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Malarstwo materii w Polsce. Na marginesach odwilżowej "nowoczesności"

100%

Jankowska-Andrzejewska M.

Artium Quaestiones

2016

issue 27

197-247

The painting of the matter was an important component of Polish art of the “thaw” period and the 1960s. So far Polish art historians have usually interpreted works made of non-traditional substances by Polish artists as examples of inspiration by Western art and a tendency to abandon the painting as such. Scholars and critics stressed the relief qualities of art objects and their impact on the spectator through the surface texture and the properties of the material used, often incorporated into a picture directly from reality and provoking specific associations. Such an approach did justice only to some such works, e.g., those painted with paints mixed with nonpainterly substances, with the mud effects of the palette, characteristic of French art (Aleksander Kobzdej, Jan Lebenstein), or abandoning traditional materials to challenge the painting as such (Jan Ziemski, Włodzimierz Borowski, Jerzy Rosołowicz). Thus far the reflection on the painting of the matter seems inadequate to the works in which paint was eliminated in favor of other materials and substances combined with painterly activities. Those unspecific substances and materials were often distributed on flat surfaces and composed in terms of basic division of the pictorial field, its main axes, relations to the edges, etc. Such “paintings made of matter” are interesting examples of the “thaw” art, which have not been interpreted as paintings, escaping chronological and other criteria of art history. Ambiguously called the “painting of the matter,” they occupied the margins of the critical discourse. The inadequacy of the terms adopted to describe them resulted in ignoring many works, while others have been included in the history of Polish art only in some aspects. So far no one has addressed the basic question of different artistic responses to the problem of searching for the limits of the painting, and related attempts to enhance the painterly idiom which was at the same time disrupted in a number of ways. The author analyzes works selected from the set of about three hundred items found in thirteen Polish museums. Regardless of the individual differences, the paintings by Jadwiga Maziarska, Bronisław Kierzkowski, Adam Marczyński, Teresa Rudowicz, and Krystyn Zieliński exemplify the combination of non-traditional substances and surface composition. Paradoxically, the decision to abandon paint did not make those artists deny the superior role of the surface, which resulted in the creation of works oscillating among painting, relief, and sculpture, close to collages or assemblages, yet quite specific. Their works either exploited the conditions offered by the framed flat surface or brought into play new, autonomous surfaces.

„Cały świat – samo życie”. Rola materii w malarstwie Tadeusza Kantora w latach 1945–1964

88%

Cieślak J. P., Kozioł W., Kunińska M.

Artium Quaestiones

2018

issue 29

121-159

The topic of the paper is the idea of matter in Tadeusz Kantor’s painting after World War II, including metaphorical painting, the informel, and the painting of the matter (1945-1964). The artist defined matter as an indeterminate, universal foundation which is a vehicle of the attributes of all that can be perceived by the senses, both animate bodies and inanimate things. A starting point are Kantor’s own texts – his notes and publications reflecting particular stages of his artistic evolution, critical essays on art, as well as later statements referring to the period under scrutiny. The present analysis is an attempt to find out whether Kantor’s postulates were really reflected in his art. Its main goal is to reconstruct his line of reasoning concerning matter and focus on the activities rooted in his theories, which is why contemporary reception and interpretations of his painting have not been taken into account. The frame of reference includes philosophical and artistic ideas known to Kantor or available to the artistic circles of the period. The text has been divided into four parts corresponding to particular stages of the artist’s development: (1) 1945-1947, when Kantor was trying to find ways of artistic expression beyond traditional topics of painting, such as the human figure, (2) 1947-1954, the metaphorical period, when, as a result of his visit to the Palais de la Découverte, he tried to represent the world invisible to the eye, (3) 1955-1959, the informelperiod, when paint became for him an equivalent of the matter, a synecdoche, one substance symbolizing all of it, and (4) 1958-1964, painting of the matter, when he kept using also other substances added to paint and chose a “concrete” approach to the painting’s meaning. The authors argue that over the first two decades following World War II Kantor succeeded in creating a new kind of painting, corresponding to the present, in which matter was to be dominant. To achieve that goal, for many years he was experimenting with different ways of representing matter – its ruling forces and principles. His initial existential observations, which challenged the uniqueness of humans in the universe, were later supplemented by shocking contact with science at the Paris Museum of Inventions. In the next decade, Kantor stopped making references to science and accepted process as a basic method of reaching the ontological foundation of the world, i.e. “matter.” His art was no longer “production,” but turned into “action.” At the last stage under consideration, he decided that the painting must not present signs referring to reality beyond it. He rejected the idea of painting as illusion and mediation, claiming that the matter of art is concrete, that it becomes “what it is.”

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2 Artium Quaestiones

1 Cieślak J. P.

1 Jankowska-Andrzejewska M.

1 Kozioł W.

1 Kunińska M.

1 2018

1 2016

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Malarstwo materii w Polsce. Na marginesach odwilżowej "nowoczesności"

„Cały świat – samo życie”. Rola materii w malarstwie Tadeusza Kantora w latach 1945–1964