An Englishman in Moscow
An Englishman in Moscow, is a 1914 oil on canvas painting by Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist Kazimir Malevich.
Description
The titular Englishman depicted in the painting is wearing a top hat and an overcoat. The man's face is partially obscured by a white fish. Regarding the identity of the man painted by Malevich, the Head of Archives at the Stedelijk Museum, Michiel Nijhoff, has said, "The Englishman is not a specific Englishman but rather a metaphor in the juxtaposition of East and West; city and countryside."The painting itself features a collage of geometric shapes and items such as a lit candle, scimitar, a ladder, a wooden spoon and other items. Malevich also painted symbols and text characters onto the canvas—segments of the words "partial" and "solar eclipse" are seen in Russian. Malevich had been influenced by Russian literary futurists and the inclusion of Russian text, text fragments, and puns can be seen in at least two of his canvases painted before An Englishman in Moscow.
Interpretation
The Tate Modern, where An Englishman in Moscow was exhibited in 2014, has described its meaning as:Narrating a short documentary film about the painting, art critic Edwin Mullins proposed an alternative interpretation, suggesting the canvas is telling the story of an Englishman's journey through Moscow and it depicts:
Regarding the text on the canvas, the art history book The Challenge of the Avant-Garde argued that, "Russian futurism in the visual arts was closely linked to literary experimentation. Kazimir Malevich drew on both Cubist visual devices and contemporary Russian poetry to disrupt conventions of meaning in so-called Cubo-Futurist paintings like An Englishman in Moscow."