Pamięć czasu — malarstwo w czasach bankructwa duchowego
The Memory of Time — Painting in the Time of Spiritual Bankruptcy

Author(s): Lech Kołodziejczyk
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Visual Arts
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: painting workshop; creative element; artistic voice; space of intense reflection; subjective pole; formulaic habits; spiritual aspect of existence
Summary/Abstract: The publication entitled The Memory of Time – Painting in the Time of Spiritual Bankruptcy includes over 50 essays pondering various issues of contemporary art in the context of my own experience as a painter, in addition to comments and reflections pertaining to variegated creation-related notions revealed in the course of creative processes during my artistic activity. The analysis of the so-called creative programme of particular painting series: Fantomanie, Kosmogonie, Księga Słońca, Głowy, Rytmy Pamięci, Ogrody Ciemności, Baśniowe Fantazje, Wirtualne Ikony is an attempt to present and describe ideas- and themes-related assumptions of individual artistic productions, as well as to specify the character of their painting language that would correspond to the content and idea expressed by them. Another part of the publication consists of illustrative material – photographs documenting particular works of painting created throughout the 40-year period of my artistic activity. The texts and paintings documentation compose a consistent whole, while the truth and authenticity of individual authorial experience of painting add credibility and substance to the content of the essays. What is pivotal idea here and what constitutes the kernel of both theoretical part (essays, comments) and illustrative material is an attempt at presenting the dramatic withdrawal, atrophy, one may even say bankruptcy of experiencing spiritual space, which is palpable in productions of socalled contemporary art. Philosophical considerations, reflections of such authors as Plato, Saint Augustin, Pseudo-Dionysius, Robert Grosseteste, Saint Bonaventura, or Meister Eckhart referring to the activity in the realm of art, seem today so distant and so unfitting the contemporary mental space, that the awareness of cultural crisis, of disappearing elementary reference points become a dramatic sign of the nowadays cultural disintegration. Within this shattered, fragmented space my painting activity externalizes the voice of a human individual searching for those ignored, unwanted, omitted spiritual spaces, the traces of understanding with great artistic tradition, with efforts of many old masters who wrote, but also materialized through art their great intentions, ideas, creative plans.

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