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Victory Over the Sun
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2021
Extract
Victory Over the Sun was a very important performance in the early history of the avant-garde. Produced in December, 1913, in St. Petersburg, Russia, it was primarily the work of the three men pictured above: the composer Mikhail Matyushin (seated left), the designer Kazimir Malevich (seated right) and the playwright Alexei (Alexander) Kruchenykh (lying down). (Note the setting, which appears to consist of unmatched drop and wings hung upside down. It is not known whether this arrangement was actually used in Victory Over the Sun, but in the sixth scene of the opera, there is the unusual stage direction: “[the Fat Man] peeps inside the watch: the tower the sky the streets are upside down—as in a mirror.”
One significant aspect of the production is that it was to this work that Malevich attributed the origin of Suprematism. Apparently he painted at least one extremely simplified non-objective backdrop for the performance: his sketch for the black and white square divided diagonally is reproduced at the right.
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- Copyright © 1971 The Drama Review
References
* Suprematism, a “movement” in painting initiated by Malevich, involved a rigorous reduction of stylistic elements and a strictly geometrical non-objective format.
* We believe that this refers to a French style of boxing in which the fighters are allowed to use their feet as well as their hands—Eds.
* In July, 1913, “a group of Futurists held a conference in Usikirko, Finland, which was called rather grandiloquently ‘The All-National Congress of Futurist Writers.’ Little is known about the proceedings of, and the participants in, this ‘Congress,’ but soon a ‘declaration’ appeared in the St. Petersburg press bearing the signatures of Kruchenykh, Malevich and Matyushin, and announcing the decision of the Congress to organize a Futurist theatre under the name of ‘Budetlyanin.'” Pp. 141-142, Russian Futurism: A History by Vladimir Markov, Univversity of California Press, 1968.
* For an explanation of zaum as well as for information on the artistic movement of which Victory Over the Sun was one manifestation, see Vladimir Markov's important, scholarly and detailed book Russian Futurism: a History. (University of California, 1968).