Lives of Artists 3
In the late eighties there was a shortage of everything, including colours. I had to take everything that got, including the "children" sets of oil paints. Their inconvenience was that there were many unnecessary, unnecessary paints, such as cadmium red light or chromium cobalt blue-green. Well, somehow I accumulated a lot of such colors, the expiry date is coming to an end, and it is a pity to throw away. Give them, I think, a loaded canvas. Then you look at the painting I painted. Based: above light red, then dark red, then shades of blue from light to dark. There was a black paint left, and I just put a black cross on top of it. Let the carpet dry. Here comes one of my acquaintances, sees a loaded canvas and says, "Wow, what a beautiful picture, just great!" I look at her and I don’t know if she’s joking. No, it is all serious. And she doesn’t say, “Give me this painting, I have dreamed of it all my life.” Everyone goes crazy in their own way, why not. “Dry, I say, come in a couple of days, take it.” I gave the canvas (I can’t call it a picture), and I forgot about it. Somewhere in a month I went to this acquaintance for business. The painting hangs in the most visible place. The acquaintance says, "I wanted to ask you for a long time: what do these faces mean in the picture?" I am falling into a precipice - what other faces, I just loaded the canvas! “What faces, where are they?” I ask. “Yes, here,” and shows me some place in the picture. I look, I try to understand how in the random patches of paint you could see some faces. “Yes, no, I say, I didn’t paint any faces, just accidentally the paints lay like that.” And I add about myself: "Yes, I did not paint any painting, just someone has a rich imagination."
PS: I think, maybe Malevich did not paint his black square, maybe he also loaded the canvas, or masked the unsuccessful picture, and there are acquaintances and "Wow, what a picture!"