Pure Materiality in the Painted Linguistic Turn

This thesis questions the notion of non-aesthetic materiality in painting. Beginning with a concern for the monochrome in early modernism, it discusses the idea of materiality in the works of Kazimir Malevich and Alexander Rodchenko on the basis of different interpretations of faktura as discussed by David Burliuk and Mikhail Larionov. The monochrome is further developed through a post- Greenberg, post-Kantian discussion of material as read by Paul de Man, and de Man’s notion of pure, radical materiality is introduced and delimitated against a traditional, phenomenal account of materiality. These two forms of materiality are explored through of the work of Agnes Martin, which also provides the ground for the progression from the material turn as manifested in the works of the Russian avant-garde and the writings of Greenberg to the linguistic turn as proposed by de Man. De Man’s call for a non-phenomenal, linguistic turn in art that allows the observer to read a picture rather than to imagine meaning is discussed in detail. The findings of this discussion anchored by Kazimir Malevich and Agnes Martin are brought to bear on Markus Amm’s work. In the Conclusion, the idea of materiality oscillating between its phenomenal and non- phenomenal forms of manifestation will be distilled from the discussion and tied into questions relating to my own practice