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DOI Artikel:Suchan, Jarosław: Dwa modele intertekstualności: Waliszewski i Janisch
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28198#0110
108
JAROSŁAW SUCHAN
TWO MODELS OF INTERTEXTUALITY: WALISZEWSKI AND JANISCH
Summary
The aim of the present paper is to define the difference between past and
contemporary intertextual strategies, sińce in the author’s view the available explanations
in this respect are insufficient. It is both insufficient to claim that the contemporary
strategies are ostentatious and meaningful appropriations, and contend that the reverse is
the case, i.e. that the contemporary appropriations ignore the meanings of the source
materiał, while in the past those meanings determined the manner and function of
appropriation. Likewise, the author does not ąuite believe that the uniąueness of the
contemporary practice of intertextuality derives from its result - heterogeneous,
non-hierachical whole arranged as a collage. In order to shed light at the actual difference,
and to point to the borderline separating the old and new intertextuality, he brings
together two works of art which are close enough to each other both as regards the
moment in time and the climate of origin to reveal crucial, and not secondary differences.
These two works are Island of Loue by Zygmunt Waliszewski of 1935 and Mona Lisa in a
Sleeping Car by Jerzy Janisch of 1939.
Waliszewski’s painting is a kind of twentieth-century variant of the fetes galantes -
representations of court entertainments and wooing in naturę, popular in the age of
Rococo. Waliszewski’s title alludes to one of the best known examples of those motifs in
painting, i.e. Watteau’s Embarkation for Cythera. The composition of the scene, however,
refers not to the Rococo painting, but to Manet’s Dejeuner sur UHerbe and Titian’s
Concert, borrowing from those works an idea to combine nudę women with elegant men in
an idyllic surrounding. Ali those borrowings are easily recognizable, yet what really
matters in this case is not a dialogue with specific masterpieces, but their use as examples
of cultural cliches of the myth of Arcadia and evoking by them the realm of eternal
happiness, which Waliszewski identified with the world of great European painting. His
art testifies to his longing for that world, close and in his view still in a sense
contemporary, yet separated from the present by an unbridgeable gap that tums it into
fiction beyond his reach. Waliszewski’s ambivalent attitude toward the history of painting
is the reason why he could not continue the tradition in a “natural” way, as it used to be in
the past, but that the only choice available to him was a sort of “artificial” continuation, a
reenactment of something that was no longer obviously present in the artisfs own time.
The “artificiality” of that situation corresponds to a gap inscribed in Island of Loue - the
historical borrowings to not match the language of modernist form into which they were
transposed. Still, the gap is not deep enough to violate the integrity of the painting. Its
coherence has been maintained, sińce the borrowings do not refer to other works
approached as autonomous kernels of meaning, but contribute to a new meaningful whole.
The case of Janisch’s Mona Lisa in a Sleeping Car is ąuite different. While
Waliszewski arranges his painting as a puzzle (bringing together other representations, he
constructs his own vision of mythic reality), Janisch, referring to the famous potrait by
Leonardo and other paintings, brings them into play as works of art. By the same token,
they function here as speech of the other, i.e. utterances which maintain their original
identity and, at least in part, independence of the borrower’s own intention. This is the
reason why in Janischłs painting the borrowings have been distinctly marked, while in
Waliszewski’s work the borrowed and the original permeate each other on various levels.
Janisch turns the borrowed works of art into objects in their own right, elements of the
JAROSŁAW SUCHAN
TWO MODELS OF INTERTEXTUALITY: WALISZEWSKI AND JANISCH
Summary
The aim of the present paper is to define the difference between past and
contemporary intertextual strategies, sińce in the author’s view the available explanations
in this respect are insufficient. It is both insufficient to claim that the contemporary
strategies are ostentatious and meaningful appropriations, and contend that the reverse is
the case, i.e. that the contemporary appropriations ignore the meanings of the source
materiał, while in the past those meanings determined the manner and function of
appropriation. Likewise, the author does not ąuite believe that the uniąueness of the
contemporary practice of intertextuality derives from its result - heterogeneous,
non-hierachical whole arranged as a collage. In order to shed light at the actual difference,
and to point to the borderline separating the old and new intertextuality, he brings
together two works of art which are close enough to each other both as regards the
moment in time and the climate of origin to reveal crucial, and not secondary differences.
These two works are Island of Loue by Zygmunt Waliszewski of 1935 and Mona Lisa in a
Sleeping Car by Jerzy Janisch of 1939.
Waliszewski’s painting is a kind of twentieth-century variant of the fetes galantes -
representations of court entertainments and wooing in naturę, popular in the age of
Rococo. Waliszewski’s title alludes to one of the best known examples of those motifs in
painting, i.e. Watteau’s Embarkation for Cythera. The composition of the scene, however,
refers not to the Rococo painting, but to Manet’s Dejeuner sur UHerbe and Titian’s
Concert, borrowing from those works an idea to combine nudę women with elegant men in
an idyllic surrounding. Ali those borrowings are easily recognizable, yet what really
matters in this case is not a dialogue with specific masterpieces, but their use as examples
of cultural cliches of the myth of Arcadia and evoking by them the realm of eternal
happiness, which Waliszewski identified with the world of great European painting. His
art testifies to his longing for that world, close and in his view still in a sense
contemporary, yet separated from the present by an unbridgeable gap that tums it into
fiction beyond his reach. Waliszewski’s ambivalent attitude toward the history of painting
is the reason why he could not continue the tradition in a “natural” way, as it used to be in
the past, but that the only choice available to him was a sort of “artificial” continuation, a
reenactment of something that was no longer obviously present in the artisfs own time.
The “artificiality” of that situation corresponds to a gap inscribed in Island of Loue - the
historical borrowings to not match the language of modernist form into which they were
transposed. Still, the gap is not deep enough to violate the integrity of the painting. Its
coherence has been maintained, sińce the borrowings do not refer to other works
approached as autonomous kernels of meaning, but contribute to a new meaningful whole.
The case of Janisch’s Mona Lisa in a Sleeping Car is ąuite different. While
Waliszewski arranges his painting as a puzzle (bringing together other representations, he
constructs his own vision of mythic reality), Janisch, referring to the famous potrait by
Leonardo and other paintings, brings them into play as works of art. By the same token,
they function here as speech of the other, i.e. utterances which maintain their original
identity and, at least in part, independence of the borrower’s own intention. This is the
reason why in Janischłs painting the borrowings have been distinctly marked, while in
Waliszewski’s work the borrowed and the original permeate each other on various levels.
Janisch turns the borrowed works of art into objects in their own right, elements of the