From Cezanne’s Petrography to Suprematist Facture

Abstract

This essay focuses on the emergence and development of the concept of faktura in Russia. The term can be translated by the French term “facture” which is frequently used in art history, denoting how a thing is made. The English translation of faktura as “texture” is less satisfactory. The author argues that faktura or facture was fundamental to the development of modernism in Russia. He analyzes the statements of Kazimir Malevich and his artist colleagues concerning facture and Paul Cezanne’s works and argues that Malevich’s analysis of Cezanne’s surfaces – his pigments, colors, brushstrokes, stratigraphy – shaped modernism and sparked a shift away from tangible materi-al textures to immaterial Suprematist facture.