Ever since it was first publicly shown in December 1915, at the Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings, 0.10 (Zero-Ten), the Black Square (then simply called The Quadrilateral), has provoked a vast range of positive—and negative—responses, as well as generating an equally varied assortment of interpretations. Hung high up and across the corner of the room, it dominated the display of Kazimir Malevich's canvases then, and has played a similar role in scholarship about Malevich ever since. It is the ultimate abstract or objectless painting—a modernist icon—and even today is still acting as a stimulus and an inspiration to modern artists throughout the world. Malevich called it “the icon of my time” and “the zero of form.” Ekaterina Kudriavtseva, or Catherine Kudriavtseva as she is known to her students at Stetson University in Florida, wrote her PhD thesis on “The Making of the Black Square,” and the present book benefits enormously from her profound understanding of the Russian avant-garde in general and Kazimir Malevich in particular.

Kudriavtseva focuses on the Black Square as the paradigm of Malevich's objectless style Suprematism and of the creative achievements of the Russian avant-garde as a whole. She uses the painting as key to examining various issues, such as Malevich's development of hard-edge geometric abstraction, his return to figuration and his changing political attitudes towards the regime, as well as the painting's reception and the various ways in which it has been interpreted during the last hundred years, especially since the artist's death in 1935. She is particularly interested in the political ramifications of the painting (both in Russia and the west). Beginning with an historical account of the painting's emergence in 1915 during the First World War, she deals with the 1920s, Stalinism, the Thaw, the Cold War, and finally the collapse of communism, discussing the role that the art market, politicians, cultural figures, critics and scholars have played in the reception of the painting. In Russia, from being derided by Alexandre Benois in 1916, and banned under Stalin, the Black Square became valued as great art; one version was actually bought by Alpha Bank in the 1990s and now resides in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Today, Suprematism and the Black Square are big business.

Kudriavtseva also places this seminal work within the ever-shifting relationship between Russia and the west, and the cultural differences that inevitably complemented the vagaries of history. This is an illuminating exercise and reveals the role avant-garde art has played in cultural politics. She uses a wide range of Russian and western sources and her bibliography is, indeed, exemplary. Sadly, there is no index, which makes locating specific instances and the positions of individual scholars difficult, but the book is easy to read, which makes searching no real hardship.

Kudriavtseva's assiduous documenting of the various stances and opinions adopted at various times is admirable and brings home to the reader precisely how none of us (whatever our profession—scholars, critics, politicians, historians) can really escape the cultural and historical context in which we live and work. Ironically, the book itself is also a victim of this fundamental truth.

As anyone who specializes in Russian art knows, our knowledge about the Russian avant-garde is constantly changing: the factual framework that seemed secure a decade ago, or even yesterday, can rapidly disintegrate. This is especially true of the Black Square. In 2015, to mark the centenary of its creation, the State Tret΄iakov Gallery instituted a new scientific investigation of the original painting, using the very latest techniques. The process revealed two images beneath the present image: a Cubo-Futurist composition covered by a proto-Suprematist—but not Suprematist—painting. Previously, the craquelure (revealing color beneath) had suggested that the Black Square had been painted over an existing Suprematist composition and was not the first Suprematist painting. This has now been disproved. Indeed, Irina Vakar concluded that the painting's long gestation indicated that it was almost certainly the first Suprematist painting.

Although Kudriavtseva's book was not able to take account of this new evidence, the event underlines the validity of her approach, and should cause us all to pause and seriously consider the factors governing our own intellectual activities.