►► “Supreme” on Vladimir’s hat
by Marcin Lodyga
text dedicated to Vladimir Umanets who is imprisoned in Maidstone prison, Kent, UK

“It was nothing other than a yearning for speed … for flight … which, seeking an outward shape, brought about the birth of the airplane. For the airplane was not contrived in order to carry business letters from Berlin to Moscow, but rather in obedience to the irresistible drive of this yearning for speed to take on external form.” - Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism

The feeling of speed (flight) required a form and thus we have airplanes. The function of the airplane is not to transport people from one place to another, but to express the desire of speed - an airplane is a shape of this feeling, it’s a “definition” of speed in a form of aeroplane. However, an aeroplane placed in the context of yellowism expresses yellow color instead of the feeling of speed. (The feeling of) yellow can take an outward shape, an external form of any object and being. Yellow in a form of aeroplane, yellow in a form of a chair, yellow in a form of Black Square by Malevich, yellow in a form of “Fountain” by Duchamp. 

In yellowism, in contrary to Suprematism philosophy, the diversity of feelings doesn’t exist. The following feelings “illustrated” by Malevich: the feeling of metallic sounds, the feeling of electric current, the impression of resound, the feeling of magnetic attraction, the impression of universe, the feeling of cosmos, the feeling of mystic wave from cosmos, the feeling of non-objectivity are reduced to one, to the feeling / definition of yellow. All suprematic compositions by Malevich express exactly the same yellowistic feeling/meaning.

“Our life is a theater piece, in which nonobjective feeling is portrayed by objective imagery” says Malevich. Feeling? Kazimir, be precise, you talk about many different feelings, not about one and you defined your Suprematism language (Suprematism forms) to express the various feelings. But yellowists can use all “languages” - the whole art (including Suprematism) and the whole reality to express only one feeling / meaning. Every piece of yellowism is a pure expression of yellow color.

Malevich called his Suprematism world: “nonobjective”. Paradoxically, yellowism is neither objective nor nonobjective because yellowism flattens (to one surface) the nonobjective world (all feelings and impressions) and the objective world (material forms, all objects with their utility) at the same time. You look at a chair and you perceive it as an expression of nonobjective yellow. You look at yellow which only looks like a dark brown wooden chair.

Yellowism is based on the supremacy of yellow and takes domination over Suprematism. 

text by Marcin Lodyga, London, 2013

Marcin Lodyga
“Sounds from the chamber”
piece of yellowism
for public audition in yellowistic chambers only
CD / audio recording of a walk through Miroslaw Balka exhibition Gravity made in the gallery space
executed in 2013

►► Luncheon on the grass
(on the grass: Arthur Danto, Roy Turner, Joseph Kosuth, Marcin Lodyga) 

What makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is. - Arthur Danto. But to expose the irrelevance of this idea when attributed to the tradition, we have only to ask what “real object”, “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet collapses into when the implicit theory which supported it is refuted. - ask another thinker Roy Turner (Philosophy Now magazine)

Marcin Lodyga starts: If “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet was placed in the context of yellowism, inside a yellowistic chamber, then it would stop to be a work of art and it would become a piece of yellowism - a pure expression of yellow color in the form of Manet painting. Inside yellowism the painting by Manet is not a work of art. We have only to ask what piece of yellowism “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet collapses into when the implicit context of yellowism which supported it is refuted. The answer: it collapses into a work of art, it becomes a work of art again, it gains its previous status.

Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning ) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy. - nervously said Joseph Kosuth (“Art After Philosophy”). Dear Joseph - Marcin replies - in the context of yellowism - which is NOT a kind of total, huge conceptual art work, as you would consider it probably, painting is not a work of art. You said: “Art is the definition of art”, I say: yellowism is the definition of yellowism. 

text by Marcin Lodyga
27/02/13

Marcin Lodyga
“You can start painting again, in yellowism”
yellowistic draft
signed and dated on the front
poster printed for the occasion of Duchamp season in Barbican, London
150 x 100 cm
executed in 2013

►► Rome outside of art
by Marcin Lodyga

Yellowism is not dadaism or neo-dadaism. If you think that yellowism is dadaism then actually you are a dadaist, because you try to devalue yellowism and make it meaningless. Dadaists were nihilists and they “promoted” nonsense. The fact that in yellowism everything means yellow leads to the wrong conclusion that everything means nothing and therefore yellowism is perceived as nihilism /dadaism. This is the big misunderstanding. The real consequence of yellowism existence is the philosophy of ONE and the vision of many different isms (existing outside of art) which can be reduced to (one) yellow-ism anyway. Although yellowism clones exist under different names - they are yellowism. In the future: many one-perspective “worlds”. Not only one “world” full of perspectives (meanings), many various subjective interpretations - like in postmodernism, especially postmodern art, but also many separate “worlds” (greenism, blueism, chairism) with one perspective each, concentrated on one meaning only. Yellowism, divided into many isms, will be positioned away from the forever developing, “organic” realm of art.  

The total flattening announced by yellowists is more humanitarian than dadaism because it doesn’t leave people with nothing - inside the desert of meanings where you can watch only the wrecks and corpses of culture. Yellowists save one meaning (yellow) for everything and also they let you live in the “yellowistic totalitarian illusion of many”- you can exist in autonomous groups called greenism, blueism, chairism or skyism etc. but you will be a yellowist anyway. All roads lead to Rome. The universal Rome - the absolute truth will be always outside of art. 

Dadaists are nihilists, they do not offer anything, they don’t show a new perspective, new possibilities, they replace everything with nothing. » Dada (…) wants nothing, absolutely nothing, and what it does is to make the public say ” We understand nothing, nothing, nothing “. “The Dadaists are nothing, nothing, nothing and they will surely succeed in nothing, nothing, nothing.” « 391, No. 12, Paris, March 1920 Francis Picabia who knows nothing, nothing, nothing. 

Nihilists say that without absolute, universal, and transcendent values, there can be no real values at all. Friedrich Nietzsche, however, argues that the lack of such absolute values does not imply the absence of any values at all. Nietzsche “permits” the values of many different and even mutually exclusive perspectives. This is called “perspectivism” - all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made. This leads (me) to postmodernism. Postmodernism is the consequence of Nietzsche’s perspectivism but is nihilistic. The proliferation of alternative perspectives, beliefs and values makes that postmodern society is foundationless.

This what we see in the galleries is the result of postmodernism or post-post modernism, or postpostpostmodernism, whatever. Many perspectives, many points of view, not one grand and universal but many interpretations closed inside the circle called “art”. In the future artists will resign from art, will abandon this circle. Art full of many perspectives will still exist but will be surrounded by - isms. Some artists will never leave the territory of art but there will be yellowists, greenists, chairists looking at them from outside - located in one perspective circles. 

All the other isms are actually yellow-ism because, they have the same architecture, logic. Finally they can be reduced to yellowism, flattened to yellow-ism. However, people will need this totalitarian illusion of many isms, they will construct their own contexts, for example greenism,redism, chairism or godism, and they will be happy inside the isms but all the new one-meaning worlds can be always considered as yellowism.

Yellowism doesn’t replace (like dadaism) all the values with nothing, yellowism gives one sense instead of nonsense. Yellowism presents the vision of many autonomous territories around multiperspective art. Yellowism saves the ONE - whatever it is: blue, green, chair and offers the new grand philosophy of ONE. 

Marcin Lodyga
18.01.2013
London

Marcin Lodyga, Khadija Davies
Portrait of Members of Art & Language with Caps, in the Style of Jackson Pollock
yellowistic draft
signed and dated 18/01/13 on the front
magazine cover, pink ink
22.4 x 28.6 cm
Executed in 2013

The authors of manifesto and definition of yellowism Marcin Łodyga and Vladimir Umanets at The British Museum in London (January 2012). 
© Sylwester Kolton.

►► A dead animal 

Today you can overstep the border, you can be a bit like Alice through the looking glass, you don’t have to, together with other artists, push the boundaries of art further anymore, now it’s time to cross it and discover the another, still unknown for many, space called yellowism. Of course, you can stay where you are and run your artistic life in harmony with the motion of postmodernism. Yellowists don’t announce the end of art; they say in manifesto: art is a forever developing whole. They don’t promote a slogan: “art is dead”, they rather say that yellowism is dead and always was dead and always will be dead. Therefore they don’t want to replace art with yellowism. They just introduce a new autonomous territory, specific environment which is parallel to the context of art. They give you a vision of time in culture when the resignation from art will be a trend. Yellowists show you the possibility of alternative existence in which the fact that you abandon art is considered as the most creative decision. It doesn’t matter what the condition of art will be after twenty or hundred years - yellowism will be still the same. Any changes and any progress around yellowism are and will be, metaphorically speaking, like a tank of formaldehyde for a dead animal. 

text by Marcin Lodyga

►► Jump out of the speeding train

Since civilization is changing extremely fast today, there is little time for new meanings of objects to crystallize - said Jan Swidzinski - the creator of contextual art. In effect the objects of art assume different meanings. The outdating of meanings is a constant process - proceeding all the faster the quicker civilization changes. Contextual art by Swidzinski just follows the changes, it runs, chases the transformations and proposes the criterion of truth of which, defined by the pragmatic context, changes incessantly. Yellowism is steady and proposes the stabilization of meanings, actually - one meaning. Yellowism is a zone with the only one information inside. Art is running, the time is running but yellowism arrests just one interpretation and it’s permanent, constant forever. You can jump out from the world of many perspectives (art) to the one-point perspective world (yellowism). Yellowists guarantee that inside yellowism the point in which you are now will be exactly the same like the point in which you will be after fifty a hundred or thousand years - you are moving in harmony with yellowism expansion, you are producing pieces of yellowism, but the time is stopped.

text by Marcin Lodyga