Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (29.1988)

2. Jacek Malczewski, Self-portrait against the Background of the Vistula, 1901, Cracow,
Muzeum Narodowe (Photo. Poznań, Muzeum Narodowe)

a person, to convey his attitude towards the basie questions of existence and the categories
of being, or even reveal his views of such theoretieal constructs as artistic creation, i.e. the
creation of ideas of abstract or, as they are often called, intelligible objects, of mental or tran-
scendcntal beings, he has to rely on symbolic imagination5.

In the symbolism of painting (with the exception of allegoric representations), the relation
between the observable, physical aspect of an object, renderable in its uniąue embodiment, and
the hidden, mental objects, symbolised by values to which the given symbol icfers, is not as
unequivocally culturally established as the relations indicated above. Though even there, the
eulturally internalised links only concern the most typical mental sensations or processes, and

5. Cf. G. Durand, ISimagination symbolique, 1'aris, 1964.

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