Pictures at an Exhibition

Zbigniew Ignacy Brzostowski

Aleksandra Jadczuk’s „Pictures at an Exhibition”

w plastrze miodu

są przestrzenie podłużnie oddychające spokojem

w plastrze miodu są zakątki pełne żywych płatków liści
[in a honeycomb
there are spaces breathing peace along

in a honeycomb there are nooks full of living leaves]

Halina Poświatowska[1]

There is a painting by Aleksandra Jadczuk that one could call musical. An elongated figure of a man – as in El Greco, one of the artist’s favourite painters[2] – sitting on a chair and blowing a tin trumpet, all set against a smooth wall. And if we could imagine what tune he is playing, perhaps it would be Modest Mussorgsky’s “Promenade”, leading the listener through his “Pictures from an Exhibition” (1874), a suite which was inspired by the drawings and watercolours of Viktor Hartmann[3]. The musician in the painting is inviting the viewer into the softly illuminated interior, where we can expect to see an exhibition of paintings by the author, Aleksandra Jadczuk. The evocation of the musical illustration is justified not only as a pretext for a brief stroll in front of the painter’s works, but also as a reference to her family’s artistic tradition. Aleksandra’s grandfather Pavel Balakirev (1914-1968) and her uncle Oleg (1944-1977) were painters, and the family is related to Mily Balakirev (1837-1910), a pianist and a conductor, the leader of the famous Mighty Handful, and, incidentally, the initiator of the erection of the Fryderyk Chopin’s monument in Żelazowa Wola[4]. One could say that tradition oblige and, in keeping with it, Aleksandra Jadczuk (born in Gdańsk in 1974) has always been interested in painting. This interest led her to the Faculty of Painting and Graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, which she graduated from in 2001 with a degree in painting from the Studio of Prof. Maciej Świeszewski and in mural painting from the Studio of Prof. Andrzej Dyakowski. In 2003, she was employed as an assistant in the 5th Studio of Drawing and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk under the supervision of Prof. Józef Czerniawski. She then progressed through the steps of her academic career to become a professor at her alma mater and the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Painting. Her works span the fields of painting, drawing, printmaking and photography[5].

Listening to “Promenade”, let us enter the “exhibition” and see what the painter has prepared for us. These are not individual paintings, but rather groupings of works linked by theme, technique or method of artistic exploration. Such an arrangement is imposed by the artist herself, who as a rule avoids giving titles to her exhibitions and paintings, leaving the viewer free to make associations and interpretations[6]. Throughout the years of her studies and until at least a decade after graduation, Aleksandra Jadczuk was working in representational painting, focusing mainly on still life, landscapes and interior views. With time, her interests and creative explorations turned towards abstraction, as she says: I concluded that I was most interested in purely painterly problems, i.e. colour, matter, form, so I moved away from a direct interpretation of reality[7]. This change looks to be quite radical also in terms of painting techniques: the closed compositions of the early period are mainly oil paintings – the ones which are the most appreciated by the artist – while the open abstract compositions are works created with acrylic paints. Sometimes the painter also uses tempera paints, stain or water glass. I like it – she says – when different paints react with each other, and I get an unexpected effect[8].

Since we have been introduced to Aleksandra Jadczuk’s work by a musician, let us pause for a while at a group of paintings whose protagonists are musical men, inscribed in geometrized interiors, perhaps more surreal than real, with a touch of vibe straight out of 1920s film set design. Then there are interiors with figures hidden in dark corners, with figures that are only a pretext to show the poignant emptiness of the interior behind them. The work depicting a scene of a family celebration in the interior is particularly noteworthy. We find there the figure of Pierrot, who foreshadows another series of paintings. However, let us return to the interiors, which do not evoke any dark associations, but exude warmth and joy. These are the ones where, instead of dark human silhouettes, the artist placed animals, such as the white dog sitting on the sill of a high window, behind which stretches a green, idyllic landscape, merging with a bright blue sky on the horizon. This is how we move on to painterly landscapes. We emerge from crammed interiors into vast spaces. Painted in bright, warm yellows, fields of ripe crops, the rich greens of grasses and trees, bright shades of blue over the horizon. This is rhythmically juxtaposed with vertical dark railings in the foreground or, conversely, wooden fences on the horizon, reminiscent of the xylophones, which the wind plays “Promenade” on, inviting us to the next group of paintings.

With the picket fences still in mind, casually imposing a rhythm reminiscent of the rhythms in Witold Wojtkiewicz’s famous cycles of paintings, we will not be so surprised when we face a group of works so strikingly resembling motifs from Wojtkiewicz. Children with serious, grim faces, as if they were small adults. Their silhouettes furnish empty interiors, where only light fills the space, creating a mood of melancholy and nostalgia for something unattainable. Just like Wojtkiewicz, hopelessly in love with Maryna Pareńska[9], giving the faces of dolls and fairy tale characters, the protagonists of his unusual paintings, the features of people from Maryna’s surroundings and her own[10], Jadczuk offers her child characters the faces of real people from her own life. She also introduces symbolic objects in these works, always with the outline of a circle or sphere, taking the shape of a children’s ball, a stylized wheel of a Roma cart or an Indian dream catcher. They can be interpreted as a reference to the forms by which the sun was represented in ancient cultures, but also in modern times, when it is associated with the proverbial spark of hope for a good day ahead. The words of one of Jacques Brel’s songs come irresistibly to mind here: as long as there is hope for tomorrow, life is worth living.

The paintings attract the viewer’s attention with another interesting motif – children’s toys. These include the aforementioned ball and, above all, wooden rocking horses, the dream of many children in the pre-computer era. These horses, the embodiment of children’s desires, introduce a note of joy into Aleksandra Jadczuk’s paintings and a nostalgia for a time irretrievably lost. However, the main theme is different – it is light and form. This is best seen in the painting, in which toy horses seem to move in a circle on the illuminated floor of an empty room. The heavily exposed, herringbone-patterned wooden tiles build up the dynamism and expression of the painting. They indicate the next direction which the sounds of “Promenade” will lead us to.

Dynamics and power gush from the canvases[11] where great steam locomotives emerge in clouds of steam from an indeterminate background. They shine with an oily, golden sheen on greasy trusses, joints, valves and pistons, brass flashes on polished buffers and wheel rims again alluding to the solar symbolism that had previously recurred in paintings of children’s games. On the one hand, the works in this group clearly evoke associations with the classics of impressionist painting – William Turner’s “Rain, Steam, Speed”[12] or the series of Claude Monet’s Saint-Lazare railway station views[13]; on the other hand, these canvases reveal Aleksandra Jadczuk’s unprecedented – maybe hidden – fascination with the power of machines. The machines which, like bulls from the artist’s favourite Spanish paintings[14], symbolize not only the primeval power and tenacity, but also the passion, vitality and energy. The artist’s paintings show clashes of light, air and clouds of steam, but also streaks of reddish traces of blood on the sand of the arena.

A different, much more subdued emotion is evoked by works related to the sea, a maritime episode in the painter’s oeuvre, so to speak. These paintings mainly depict traditional rows of moored fishing boats. A particularly noteworthy example, however, can be found in the work depicting a fishing boat at the quay, painted with broad brushstrokes. The composition of the painting is divided diagonally from the lower edge on the left to the upper edge on the right. To the right of this hypothetical line, a pier running right in depth is shown, divided rhythmically by the outlines of the planks that it is built of. On the left, a cutter moored to the quay is depicted in bold perspective, distinguished from the pier by the predominance of circular forms or arches. Shades of ochre and the colours of the cool Baltic – greens and blues – dominate. The freedom which the work was painted with brings to mind a fragment of a poem by Stanisław Grochowiak, a poet who dreamed of being a painter:

(…) ukryty czujnie

Za plecami Gauguina, wygiętymi w pałąk urzędniczego garbu; patrzył,

Jak on łatwo kładzie

Te swoje ugry i sieny palone, nie pędzlem,

Lecz szpachlą.

Boże miłosierny –
[hidden cautiously

Behind Gaugin’s back, arched into a clerk’s hump; he looked

How easily he lays

His ochres and burnt siennas, not with a brush

But with a spatula.
Oh, merciful God –][15]

These maritime works also include several small stained-glass windows. The quarters with the shape of large fish, filled with shoals of glass “fishy trinkets”, do not conceal any mystery, but the light seeping through the stained-glass windows in a calm straw colour offers a sense of calm and abundance, while the red and blue reflections suggest the richness of marine life. And again, this time from behind the colour of the stained glass windows, the familiar melody of “Promenade” seems to be resounding, now extracted from a small tin foghorn.

We move on to the most interesting group of paintings – still lifes. It is strange, but the artist claims that she is not even fond of this genre of painting, especially since she has experienced an excess of it in Dutch museums[16]. However, it is her still lifes – despite her attitude – that most seduce viewers with the harmonious beauty, composition, range of colours, form, the matter of the objects depicted, in other words, everything that Aleksandra Jadczuk sees as the most significant aspects of her art[17]. Perhaps it was a trust in her artistic intuition – more than a considered, rational concept – that dominated the work on the still lifes. Here, the painter decisively departed from traditional mimetics, following the example of Paul Cézanne, who wanted to explore the relationship between colour and form, and used “correct perspective” only to the extent that he needed it for a specific experiment[18]. The influence of Picasso’s and Braque’s still lifes is no less evident in these works. Aleksandra Jadczuk retains a three-dimensional foreground in some of them, but she consistently builds up space, like these artists, abandoning deep linear perspective. She closes the depth of perspective in the background with some kind of curtain, a blind window, a wall or a colourful structure that is difficult to identify. In some of the works, the deep perspective is replaced by the two-dimensionality and forward displacement of objects that is characteristic of archaic art: objects from further away are placed at the top and those closer to the viewer are placed at the bottom of the canvas, the shapes of the objects indicate a multiplicity of viewpoints. The foreground, however, always contrasts with the flat background. The spectrum of objects used in the compositions is quite traditional – mainly glass, ceramic and tin vessels, fruits, vegetables, fish, sometimes flowers. These are just forms, derived from basic shapes; their charm and their calm, refined beauty was achieved by the artist using pure, luminous colours, light falling on the objects, a balanced gradation of tones and a harmony of colours.

And once again “Promenade” opens a new collection, new attempts and realizations, a new period in Aleksandra Jadczuk’s work. After years of creating representational paintings, referring directly to nature and interpreting reality, the artist started to turn towards abstraction in the second decade of the 21st century. This is how she herself characterizes this time: at the beginning, the first works of this type featured simplified, geometrized organic forms and signs with still clearly discernible echoes of the real world. However, I was determined and consistent in my efforts to create arrangements of colours, forms or planes that would, as far as possible, spontaneously reveal the designed content. (…) Since then, I have systematically developed and deepened the process of abstracting the image. Combining experience, knowledge and intuition, I did not assume or accept any model of abstraction in advance. (…) I moved slowly from observation and analysis of selected phenomena to their maximum synthesis, from the image of a reflection of reality to the image of a sign.[19] We allow ourselves to be caught in these – as Julio Cortázar wrote – snares of geometry, by means of which our Western existence is meant to be ordered: the axis, the centre, the raison d’être, the omphalos, the names of Indo-European longings[20]. And so, looking at Aleksandra Jadczuk’s abstract pictures, we can subconsciously feel a kind of warning – the words of Plato, which, as the legend goes, he was supposed to have placed above the entrance to the Academy: Let no one ignorant of geometry enter[21]. Although the relationship with mathematics does not seem so obvious, when we look at individual canvases, we find numerous examples of shapes that can be recognized as references to nature: geometrized landscapes, plants, water, organic forms, celestial bodies. By referring to real matter, the artist gives the matter a new order – the order of aesthetics[22]. And in this pursuit, she arrives at the practice of geometric abstraction, in which she currently finds the meaning of her creative search. The most characteristic feature of these investigations is the consistent construction of open pictorial compositions made up of individual images. I investigate – says the artist – the congruence and relationship of individual images in the constructed structure of the whole image. Each element is simultaneously a whole and a part. I create coherent systems of varying dynamics, as well as three-dimensional painterly objects[23].

The individual canvases depicting concrete geometric figures, juxtaposed in more or less complex forms of various sizes, create new qualities linked by shape, colour, contrast, value, the structure of the matter, and finally rhythm[24]. The spectator can move around these signs symbolically by throwing an imaginary flat stone to play “hopscotch” and stopping where the stone falls. This childish ritual of pebbles and hopping on one foot, leading to Heaven[25] may seem amusing, but it is just as valid for the reception of these abstract, constructed images as other, more “scientific” cognitive methods. We can therefore ignore the irony-laden opinions relating to Aleksandra Jadczuk’s activities in the field of abstract art[26] and look at it from the perspective of geometrical references. May we get inspiration from the words of Galileo Galilei: the Universe […] is written in a mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanely impossible to comprehend a single word[27]. Obviously, the route of the artists’ formal procedures in creating geometric abstractions seems to have been mathematical analysis in the first place, which, at least in theory, should be a guarantee of the objectivity of the creative material. This was the case with Jerzy Grabowski[28], who created his abstractions primarily based on the figures of a square and a triangle based on the diagonal of this square. However, in Aleksandra Jadczuk’s case, it seems that mathematical analysis does not dominate her abstract painting, and the artist is primarily guided by her experience and intuition. Looking at the painter’s abstract works from different years, we see that the dominant module is the rectangle, but, surprisingly, not the golden one, delineated by the golden ratio, which seems to be the figure best perceived by the eye[29], but a Silver and a Cordovan rectangle[30]. It seems as if the painter was subconsciously inclined towards the models of abstract ancient art, so abundantly represented, for example, in Islamic art or – in a different field – in Bach’s fugues[31]. Examples thereof can be found in the repeated motifs built on a square base but ultimately taking the shape of a polygon. From such polygons, a regular arrangement is created, which can be extended indefinitely, creating a configuration of rhythms and colour relationships between the modules. It would not be out of place here to recall the achievements of Maurits Cornelis Escher, who derived part of his strongly geometrized art from impressions he had while looking at the Alhambra[32]. Coming back to Aleksandra Jadczuk’s achievements in the field of abstract art, it should be emphasized that the artist assumes, above all, the reception of her work through sensual experience, which is influenced by the form, colour, rhythms, tensions between individual parts of the composition. She leaves mathematical analysis to those who wish to delve deeper into the problems of abstraction.

The art of the Gdansk painter, which we get to know symbolically by going through “Pictures from an Exhibition”, although it manifests itself in different, seemingly distant genres, always shows similar features. And not only is it about a mastery of form, colour, mood, but above all it is an affirmative work, even when depicting melancholic moods. Fortunately, such an outlook is increasingly noticeable in artistic creation after periods of many contemporary art trends defined by negation[33]. Negation, decay and a stubborn pursuit of bleak chaos are simply boring[34], take away the will to live and do not build anything positive. At most, they evoke a feeling of gloom and bitterness, and we don’t really know why. Aleksandra Jadczuk, on the other hand, seeks positive values, regularity, as in the honeycomb from Halina Poświatowska’s poem quoted at the beginning. She looks for harmony, balance between cold and warm colours, between art and life.

We are already leaving the “exhibition” of the Gdansk painter Aleksandra Jadczuk, again, to the sounds of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Promenade”, which was taking us from one group of paintings to another, but let us now indulge in the orchestration of the piece by Maurice Ravel.