Arseny Zhilyaev (editor) · 2015 · PDF · Calibre ID 14788
Resurfaced in The Chemist’s Shelf (2026-10-20).
Role in the triad
The counter-position and its institutional sequel: Malevich’s ‘On the Museum’ (1919) — the dead as powder on one chemist’s shelf — and Levitsky’s 1931 review of a crematorium exhibition.
Why this book
Prints Fedorov’s ‘The Museum, its Meaning and Mission’ (Part I) beside Malevich (Part II) and the Atheists’ Museum section (Part VI); word-frequency by part shows resurrect-/dead vanish after Part I and cremat- peaks in Part VI. Printed page = PDF page − 1.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “Contemporary life has invented crematoria for the dead, but each dead man is more alive than a weakly painted portrait. In burning a corpse we obtain one gram of powder: accordingly, thousands of graveyards could be accommodated on one chemist’s shelf.” (Malevich, p. 270) | “Our contemporary life should have as its slogan: “all that we have made is made for the crematorium.”” (Malevich, p. 270) | “enough pawning the graveyards of Vagankovo, enough singing requiems—none of this will rise again.” (Malevich, p. 270) | “Our job is not to photograph remains—that is what photographs are for.” (Malevich, p. 272) | “A museum, we could say, is a cemetery that has been transported and placed in the center of the city” (Fedorov, p. 132) | “Is cremation at all necessary, or is it better to abide by the age-old custom of burying the dead?” (Levitsky, p. 555) | “This is not just a technical error, but a crude ideological blunder on the part of the exhibition’s organizers.” (Levitsky, p. 556)
Themes
antireligious museum · avant-garde · Bekhterev · cremation · crematorium · Fedorov · Levitsky · Malevich · museum · pharmacy · Soviet museology