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A task to write a short essay on painting, its significance and functions is an immensely difficult one in the face of the confusion surrounding the visual arts. The circumstance which encourages me today to write such a text is the exhibition ‘The XX first century Polish painting’ in Zachęta Gallery. The exhibition has triggered some questions relating to painting in general. The text consists entirely of my own remarks and personal opinions. It has a form of a few miscellaneous reflexions on a very difficult issue. When we think about painting, we basically know what it is. Painting is a fundamental (as yet) branch of the visual arts; its essence lies in the use of lines and colour, or sometimes in the use of only a patch of colour on a surface. In Modernism the traditional structure of a painting was altered due to the introduction of new materials and mixed techniques, a procedure which was, and still is, an expression of both the romantic strive for the integration of all arts and for the use of new media, video in particular, employed with the view to broadening the scope of one’s creational possibilities by means of introducing the element of time. However, the introduction of time constitutes, it appears, an attack on differentia specifica of painting. According to the rules of contrast, the answer to the question on why temporality is contradictory to the nature of painting will allow us to seize the essence of good painting. Its cradle is a two-dimensional surface of canvas, and the artist’s task consists in painting in such a manner that everything he chooses from the surrounding environment will be able to stand the test of time and ‘freeze’ a given moment in a such a way that someone looking at the painting in two or three hundred years’ time will be able to sense the force and weight of this moment and will comprehend, accept and ‘understand’ this weight. The function of a painting in the first place is not to depict objects but to halt the flow of time, and, in its final expression, a painting should be targeted as if against time. A good painting is a message beyond time.

When I contemplate modern painting, the works by Rembrandt, Vermeer or Cezanne keep coming back to my memory as a point of reference. They represent a perfect or near-perfect visual embodiment of the ideal of painting. From that point of view, the exhibition in Zachęta can be described as shreds of the shattered tradition of the ideal of painting, as shaped by the Western tradition. This exhibition may well confirm the fact that we live in an age of a modern iconoclasm, which is all the more surprising because the Western tradition managed to deal very successfully with this disturbing human tendency. As pointed out by Alain Besançon, the secret of the astounding richness of the Western art of painting lay in the fact that it was relieved from the burden of theology and in its freedom in the face of theology, freedom combined with the conviction – also a theological conviction – that since God the Creator is good the things that he made are beautiful. A strong predisposition towards theology is quite iconoclastic. At the same time the reasons for this shattering of the tradition are not a historical necessity. The attempt at explaining this process is very instructive and provides the answer to the question: ‘why are we looking at particular paintings and not on others and whether what we are looking at really belongs to the so-called canon?’ One of the reasons accounting for the iconoclasm in art was the dominating presence of the esoterics in artistic theories. Abstract works by Kandinsky, Malewicz and Mondrian sprung from the mystical inspiration and the time and space accessible to the senses were ignored. It turned out that the attempts at depicting a divinity without any consideration for the earthly things led to the disintegration of the ideal of painting. An excess of idealism in any form condemns art to death. Moreover, this tendency was coupled with the scorn towards the tradition manifested in certain movements of Modernism.

The reason for this disparaging attitude lay in the acceleration of the civilisational processes, as a result of which it was the modernity that became a benchmark against which the value of the creations of the human soul are measured.

When we think about art in the terms imposed by a historical perspective, i.e. when the basic criterion in the evaluation of a painting is its newness or a conceptual ability to create new pictorial languages, the perception of all that belongs to the sphere of human spirituality becomes flattened because spirituality exists beyond time. This, in turn, means that art is no longer thought of and perceived in terms of the form. The form symbolises the power of the artist’s personality, in which respect it resembles the characteristics of one’s handwriting. Even at first glance can one identify differences in people’s handwriting. It is an obvious fact. There are as many handwriting styles as there are literate people. What brings about those differences? They depend on people’s inner life, on their psychological features and their spirituality, as well as on the way in which they were taught to write. Handwriting of a person who writes a lot will be more ‘experienced’, more ‘aesthetic’. The need to write, spurned by the spirit, will influence one’s handwriting, which, from a certain point of view, is a distant echo of painting and it is intimately connected to a person who conveys the message to others. Painting obeys similar rules. It is impossible to explain why one person is endowed with talent and their work is considered interesting while another person, despite strenuous efforts, will remain an author of merely pseudo-artistic works. According to psychoanalytic theories, a painter’s talent is a result of sexual inhibitions, and an acute perception of space and colour make up for this non-fulfillment. The attempt to scientifically prove that an author of pseudo artistic paintings is in fact an outstanding and unrivalled artist is theoretically possible with a help of an appropriate intellectual commentary, the authority of science being after all undisputable, but in the end the result will be nothing but words which does not mean anything in the face of the omnipotence of an image. The commentaries which I heard in respect of the exhibition in Zacheta confirm my words. Many of my acquaintances unanimously stated that the exhibition featured an abundance of painters but very little painting.

People who produce painting

It is because, among people who paint, there are only a few who know what painting is about. It might mean that, fortunately, less and less people suffer form sexual inhibitions, which according to some people would be the reason why painting is in crisis. In order to elucidate this problem it is important to make a distinction between those who paint and those who produce paintings. The tradition of ‘producing’ paintings began with Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malewicz, already mentioned in the text. They were driven by mysticism. Let us now turn to the present, not quite mystical, times and imagine a bright and very ambitious student of the Academy of Fine Arts. The painting classes begin with the exercises in realism. Realism in painting consists in penetrating nature, studying the principles of optics; it is a philosophical and contemplative pursuit and groping for one’s own form. But it is only the first stage in the task of perfecting one’s personality, a task which I regard as a development of the cognitive capacities of all the senses, the sense of sight in particular. This has nothing to do with ethics and morality, even if critics of catholic orientation like referring to these values. It does not mean, however, that an artist can be corrupt only because of his being an artist. After all, morality is woven into the quality of artistic work by a thousand of threads which, most probably, are imperceptible to our consciousness. Nevertheless, in the face of other opportunities offered by the visual arts, it is considered hazardous to look for an opportunity of distinguishing oneself from others and of creating ones own style on the basis of the contact with nature – the only true master and teacher of painting. Hence such a multitude of para-artistic activities in the domain of visual art; everyone can have an opportunity of self-fulfillment. But does it automatically increase the number of talented painters who have something important to convey to the public and who are able to find their own form? It is highly unlikely. Still, the emergence of such great numbers of artists requires a change in the description of both the function of art and the institution of art by the people who as part of their profession provide art-related services. These people gradually start to lay down the rules. This process affects above all the understanding of the purpose of artistic activity. In this respect the harm, perhaps irreversible when the rules of big numbers are at work, is the most acute. It is the society and social relations, with which the middle classes are obsessed and which are treated as a fetish, that become nature. In view of this change in the description of the art function, replacing the inspiration provided by nature by photographs in a newspaper becomes for a young painter an opportunity which he is eager to seize. I do not mean to say that such inspiration will always be flawed and conflicting with the nature of art; however, in such situations dynamic images of nature, who flee the painter’s eye and always outwits him, this totality of things which the artist aspires to bring down to an image – a sign, all this ceases to be a point of reference and is replaced by a newspaper snapshot, which can merely serve as an inspiration for a witty poster or an amusing gadget.

Having received social approval of the institutions established for the purpose of consecrating para-artistic activities, a young artist embarks on a production of gadgets. Is he a painter? No. He merely makes paintings. He produces them, just like a factory produces vehicles of a given make. A painter’s signature has a function similar to a trademark. A similar situation can apply to the case of the ‘older’ painters – geometrical abstractionists.

I am impressed by the intelligence of a young painter, who understands perfectly the laws governing the market, but he is not, to my mind, a painter in the true sense of the word. He lives on a symbolic capital accumulated by the tradition of painting, while his work is a kind of a historical testimony to the interest which the visual arts take in the issue of manipulating the perception of an average man by newspapers. Such a painter fits perfectly well into the criticism exposing the violence of the turbo capitalism. I do not want to belittle this kind of work; still, this is not the art of painting but something close to a poster.

People who paint

Let us return to the subject of the exhibition. When strolling in the gallery rooms filled with objects which aspired to the status of a painting, I recalled the time in the 80ties when, during my teacher traineeship, I met a little boy, a first form primary school pupil. He painted his small pictures in poster paints with mastery worthy of Leon Tarasiewicz. His sense of rhythm and colour was faultless. When he used yellow, violet naturally appeared next to it. He left blank spaces on the paper from which emanated whiteness i.e. the light.

He was completely engrossed in his work. He was of an untamed nature. I kept some of his works and am sure that they have in them more of the art of paintings than what I saw in Zachęta. With full confidence one could exhibit them side by side with Leon Tarasiewicz’s paintings. This boy was a painter because his works represented a visible world, molded by a painter’s thoughts and feelings into a form which belonged to him and to him only.

Keeping the picture of the boy in my memory, I moved on to those artists in the exhibition who paint and not merely produce paintings. They view nature as their point of reference. Wilhelm Sasnal is one of them. He is not the only painter through-and-through featured in this exhibition, but certainly he is the one who distinguishes himself from others. Sasnal is a versatile artist. In his works he makes intelligent references to the prevailing trends of the time and pays his tribute to the almighty art experts, being at the same time an excellent painter who is anchored in nature. The only look at the his artistically successful and complete paintings allows the eye to immediately embrace the totality of a painting, which means that the artist succeeded in capturing on canvas the rather pre-conscious experience of an image which either tries to capture the visible reality or was brought to life by the force of a visionary imagination. Some of Sasnal’s paintings, such as ‘Chicago’, ‘Abdomen’ or ‘A man with a net’, were excellent. He starts his work with halftones and he proceeds very carefully, which indicates that he is aware of the difficulties entailed in the broadening of the colour gamut. In the painting ‘A man with a net’ my attention was drawn to the way in which the artist paints the white net. This is a central and key point of the image. It is in by and large a monochromatic painting; the space is constructed through the use of valours and is built up dynamically but with a certain offhand manner, a technique which endows the painting with lightness. Sasnal’s paintings create an impression of having been painted effortlessly, as if without human participation. This particular painting is a very colourful one, an effect which is obtained by stopping the process of painting at a right moment. An experienced painter, Sasnal is aware that the art of paining is governed by the principle ‘less colour means more colour’ and the rule according to which all valours in a painting should be directed at a higher-order harmony. Halftones and the relation between black and white, deriving from the art of drawing, are merely a point of departure. The more colour one introduces, the greater the difficulties, since one can easily lose contact with the source experience – the retina, which is ever-present and always ‘illuminating’ the canvas, and on which forms a primary image, an invisible foundation where the energy flowing from the body and the sunlight accumulates. This is still nature, which transforms itself into image. An image, in turn, is transformed into culture through the intermediary of words.

Indeed, nature is represented not only by everything that surrounds human beings, but also by their inner life. It is always richer and more complex than anything that a man can capture in his thoughts and express in words.

Love of existence

The images of the world that flow in front of our eyes resemble a film; they are temporary. Choosing one image from this wide spectrum is a procedure arising out of a desire to bring time to a standstill. The choice is motivated by emotional factors. One paints the invisible, that is thoughts, but most of all one paints feelings. I paint a particular thing because the sight of a given subject has inspired my love – the love of existence is crucial for a painter. In fact, I paint exactly this love – the invisible. The interest in the art from the olden days, setting aside the efforts of the advertisement industry, has its origins in this invisible charge of the love of existence. This is for this reason that the painter’s feeling must be defined precisely and clearly in himself; this is how the ‘clarity’ and distinctiveness of the form is achieved. The artist must posses inside himself this invisible architectural structure.

Why is this love of existence so important? When at the exhibition, I noticed a family: a father with a child in a sling and a mother with an older child in her arms were visiting this sanctuary of art in search for more sublime experiences. If one comes to the exhibition with children it is because one hopes that the visual experience will shape their personality. Shaping ones personality, in turn, is possible only through the contact with the form, which is an emanation of the artist’s inner life and which bears the marks of beauty understood in a broad meaning of this term and deriving, no more than less from the form itself. The present day democratisation of art, a phenomenon which manifests itself in abstract painting or in an art based on the philosophy of postmodernism, makes the domain of art available to those painters who lack this architectural structure, even if they are skilful and intelligent. They know how to benefit from tradition and its achievements. Instead of painting they opt for conceptual procedures, or they create a visual discourse on painting, which does not lead to fruitful results. When a powerful personality perceives the realty, they bestow on it, in the act of artistic expression, a particular form. A painter creates a fictitious reality, which is a response to human desires, and the most fundamental of them is a desire for eternal life.

Due to its atemporality and anti-temporality a painting offers an illusory escape from life and its biological and economic processes. The more nature a painter is able to ‘grasp’ in his work, the more powerful the impact of the painting is. The higher the charge of the time ‘frozen’ in a painting, the greater the therapeutic effect is. This is the basic function of painting, which derives from its initial religious character, at least in Europe. When painting a divinity, one also painted the desire for ones own immortality which the artist lent to others so that they could confirm this desire in a cult and ritual. The cult of religious paintings, still alive amongst the practicing Catholics, is a remnant of this tradition, which is a source of inspiration for both artists and their audiences visiting museums in flocks. However, as was pointed out by Alain Besancon, this theological predisposition of art was, in the Western culture, redirected from a divinity to existence. And existence in the art of painting can only be captured by means of contemplation. Another means of acquiring the ability to paint does not exist. It has never existed and it never will.

Maciej Mazurek
Translated by Marta Wójcik

The article comes from the monthly “ARTeon” issue no. 3/2007