Cov 1918), pa 5, When reference ie made fo “Cubism tho present study dermal denies he esta ng of Cub pa ten c more purely artistic pursus of Picasso and Braque. Whe Pisaseo and Braque ula not have remained untovchod by Specusion about a fourh mension, te concept wes far storeintegralto the art and theory of Puieainx Cubist uch as Metzinger and Gleizes and tthe crfis Guilauroe Apolinae 6. Newspaper and perocica aricies puiened during the Fst Won War and the postwar period make "clear het Erste itaned the stats of a celebhy onlyin 1819, when his rece tion tat ight waves are bent oy the mass of the sun was testablshed empinoaly during 280." eclipse. On Enstemn and fhe 1919 eclipse, see Fonals W. Crk Einstom The Life and Times (New York Word Publishing Co, 1977), pp. 227-6. 7. Onenineteenh-century autor fascinated by the fourth dmen- Sion. H.&. Wels, cid employ th interpretation of tme stone as the fourh dimension inthe Time Machine of 1696, although i the rest of his stares involving the concen! the more popular Spatial interpretation was deed In aft Belore Word War, here vias algo one excepliona cave of af ast Using a tmmporal iourth dmmersion.For he akan Futurist UmberBoceion the {Gynamismof tne hed armore appeal than the Cabsts moe Slate geometry of higher spaces Bier the war van Ooesburgs acceptance of the detntion of the fourh simension a ime id not nauee Fimo ve up al of his eatlerascociatone wina spat fourh cmmanion. Thus. Fis wringg on de Si archiocture and lim and on Elementrist aiming. the popular nineteenth century image of the Tout Eimenstonal hypercube reappears