01
trzy tematy biblijne, oblicza smierci
From
the catalogue of the exhibition:
"I don't imitate death, but I'm using
its signs," said Kantor. But
it was also Kantor who unceasingly named and defined things using names connected
with death, e.g. The Theatre of Death, The Dead Class... In Bałka's art there
is no clear-cut and easy read symbols. However, everything in his art is pervaded
by the omnipresent experience of death as the end of being. Thus, being becomes
dying out. "For me, each sculpture I'm just working out is the last one.
In such a sense I'm accompanied by dying, experiencing little deaths before
the big death. For the time being, these are sculptures." The word "death" has
never appeared in Bałka's art. "First of all, I'm avoiding great words."
Rafał Jakubowicz, Death and Memory
Truly, there's only one face of death. It is a great void that arouses fear.
We are defending ourselves in various ways - we believe in the afterlife, in
the eternal cosiness of the void or in the eternal reward. We try to ensnare
or humiliate death and to grow accustomed to it in this world. Maybe we even
want to revenge ourselves on death. To get it, we use almost schoolboy's operations,
adding mug to it and dressing it up in clumsy grotesque masks or in jester
suit (if naked body can be called a suit). And we call it gently with diminutives;
my father used to call it deathy (śmiertka in the highlanders' dialect). Such
a death can sometimes be mocked, but this happens rather in fairy tales. And
a picture is a fairy tale. More than one mocking counterfeit of the great persecutor
can be read in my father's pictures. Nevertheless, I've got an impression that
he had never forgot that in the end we could deceive neither death nor ourselves.
I feel that respect in his pictures.
Wawrzyniec Brzozowski, In evry stain of paint
The motive of vanitas has been present in the whole creation of the artist.
Not only her imagination was baroque; the same was with her attitude towards
the world and her relation to death, I mean her relation as a human being and
an artist to death, notably to her own death. Don't forget that she was one
of those who survived. Much of her adolescence she spent in concentration camps,
conscious of ubiquitous death and knowing that every survived moment is given
by fate. Maybe the camp and then the almost fatal disease were such intensive
experiences that they caused the change in her attitude towards the world,
death and life. Those experiences made that she felt strongly fragility, transition
and impermanence of life. Illness, dying and eventual death stopped to be taboo
for her
Anna Król, Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973)
Usually, death is painful. Death is the decay of form. If you identify with
form or if you got used to it, you will see death as a catastrophe and as the
end. Actually, on a certain level of existence it is the end of certain manifestation
within the world of form. There is not only identification with the body that
is at stake here. Much more important is identification with feelings, emotions,
mind and individual structure of ego. The problem of death is, in fact, the
problem of identity. If you identify with certain isolated and specific dimension
of your existence, then you will be terrified with the decay of that existence.
Marek Rogulski-Rogulus Death as the Technique of Transcendence
Do you consider fear as the fundamental human experience?
A fear of death is the basis for any reflection, any religious thinking.
But a Christian should not fear dying.
Only young priests say so. As long as he is young, he does not fear to die,
but when it happens that he has to stay in bed and to suffer, then he fears
a little. Christ in the Garden also feared death.
How is it possible that God allows such horrible reality to exist? Shouldn't
He be brought before court?
These are Job's questions, the questions from the canon of Hebrew Bible. Man
has the right to accuse God, and the right to ask God about essential things.
Or, blasphemy doesn't exist?
Blasphemy resulting from recklessness or opportunism is something horrible
and ugly. However, blasphemy resulting from despair is fully entitled. I live
now in ultimate times, for I am old and sitting in the so-called waiting-room.
I am waiting for death, anyway.
Has god given up to control the World? Jerzy Nowosielski in talk to Dariusz
Suska |