There might be a lot going on in this untitled painting by Lyubov Popova.

Depending upon how and where you look you might see a guitar, boobs, mushrooms, even hidden messages. However, you also the option of simply admitting that you can’t see anything clearly, which might be the best description for the work that there is. When Lyubov Popova painted this piece in 1915 she was deep into the world of abstract art. Originally, Popova was a Cubist, and worked alongside other famous fanatic disciples of the style, such as Henri Le Fauconnier and Jean Metzinger. Now Cubism is pretty abstract, however most viewers would still be able to generally make sense of the subjects in paintings made in this style. So while we can see cubism’s influence here, we know that the movement is not entirely to blame for our confusion.

A better explanation might be found in the movement Popova joined after mastering cubism: Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism called for a whole new level of abstraction. While artists working in a cubist style were driven to conceptualize things with a plethora of ninety degree angles, Suprematists were looking for something called the "Zero Degree." In short, the Zero Degree is the point where art is no longer art. Hearing this, and then looking at Malevich’s White on White, we begin to see what they mean. These artists attempted to find the Zero Degree by doing things like abandoning visual representation entirely. It seems here that Popova is in the process of letting go of the influences of Cubism and Futurism and heading down the path to "supreme feeling," where Suprematists free themselves from the burden of painting recognizable subjects in order to get at something more spiritually universal.