Mies and Malevich: Form as a Historical Process

Abstract

This thesis explores how Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and Kazimir Malevich (1897-1935) contextualized their work within history. This takes the form of three broad lines of investigation: First, it considers how Mies and Malevich contextualized their ideas historically in terms of the intellectual and aesthetic inheritance of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how this influenced their work’s development. Second, it examines how Mies and Malevich positioned their work in relation to contemporary historical processes during the years following the Russian and German Revolutions of 1917 and 1919, exploring the extent to which this underlies what was, for both, a formative period of artistic development. Finally, this thesis seeks to understand how Mies and Malevich conceived of the development of form as being the result of a historical process by examining their abstract architectural experiments and theoretical writings. Contrary to the consensus of historiography on Mies and Malevich, this thesis argues that they did not see their work as a reflection of eternally valid principles. Instead, it suggests, they interpreted their work from a historical standpoint.