Kasimir Malevich —after whom this work is named—harbored grand theories about art, society, and spirituality. His stark Suprematist squares are watershed works in the history of the Russian avant-garde. Such purpose-driven art must have tempted Twombly's relaxing touch. Created when conceptual artists like Joseph Kosuth were using words to worry the meaning of language and images, Malevich uses a legendary artist's name to worry the meaning of his art. Looking at Malevich, you experience the self-induced awe a child feels as he writes a name—his own, his sweetheart's, a famous person's—over and over again. Malevich's name itself acquires a shamanistic power, as if his name were as absolutely autonomous as a Twomblyan doodle. Malevich the theoretician, imprisoned in his ideas about art and freedom, is reborn as a gesture liberated from ideas.