Od wzniosłości do dowolności. Malarstwo w czasie tragicznym
From Sublimity to Arbitrariness. Painting in the Tragic Time

Author(s): Lech Kołodziejczyk
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Sociology of Art, History of Art
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: alternative reality; creative dignity; spiritual space; source of evil; impulse of actuality; dehumanised world; chaotic reality; ordered reality; cultural codes; freedom in art; author’s state of consciousness; mental products; signs of the times
Summary/Abstract: Written at the turn of 2021/2022, the monograph From Sublimity to Arbitrariness. Painting in the Tragic Time summarises numerous reflections and comments contained in two previous books: Pamięć czasu – malarstwo w czasie bankructwa duchowego [Memory of Time – Painting in a Time of Spiritual Bankruptcy] and Malarstwo jako egzystencja – tożsamość osobista a postawa twórcza [Painting as Existence – Personal Identity versus Creative Attitude]. The new publication, written in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and, above all, the barbaric war in Ukraine, addresses the fundamental challenge of the present time concerning the foundations of the collapse of man's spiritual condition at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The striking disappearance of moral and ethical content at the present time results in an exceptionally repulsive manifestation of numerous attitudes, where the pursuit of material goods effectively eliminates from our lives everything that is connected with a deep reflection on the meaning of human existence, its universal values, rigours, principles without which our life irretrievably loses its human dimension, turning into a hostile space of numerous threats, fears, frustrations, traumatic experiences and emotions. All this results in a growing avalanche of depressing arbitrariness and the striving for so-called freedom from everything, which only deepens the feeling of the current chaos and entropy in interpersonal relations, where the possibility of communicating with another human being becomes a fundamental problem.

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