Malevitch QR, acrylic on canvas, 92 x 92 cm, 2014
From the Black Square on white ground of Malevich in 1915 to the black squares of today’s QR barcodes the image changes less than the meaning we give to it. This is a complete mistake to say again and again nowadays that everything has been done in painting, as a painting is not made of its pigment, composition or forms. Marcel Duchamp did show it by calling Pharmacya landscape (1914), claiming Fountainan urinal (1917), or growing a moustache and a goatee to the Mona Lisa: a painting is made of the social meaning we impute to it. A black square on white ground has expressed the emblematic absolute of Russian Suprematism, a few years later it announced the death of painting by Malevich. Today it has become a digital icon of quick identification. And if you scan my painting with a smartphone you will read the words “Art, Life, Philosophy”: the meaning l have to power to give to it.