The following weekend Carol and I went to see Paintings From Poland: Symbolism to Modern Art 1880-1939, at the National Gallery of Ireland. When I told friends abroad about the Dublin of the noughties - they were very surprised. Our streets teemed with every race, nationality, creed and colour – and I loved it. As I said to Carol when we see all the beautiful women from around the world walking Dublin’s streets: “I am all for integration!” However, I seriously welcomed the influx of new cultures, new outlooks and new perspectives.
By 2007 – I did not recognize the
city of my birth. What had happened to Ireland in the last fifteen years had
been nothing short of miraculous. I grew up in a poverty stricken, backward and
intolerant Ireland - sparsely populated by a virtually all white, all Catholic,
all Irish population whose knowledge of the world outside our shores was
limited to a sun holiday in Spain, the television shows of Britain and the
cinema of America.
In the 1980s, virtually nobody
wanted to live in Ireland – and even if they did they could not get a job.
However, the Celtic Tiger turned our country of émigrés into a country of
immigrants. When the English comedian Lenny Henry (who by the way was black)
appeared on The Late Late Show in the
mid 1980s he thought it was hilarious the way people looked at him in the
street – it was not racism – just amazement – they had never seen a black man
in the flesh! However, by 2007 - unless you were purple or pink – nobody would
notice you!
Thankfully, conscious racism was
still very rare – though it did exist. However, nagging at the back of many
Irish people’s mind was the question – how long would the good times last?
Already there was a worldwide economic turn down and it looked like it would
get worse. How would Irish hospitality fair when jobs were scarce? Could we see
the same segregation and racism that had cursed other European countries? How
in God’s name could we prevent what happened in France and The Netherlands –
happening here?
One way was integration of the
foreign community into the Irish community – no ghettos, no ‘white-flight’, no
nations within a nation – mutual respect and mutual understanding. Our
newspapers and television stations had gone out of their way to have immigrant
writers, commentators and actors in the media. Moreover Fair City, a soap opera on RTÉ 1 (kind of our version of BBC 1’s Eastenders) - had long had foreign
characters, and ‘water-cooler’ stories of racism, prejudice, crime - but also
deep friendship. In Dublin we had The
City Channel a public broadcast station - which had programs made and
featuring Polish, African and Asian news and stories of Dublin life. I
remembered one night - a few years before – I had been watching African Eye – when they had a story on a
young female Zulu dance group in Dublin. The first shot was of about ten young
African women dressed in great authentic Zulu costumes and doing a fierce
dance. Then they started interviewing the girls, and I fell out of my seat when
half of them spoke in the thickest Ballymun accent I had ever heard and some
said they had never been to Africa! Nothing encapsulated more for me - the
shifting nature of identity in Ireland.
The Polish community in Dublin was
one of the largest – there were Polish newspapers, Polish shops, and Polish
translations in many places. Since the early 1990s, galleries like The Temple Bar Gallery - had forged
links with artists and institutions in Poland. However, we had seen less of
historical Polish art. Therefore, this exhibition was very important.
However, I have to say I had my
doubts. Was it all just a cynical operation of political propaganda? Was it
just smug artistic political-correctness? Was it just a middle-class exercise -
of no importance to the common Polish or Irish man? Could art really tell us
things about our new friends in Ireland? Well perhaps it was cynical propaganda
- perhaps it was only of interest to a small elite – but I also thought that it
was a highly illuminating exhibition. So much so that I had to say: “Bring it
on! Bring on Nigerian art, Chinese art, Lithuanian art – let us all see how the
other thinks - let us see the undiscovered hero's of world art - let us share
our visions.”
As you can gather - I went with
great curiosity to see this show. Poland really is another country – one I know
very little about. But Carol was far less interested. What paintings we had
seen on the very inadequate Irish National Gallery website were poor choices
and even though she liked (with uncritical abandon) female artists – Carol had
no interest in this shows ‘World Star’ - Tamara de Lempicka. As for me – I
thought de Lempicka an utter joke and her canvases nothing more than calendar
art - perpetrated on the art world by politically blinded Feminist historians
in the 1970s. But more on this joke later. Anyway, I was not going to see that
silly opportunistic woman - I was going to see my old soul mate in the madhouse
- Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz.
As usual the first thing we did
when reaching the gallery – was head for the book-shop and my girlfriend kindly
bought the catalogue for the Polish show (I was practically broke.) Flicking
threw its thick pages we were utterly delighted and surprised by what we saw -
and could not wait to see the paintings in the flesh. At €25 and 203pp with
over seventy colour plates and an exciting text - which is a fine mix of
connoisseur appraisal and sociological and philosophical speculation - it is a
gem. However, in parts I sensed the strain of translation from Polish to
English.
Yet again, the National Gallery bookshop
was a devilish temptation for me – but since I had only €7 in my pocket - I knew I could only look. Seeing all the
newly brought in Christmas coffee-table art books - drove me mad with desire -
and I had to walk briskly away from them, lest I lose my mind. Still I
determined to treat myself to some at the holidays – my first buy being the
essential Picasso A Life Vol.3 by
John Richardson which I had waited on since buying, reading and loving Vol. 2
in 1997
Before going around the show, we
went into the coffee shop - and my girlfriend treated me to a Mocha - and we
shared a mouth-watering slice of Strawberry sponge cake which was utterly
delicious.
After our little treat, we headed
into the exhibition - that from the very first paintings – blew our minds! This
exhibition of Polish art - was quite simply the strangest, most impressive and
most surprising exhibition I had seen in 2007. Yes, the Lucian Freud in IMMA
was a better solo exhibition – but I went to that with a total all consuming
knowledge of his work, his life and his place in English society. This exhibition
on the other hand was a total Jack-In-The-Box of surprises, revelations and
discoveries.
I only knew a handful of these
Polish artists beforehand (Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Tamara de Lempicka and
Jacek Malczewski) and my knowledge of Poland was limited to; Napoleon’s battle
at Austerlitz, Germany’s invasion and occupation of Poland in WWII and the
tragic destruction of Warsaw in 1944 - after its second uprising (the first
being the tormented and bloody Jewish uprising of 1943) and finally a vague
knowledge of Poland under the Communists, the Solidarity movement, Pope John
Paul II - and this ravaged and abused countries recent emergence as a European
democracy. In other words – no more than is necessary to be a competent player
of Trivial Pursuit.
The major first part of this
exhibition dealt with Symbolist painters like; Kazimierz Stabrowski, Józef
Mehoffer, Jacek Malczewski, Witold Wojtkiewicz, Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Ferdynand
Ruszczyc, Konrad Krzyzanowski, Franciszek Zmurko, Wojciech Weiss, Konrad Krzyzanowski,
Jan Matejko, Franciszel Zmurko Bronislaw Worjciech Linke. Yes. Yes I know. I
had never heard of most of before either – but believe me they were worth
checking out!
In their lush, morbidly coloured
paintings; a Chimera (half woman /half tiger) played a violin in the
countryside, tumultuous streams of human-bodies hurtled across the flat land
like a whirlwind, monstrously large dragonflies threatened a family in a
garden, empty rooms flickered by the light of a couple of candles, mentally broken
people played with dolls as ragged as themselves, lurid colours spoke of music
and death, mauve pirate ships sailed on purple seas, jesters slumped in
despair, a murdered odalisque lay sprawled over fine cushions, and a faun
played the reed to a barefoot girl and a baffled and ruffled group of turkeys
(the critics.) Moreover, everywhere there were secret codes for Polish
nationalism and independence.
I cannot remember an exhibition
before where I was so in need of the little explanations on white plaques by
the paintings. The symbols and stories behind them were essential - to their
understanding as narratives. However, unlike so much conceptual art of today –
the ideas behind these Symbolist paintings were genuinely odd, imaginative,
complex and evocative.
Now earlier I mentioned that this
show might have seemed an elitist exercise. However, even if you did not know
much about art – you would probably have loved this show. If you liked the Fin-De-Siecle, Fantasy Art, Dark Art,
Comic books, Satanism, Decadence, early Walt
Disney films like Fantasia – you
would have loved this show! This was where so many of the ideas of fantasy came
from – but it was made by superbly trained academic painters. Moreover, if you
hated Modern art and liked your paintings realistic, crammed with detail and
telling a story – you would have loved these canvases.
In painting, I knew there were so
many ways to fail - so many ways to be rotten. But there were also - so many
different ways to succeed. Many of these painters were clearly men of great
intellectual curiosity, passion, and skill – but god knows they had so many
other things against them that were outside of their control – being born in
Poland and not France in the 1860s was just one of them.
At its most reductive the history
of Modern art in my youth - was a history of France, Spain, Germany Russia and
The United States. It was assumed that the greatest artists in the world were
born either in Paris or New York - or emigrated to them. It was of course a
gross and stupid assumption - that shows like this proved wrong. I am not
saying I found a Polish Picasso or Matisse – but I found artists at least of
the second or third rank - who pulled off some fascinating and original
canvases – some of them excellent masterpieces. Which reminded me of when Orson
Well’s, was interviewed by Parkinson on ITV in the 1970s. Parkinson put it to
Wells that he was a genius - to which Wells laughed - and replied something to
the effect that there had only been two real geniuses of the twentieth century;
Einstein and Picasso - and probably some guy in China we have never heard of!
He was absolutely right, and how many ‘could-have-been-geniuses’ were there in
countries like; Romania, Iran, Johannesburg or Hong Kong – artists who never
had the support structure of a superpower state like those in France or the US.
The Symbolist's like Stuck in
Germany, Klimt in Vienna, Kupka in Prague, Redon in Paris and Hodler in Zurich
had the honesty to express their own confusion of beliefs and solipsistic and
misogynistic fear of women in their art – I respect them for that. Even if you
hate misogyny and want to end it –first you have to try to bring up the subject
- and get men and women to be honest about their feelings. The biographies of
some of the major Symbolist's - was a sad codex of human suffering, neglect,
misunderstanding, madness, alcoholism and often suicide – only the
Expressionists were more tortured. These dark, lush, fin-de-siècle oil
paintings of almost hallucinatory intensity – spoke of a continent and
humankind undergoing the most profound political, religious, economic,
philosophical, sexual and eventually military upheavals.
Sometimes the most perceptive
writers on art I found were those that hated most of it. One such writer was
Leon Tolstoy who in his classic polemic What
is Art? (1898) – attacked Symbolist's poets and painters in the following
terms: “…there is then no reason why some
circle of perverted people should not create works that titillate their
perverted feelings and are incomprehensible to anyone except themselves, and
call these works art, which in fact is now being done by the so-called
decadents…” Strong stuff, and earlier he had written: “These are all works by people suffering from erotic mania. These people
are apparently convinced that, since their entire life, as a result of their
morbid condition, is concentrated on the smearing about of sexual abominations,
it must mean that the entire life of the world is concentrated on the same
thing.” In an age of Internet porn over-dose these paintings might have
seemed a bit tame to young people - but they were undoubtedly still very
peculiar works.
In defense of them I would have
pointed out to Tolstoy the seriousness of their academic training, their sheer
skill in drawing and mastery of colour and brushwork. I knew that there was not one single painter
alive in 2007 - who could have painted as technically correct as these artists
– who had died only about a hundred years before. This was in large part thanks
to Jan Matejko who featured at the beginning of this exhibition. Matejko taught
most of these early Symbolist's the art of figure drawing, composition,
chiaroscuro, brushwork and colour – but unlike most academic painters – he did
not crush their creativity, identity or passion in the process.
Next, I would have insisted that
the Symbolist's were honest and courageous men who sought to reveal their inner
demons – long before Freud and the Surrealists. I would have added that their
work told us just as much about the twilight of their epoch as the
Impressionists. But whereas the Impressionists were the fathers of modernism –
the Symbolist were in a sense the last sterile sons of a family line of
Aristocratic painting. Their project was as doomed to failure as the story of
their military counterparts – the brave, heroic and glorious Polish Cavalry -
who charged German tanks on their horses in 1939 – and were massacred. I say
‘story’ because this version was by my day - under attack from Polish
historians who said that the Polish
Cavalry had actually fought quite well in their battles - and that the
‘story’ was a form of ‘black-propaganda’ by the Nazis. But then I observed that
the Symbolist's themselves knew all about ‘black-propaganda’ – they had been
written out of fashionable art history.
The Symbolist's were the first
group of artists to make their own pathology the centre of their art. Where the
Impressionist had emphasized the artists eye – the Symbolist's emphasised the
artists mind; his fears, his longings, his ambitions, his hopes, his dreams and
his nightmares.
In these Polish Symbolist paintings
- I felt I had gone deeper into the anti-chamber of the pre World Wars Psyche -
than in anything produced by Beckman or even Picasso when painting Guernica. Because evil does not come out
of reason, measure, transparency and maturity – it comes from immaturity,
madness, obscurity and thwarted souls. The healthy, manly art of those masters
could never really explain the narcissistic, embittered souls of men like
Hitler and Stalin.
Another odd experience I had at
this exhibition was the sense I had of travelling back in time – to a very
different notion of great painting. I had often read of anecdotes about the
Salons – which told of enraptured visitors peering up close to the Academic
paintings with their magnifying glasses – enthralled by the paint-work, detail
and sure-handed drawing. What was true in the 1890s was as true in 2007 - with
these canvases. You had to see them in the flesh – you simply could not see the
subtlety of colour modulation, brushwork, pastose textures and deep shadows of
these paintings in reproduction. There were packed ranks of visitors around the
Symbolist canvases – taking in every inch of colour and line. However, by the
time we had got to the more modern canvases – people were thinned out and
standing off the canvases in growing boredom and indifference. I completely
agreed with them. We went around the Symbolist section again - but not the
Cubist, Expressionist, Neo-Classical and Surrealist sections.
My girlfriend and I both thought
that Kazimierz Stabrowski’s bold handling of oil paint – lush, thick, pastose,
glossy and opaque - applied with broad hog-hair brushes - was startlingly
reminiscent to my own painting style particularly in works like Sodium Amytal,
1993 (but done with far greater painterly skill, discipline and professionalism.)
Four of the most shockingly modern
paintings in the show were small, quick, alla-prima oil paintings on canvas by
Konrad Krzyzanowski from 1906 – which in their brevity – I swore anticipated
the spare canvases of Luc Tuymans and William Sasnal of my today.
However, after the high of the
Polish Symbolist's - the show slowly degenerated into weak, academic and
opportunistic rip-offs of Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism.
That is where my old friend in
solitude Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (B.1885-D. 1939 - he was also called
Witkacy) came in. I first read his amazing modern novel Insatiability – in December 1991. Witkacy was an eccentric
avant-garde novelist, dramatist, philosopher and prolific painter. He suffered
from mental illness - and when he heard that the Russian Army had crossed the
border (joining the Nazi’s in a low carve up of Poland) - he committed suicide
by taking veronal and cutting his wrists. I probably would have done the same.
Therefore, it was appropriate that I had first read Insatiability – in St. Ita’s mental hospital Portrane - where I had
been committed! And when in 1998 I painted ‘Art Is Dead’ I had no idea that
Witkacy had declared art dead in 1924!
His anti-Utopian and prophetic
novel Insatiability tracked the
adventures of a young nihilistic Pole whose own fate paralleled the inevitable
collapse of Western civilization following a Chinese Communist invasion from
the East. It was not a perfect novel – in fact it was a bit of a mess – but it
was also an original, highly intelligent - mixed up collection of philosophical
observations on art, sex, women, madness, metaphysics, the vastness of the
universe and the insignificance of its hero. The great Polish poet Czeslaw
Milosz said it best when he wrote “The
whole book was nothing but a study of decay: mad dissonant music, erotic
perversion, widespread use of narcotics, dispossessed thinking, false
conversions to Catholicism, and complex psychopathic personalities.” It was
quite simply, one of the weirdest books I had ever read (and I had read the
Marquis de Sade, Bataille, Joyce and Burrows.) I had no idea if it was any good
as literature - but it stayed lodged in my brain. I have to say - I felt the
same for many of the wonderful Polish Symbolist painters.
Therefore, I went with fond hopes
that his paintings would turn out to be amazing. I had seen a few of them in
reproduction and thought very little of them - his Expressionist phase looked
artless and badly drawn – while his Surrealist phase looked little better than
the drawings in crayon many adolescents draw when high on drugs (Witkacy
experimented with hallucinogenics.) However, I hoped seeing his work in the
flesh would change my mind. They did not. I was devastated to discover they
were pretty rotten; immature, graphic, linear, illustrative and ugly. But my
fondness for this anti-hero remained – the world of art history was all the
richer for his presence.
Then there was Tamara de Lempicka’s
early painting Lassitude (c.1927) -
which proved to be as bad - if not worse that I had thought it might be in the
flesh. Her drawing was no better than that of a high-school student, her paint
was limp, her brushwork flaccid and her anatomy as defined as a stuffed sausage
skin. However, it was her painting that was on all the National Gallery’s
posters for the exhibition!
Frankly her work had only one
compelling reason to be studied in my mind – to illustrate bluntly - how tenth
rate female artists like her were ludicrously overvalued, overpriced and over
hyped in an art world made up largely of women; art student’s, artists,
curators, historians, critics and collectors – some of whom only saw what they
wanted to see. Could anyone tell me to my satisfaction I wondered - how this
stupid and deceitful woman (she lied about all kinds of facts of her life –
Balthus did the same but he was a genuine Master) could be more famous and
written about that her male Polish counterparts like; Kazimierz Stabrowski,
Józef Mehoffer, Jacek Malczewski, Witold Wojtkiewicz, Ferdynand Ruszczyc,
Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Konrad Krzyzanowski, Franciszek Zmurko, Wojciech Weiss or
Konrad Krzyzanowski?
Moreover, even if you were a craven
Feminist politician - walking the concrete runways of international
contemporary art bureaucracy, determined to advance your prejudices in revenge
for what you perceived as patriarchal repression - why in God’s name chose her?
Not one scintilla of her work was the product of the female imagination – it
was the stolen grammar of Raphael, Ingres, Picasso and the Western (male)
realist tradition in general. I thought the answer was that her work appealed
to rich morons of either sex - who knew nothing about painting and wanted their
vacuous lifestyle endorsed by such equally pushy paintings.
I had to giggle when I read in the
catalogue that it was the only painting by de Lempicka’s in a Polish national
collection and was only purchased in 1979 – I thought their past museum heads
had the right opinion of her – but I doubted if future ones would be so wise.
However all this taken into account
– this was a must see exhibition for anyone remotely concerned with art history
- because it gave the lie to the simplistic notions we had about talent, success
and even genius. Poland I never knew you – but then what did I really know
about Hungry, Russia, Tibet or Australia?