DOI Heft:
Nr. 2-3
DOI Artikel:Ławniczakowa, Agnieszka: In the Mirror of a Well: On Jacek Malczewski's self-portraits
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18904#0056
11. Jacek Malczewski, Return from the series My life, 1914, Poznań, Muzeum Narodowe (Photo.
Poznań, Muzeum Narodowe)
another person, well-known in culture and embodying definite ideals, to place one's self-repre-
sentation in a meaningful context or, while creating one's self-image, to concentrate on such
transformation of the painted structure that it in itself has a symbolic effect through the orga-
nisation of space and colour.
The number of Malczewski's works of subject-matter interesting to us here, and the frequency
with which they occurred in his oeuvre, are comparable, to confine ourselves to the same period,
to what we find in James Ensor, Ferdinand Hodler, Lovis Corinth or Oskar Kokoschka23. The
affinity goes as far as the message, subject-matter, and form though not literally. Yet Malczewski's
self-portraits as a whole offer a much greater variety of shades of meaning, and his symbolic
imagination has a much broader rangę; moreover, I believe that they appeal to especially the
contemporary spectator much morę powerfully thanks to the synibol-constituting quality of
Malczewski's paintings.
Malczewski shared with the contemporary Symbolists the conviction, originating in Roman-
ticism, of the peculiar, almost religious value of art, its essential cognitivc and creative power.
He wrote that great art was „the unveiling of eternal harmonics taking their beginning in God"24.
In this concept of art, the role of the creativc artist capable of reaching to the essencc of things
intuitively thanks to his cognitive power, the unveiling and creation of new reality, was indeed
peculiar.
It has been frequently observcd2S that this kind of consciousness must have been continually
at strife with the definite political, social or private-and-existential reality. This kind of con-
23. Cf. data in exh. cat. I/autoporUtit a Vage de In pkotographitl Peintres el photographu en diafague mec leur propre image,
Musćc cantouul des Bcnux-Arts I,ausanne, 1985.
24. J. Malczewski, „O powołaniu artystów i zadaniach sztuki" (On the Misston of Artists and the Goals of Art). Rector's Speech
at the inauguration of the 1912/13 academic year, published in M, Janoszanka, Wielki Tercjarz. Moje wspomnienia o Jacku
Malczewskim (Great Tertiary. My Memories of Jacek Malczewski), Poznań, 19B7, p. 51,
25. Recently, P]i. Junod, „(Auto) portrait dc 1'artist en Christ'', in Uautopottrait a l'age de la pholographiet op. cit., p.63 and ff.
46
Poznań, Muzeum Narodowe)
another person, well-known in culture and embodying definite ideals, to place one's self-repre-
sentation in a meaningful context or, while creating one's self-image, to concentrate on such
transformation of the painted structure that it in itself has a symbolic effect through the orga-
nisation of space and colour.
The number of Malczewski's works of subject-matter interesting to us here, and the frequency
with which they occurred in his oeuvre, are comparable, to confine ourselves to the same period,
to what we find in James Ensor, Ferdinand Hodler, Lovis Corinth or Oskar Kokoschka23. The
affinity goes as far as the message, subject-matter, and form though not literally. Yet Malczewski's
self-portraits as a whole offer a much greater variety of shades of meaning, and his symbolic
imagination has a much broader rangę; moreover, I believe that they appeal to especially the
contemporary spectator much morę powerfully thanks to the synibol-constituting quality of
Malczewski's paintings.
Malczewski shared with the contemporary Symbolists the conviction, originating in Roman-
ticism, of the peculiar, almost religious value of art, its essential cognitivc and creative power.
He wrote that great art was „the unveiling of eternal harmonics taking their beginning in God"24.
In this concept of art, the role of the creativc artist capable of reaching to the essencc of things
intuitively thanks to his cognitive power, the unveiling and creation of new reality, was indeed
peculiar.
It has been frequently observcd2S that this kind of consciousness must have been continually
at strife with the definite political, social or private-and-existential reality. This kind of con-
23. Cf. data in exh. cat. I/autoporUtit a Vage de In pkotographitl Peintres el photographu en diafague mec leur propre image,
Musćc cantouul des Bcnux-Arts I,ausanne, 1985.
24. J. Malczewski, „O powołaniu artystów i zadaniach sztuki" (On the Misston of Artists and the Goals of Art). Rector's Speech
at the inauguration of the 1912/13 academic year, published in M, Janoszanka, Wielki Tercjarz. Moje wspomnienia o Jacku
Malczewskim (Great Tertiary. My Memories of Jacek Malczewski), Poznań, 19B7, p. 51,
25. Recently, P]i. Junod, „(Auto) portrait dc 1'artist en Christ'', in Uautopottrait a l'age de la pholographiet op. cit., p.63 and ff.
46