Conclusion
Malevich’s restaging of his career at the Tretiakov in 1929 does not fit neatly into typical classifications of reenactment practices; his acts of curation, of falsifying dates, of painting per se, fall outside the realm of other cases discussed within this volume.
Yet how else, as a visual artist whose career was largely predicated upon the production of objects, could one performatively reenact one’s career? Malevich’s method of performance as a visual artist had, since 0,10 in 1915, been within the venue of the gallery exhibition. To reenact his career, he reused two techniques that had largely defined his actions as a professional artist: the act of painting and the act of exhibiting. Contemporary artist Steve Rushton (2005) has proposed a broad reading of reenactment in artistic practices as unclassifiable into any sort of movement or genre. He contends, rather, that reenactment serves more as a tool for memory production, a frame by means of which memory can be manipulated. The motives, methods, and results of contemporary artists working with the frame of reenactment are divergent. In other words, from Rushton’s perspective, there is no correct or incorrect way to do reenactment as an artist. From this perspective, Malevich’s methods for memory production place his actions within the category of reenactment, despite their idiosyncratic nature.Nonetheless, unlike the Storming of the Winter Palace reenactment, Malevich’s reenactment remained clandestine. It is unclear if anyone who engaged with his 1929 retrospective understood the full scope of its constructed nature. This raises the important question of whether a masked reenactment, which only one involved party understands as reenactment rather than reality, actually constitutes a reenactment at all. Does reenactment require an audience that is aware of its reenacted nature, even while asserting its isomorphism with the original? Malevich’s practice certainly diverged from the transparency that we might understand today as an inherent element of reenactment. Nonetheless, it converged significantly with many other core elements of these practices, in terms of restaging the past and producing it performatively for the needs of the present.