When Malevich hung his black square in the Suprematist exhibition in 1915 and created Modernism, did he consider himself a modernist? Why did he hang his painting where Russian families would hang their icons? Did that put him closer to an orthodox God or was it just a declaration of the supremacy of pure artistic feeling?
When Cezanne broke up the Provence landscape into cubes that would create Cubism and later make Picasso move closer to the Montagne Sainte Victoire to be buried there, did he know the greatest artist of the 20th century would want to lie in his wake at the foothills of his modest landscapes?
When Mondrian moved to New York at the end of his life and perceived the complex vibrant city as a square of geometric shapes, did he know that New York would become the birthplace of Abstract Expressionism?
We don’t have any answers to these questions. But we think about them. We think about what a modern artist is, what is modern art today. And like in the Socratic Method, the questions go on.
Did Delacroix know that he would create an image of the struggle for freedom, a personification of liberty that would be a political and feminist symbol centuries after he painted it?
Did Muhammed Ali (Aka Cassius Clay) know that he was a poet, writing with boxing gloves and evangelical eloquence by resisting the biggest aggression of his time; the Vietnam War?
Did Michelangelo know when he made sublimely aesthetic depictions of white flesh and masculinity as marble slaves, that slavery would be abolished and homosexuality decriminalized centuries after his lifetime?
Did Manet know after being excluded from the Paris Salon of 1863 that by bridging Realism and Impressionism he would be seen as the father of Modern Art, shattering centuries old rules of Western picture-making?
Questions questions, questions. As Euripides said ‘Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing’. Take Courage.
Martha Parsey. August 2026.