Malarstwo materii a powojenne przemiany dzieła sztuki

Matter painting is interpreted in this article as a turning point in the development of the art history after modernism. We start from the analysis of the trauma that is depicted in the abstract painting of Malewicz and Kandinsky. The drama of the World War I is presented in the structure of “Black Square on the White Field” (1915) because of its radical lack of the figuration, that shows the traumatic gap in the history and narration ( as history develops always between the representations of certain figures). Then we turn to the cultural shifts inscribed in the matter painting and its structure of the signifiants, and interpret it in the terms of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Finally, we conceive of a parallel between the shits in the notion of sign in the modern and postmodern philosophy and the ontological changes of the work of art in abstract and matter painting.