(text published in the catalogue of the exhibition “Bereś”, Cricoteka, Kraków 2024)

The fact that I have put a distance between myself and the so-called new sculpture, or even that I once publicly stated that I was not a sculptor, in no way means that I have become detached from what, to my mind, constitutes the essence of sculpture,¹Jerzy Bereś, 2002, online:https://beresfoundation.pl/en/about-him/ (accessed: 4 Mar 2024). Jerzy Bereś said in 2002, looking back at his work. It is not my intention to investigate what the artist meant by the essence of sculpture, but I wish to take – as Georges Didi-Huberman put it²Cf.: G. Didi-Huberman, Ähnlichkeit und Berührung. Archäologie, Anachronismus und Modernität des Abdrucks, translated from the French by Ch. Hollender, Köln 1999, p. 8. – an anachronistic approach to the subject matter in an attempt at interpreting it from my own contemporary perspective. The French art historian has a positive understanding of this anachronism: as a point of departure, a principle that operates secretly yet relentlessly.³J. Vojvodík, “Siła dotyku – nowoczesność anachronizmu. O filozofii sztuki Georges’a Didi-Hubermana”, translated by H. Marciniak, [in:] Teksty Drugie 2009, 5, p. 12. I shall inspect a selection of Bereś’s works through the prism of expanded haptics with emphasis on the sense of balance and the kinaesthetic sense (proprioception) as I believe this will enable me to demonstrate one of the absolutely essential aspects of his sculpture and oeuvre.

Jerzy Bereś, “Cart” (1968/1969), photo courtesy of the Museum of Art in Łódź.

I redefine the classic concept of haptics to include the sense of touch as pertaining to the whole body, rather than, as Alois Riegl advocated, being a mere modality of sight.⁴J. M. Krois, “Tastbilder. Zur Verkörperungstheorie ikonischer Formen”, [in:] J. M. Krois, Bildkörper und Körperschema. Schriften zur Verkörperungstheorie ikonischer Formen, Berlin 2011, p. 227. Sight is still a constituent of expanded haptics⁵M. Smolińska, Haptyczność poszerzona. Zmysł dotyku w sztuce polskiej drugiej połowy XX i początku XXI wieku, Kraków 2020. – the way I see it – but is activated in a different way, in connection with touch⁶Cf.: B. O’Shaughnessy, “The Sense of Touch”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1989, vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 37–58. that is not only located on the whole surface of the body, or in the skin,⁷L. U. Marks, The Skin of the Film. Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, Durham – London 2000, pp. 162–163. but also stimulated by all kinds of somatic experiences in general.⁸A. Garrington, Haptic Modernism. Touch and Tactile in Modernist Writing, Edinburgh 2013, p. 16. Expanded haptics is thus multisensory by nature and embedded in a sentient skin-covered body of a haptic empathic subject. The concept therefore signifies a capacity to perceive and experience that is specific to a feeling and thinking subjectivity, involving senses, emotions and the mind.

These questions seem to have mattered a lot to Bereś. Yet I am inclined to believe that the primary focus of his attention was on the two senses which art history has so far left out of the field of aesthetic experience. The sense of balance enables us to understand our body position in space, while proprioception – also known as the kinaesthetic sense – to locate our body parts without looking. Bereś’s objects, designed for interaction with spectators, and manifestations play with the sense of stability, encouraging us to engage with a rocking toy (Toy, 1972-73), grab the bar of Lever (1970-71), lift the stone that has the word “face” written on it from a bucket filled with water, or to imagine travelling by Cart (1968-69) or Scooter (1968). Activating audience and exerting a profound somaesthetic influence on kinaesthetic imagination and muscle memory is the essence of Bereś’s sculpture.

Jerzy Bereś, “Toy” (1972/1973), photo by Jacek Szmuc.

Graham Dunstan Martin, whose research takes as its focus the kinaesthetic sense within the context of so-called visual arts, rightly observes that as a constituent of the sensory message conveyed by every work of art proprioception must be included in studies of the perception process.⁹G. Dunstan Martin, “Proprioception, Mental Imagery and Sculpture”, in: From Rodin to Giacometti. Sculpture and Literature in France 1880–1950, ed. K. Aspley, E. Cowling, P. Sharatt, Amsterdam – Atlanta 2000, p. 213. He puts forwards a number of notions which I shall attempt to effectively put to use as tools in my analysis of a selection of Bereś’s pieces; they are: our proprioceptive expectations and the proprioceptive illusion and hallucination which may even invoke a physical sense of loosing balance.¹⁰Ibidem, p. 207.

A close correlation exists between Bereś’s haptic oeuvre and theses proposed by Barbara Montero, who counts proprioception among the aesthetic senses.¹¹B. Montero, “Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 64, No. 2, Spring 2006, p. 231. If proprioception is an aesthetic sense, than an aesthetic judgement may be founded on proprioceptive experience that is brought about by the activity and function of mirror neurones. This sense enables us to consider a representation of movement beautiful, and Montero coins a verb – proprioceiving – to stress the active and significant role of proprioception in the perception process of an artwork. The researcher believes that dancers are a prime example of the functioning of proprioception in aesthetics in that they are able to assess the aesthetic value of their own dance by feeling and, indeed, proprioceiving. The sense thus occupies an important role in perception on the part of a dancer, or an artist in general, and a viewer¹²Ibidem, p. 236. – it is proprioception that makes us flex our muscles and join Bereś in toiling and pushing all sorts of carts, wheelbarrows, ploughs and wheel vehicles as we observe his naked body perform these actions; we are getting involved. Mirror neurons and proprioception are accountable for the fact that we form aesthetic opinions about the artist’s manifestations while we are staying still. The movements of the performer and the people immortalised in photographs as they engage in interactions with his kinaesthetic objects ‘resonate’ in our bodies, represented both visually and kinaesthetically inside them.¹³Ibidem, p. 237.

Jerzy Bereś, “Pendulum” (1971), photo by Oskar Hanusek.

Movement – essential to Bereś’s work – was not included in Riegl’s classic definition of haptics. In a more recent delineation of haptic perception, Mark Paterson attaches considerable weight to it. Here movement occurs on the part of an object, image and space as well as the one who observes an object, image or space.¹⁴M. Paterson, The Senses of Touch. Haptics, Affects and Technologies, Oxford and New York 2007, p. IX. See also: M. Paterson, Seeing With the Hands: Blindness, Vision and Touch after Descartes, Edinburgh 2016. This is a synergy between sight, touch, body balance and space awareness, and the proprioceptive model functions here as a haptic phenomenon. According to Paterson, there is a proprioceptive fusion between kinaesthesia and tactile and cutaneous perception. It can thus be generally stated that the researcher – basing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology – defines haptic perception as proprioceptive and kinaesthetic, or as perceiving the position, state and movement of the body and limbs in space.¹⁵ M. Paterson, The Senses of Touch…, op. cit., p. IX.

It is precisely this perception that Bereś, whose stance is compatible with the postmodern revalorisation of the hierarchy of the senses¹⁶See: U. Zeuch, Umkehr der Sinneshierarchie. Herder und die Aufwertung des Tastsinns seit der frühen Neuzeit, Tübingen 2000. while also with adding new elements to their short list, incorporated in his objects. Exploring the phenomena of movement, balance and “widening/extending” the body with various materials, his works in fact correlate with other theories that have supplemented the five classic senses with some more, for example the sense of balance and proprioception. In my opinion, forms able to convey – beginning at the somatic level – existential and social-political content take priority in Bereś’s practice. This is a good enough reason for activating the senses which remained outside the category of classical sculpture or the so-called new sculpture. Using the materials at his disposal at the time, he builds his objects to induce proprioceptive hallucinations in the feeling and thinking bodies of the audience and in this way get through to them. These hallucinations carry deeper meanings that unfold through proprioceiving and being close to losing balance.

Jerzy Bereś, “Pendulum” (1976), photo by Marek Gardulski.

In the 1970s, Bereś becomes intrigued by a pendular form; both objects that bear the title Pendulum, the first from 1971 and the second from 1976, reference body parts – feet and hands respectively. The slope of the 1971 piece positions the red enamel mug at a dangerous tilt. An unsettling metallic noise comes from the inside. In the object produced five years later, a hand swings back and forth between a piece of bread and a stone. This is both an oscillatory motion that affects our haptic labyrinth and a figurative representation of vacillating. As the process of proprioceiving progresses, muscle tension increases prompted by the disturbing impression of an impending loss of balance, the wobbling constructions, the slanting mug that may soon lose its content… The hand keeps moving to and fro, lacking the capacity to choose between the bread and the stone. In both cases, the uncertainty, the oscillation and the real movements performed by the objects or felt in proprioceptive imagination determine how the message of these works is shaped to pose questions about the existential and political condition. How high can we raise the leg to release whatever produces that metallic sound within the mug even though the content of the vessel is out of our sight and remains unknown to us? Would that be an act of courage or an unnecessary risk? Perhaps – even if we put the foot up – we will not be able to find out what is inside the mug. It is not only the rod of the pendulum that Bereś “sways” but our haptic systems, emotions, thoughts and our world views as well. What was the meaning of having to choose between a loaf of bread and a piece of rock in the mid-1970s, and what can its reading be nowadays? Despite their coarse aesthetics belonging to the socialist past, Bereś’s Pendulums continue to bear relevance today as they activate the kinaesthetic sense and the sense of balance, affecting our haptic systems and metaphorising meanings in relation to contemporary existential and political problems. Motion – real or taking the form of kinaesthetic expectations – is immanent in these pieces, and without it their figurative significance would never arise.

Bereś not only plays with body image, but he also unlocks the potential of body schema. John M. Krois claims that body image is something one is cognizant of, it is a combination of how one perceives and conceives of one’s body.¹⁷J. M. Krois, op. cit., p. 215. Both, tactile body image as it was once called by physiologists and a haptic perception of one’s body as an object fall under this label.  Krois points out that this is a visual and conscious bodily self-perception that may be linked with representational strategies. Once a body image has been constituted, it cannot be extended to include new elements. Body schema, on the other hand, underlies body image. It is a set of sensorimotor capacities which function outside conscious awareness requiring neither control nor supervision.¹⁸Ibidem, p. 219. The concept is irreversibly connected with proprioception and the ability to see the body as a reference point in space. Moreover, body image and body schema are strongly synchronised and Bereś uses this with great deftness when he immerses the body in haptic experience.

Unlike body image, body schema can be expanded to include tools or garments.¹⁹Ibidem, p. 229. Within this context, Krois points at such items as a hammer in a worker’s hand or a feather adorning a woman’s hat. This kind of expansion is evident in Bereś’s oeuvre – all his objects are meant to interact with such extensions or proprioceptive prostheses.

Jerzy Bereś, “Desk” (1970), photo courtesy of the Museum of Art in Łódź.

Desk (1970) and Lever (1970-71) interrogate stereotypes of women, leaving it for us to decide whether it is the face or the bum that we prefer, and whether the beautiful slim female legs that stick out of the desk should remain parted or whether they should be joined together. A strategy like this induces the emergence of a proprioceptive self,²⁰Ibidem, p. 258. which – faced with these two pieces – must not only respond to the challenge of active interaction but also confront the issue of sexist objectification of women. It is not enough to have a body to experience haptic empathy and relate to an artwork, the body must be one that moves and has a body schema.²¹Ibidem, p. 265. Body schema is precisely what enables one to attribute life forces decoded from the dynamic relations within a work of art to inanimate objects. This is exactly what gives such power of impact to Bereś’s creative output, and the sensations generated by the sense of balance and proprioception are part of the experience of expanded haptics. An activated proprioceptive self turns one’s haptic labyrinth into a trembling compass indicating the meaning of Bereś’s works: those embedded in the social-political context of his time and the universal ones – after all, objectification of women is regrettably not a thing of the past.

Jerzy Bereś, “Lever” (1970/1971).

Lever, I believe, raises a general question as well about helping someone take an upright stance and regain face which has been low in the bucket full of water up till now. This is, however, not terminus technicus but terminus ethicus.²²R. Poloczek, (Motiv-)Geschichte der ‘aufrechten Haltung’ und des ‘aufrechten Ganges’ in Polen: Ursprünge und moderne Ausprägungen, University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2019, p. 619. This way of thinking closely corresponds with the anthropology of German philosopher Ernst Bloch whose theory centred on an upright position.²³Ernst Bloch, “Aufrechter Gang“, [in:] E. Bloch, Gesellschaft und Kultur. Ausgewählte Schriften, Band 2, Suhrkamp, Berlin 2010, pp. 91-212. To keep upright is what every child needs to learn early on and, in the figurative sense, it denotes pride and dignity. For Bloch, an upright position is synonymous with an obligation to resist violence. I propose – as I have suggested above – that Bereś’s Lever is analogously about more than just a bodily position, it is about an ethical attitude.

Providing a vivid depiction of people interacting with Toy (1972-73), Jacek Szmuc’s photographs trigger off proprioception in those watching them today. The inscription “Toy – foot propelled rocker” is an open invitation to the viewers to put a feet on it and upset its balance. Once it is set it in motion, the stone hanging on a piece of string begins to move putting the glass jar that acts as a cover for the stick, at the top of the device, to which the string has been tied at risk. A nail has been driven transversely into the stick and both its ends hit against the glass, producing a metallic sound as Toy is being rocked. There is still a remnant of the label suggesting the jar used to contain cucumbers – hence the tension between everyday life, triviality and art. Some of the people in Szmuc’s photos approach the object gingerly, others are enthusiastic and joyful as they disregard the artist’s hint that the rocker is to be swayed by feet.

Jerzy Bereś, “Toy” (1972/1973), photo by Jacek Szmuc.

Without becoming detached from so-called sculptural essence, Bereś brings to it as rudimentary components proprioceiving and playing with the haptic labyrinth. As we get in contact with his objects, we are subjected to kinaesthetic choreography. Neurobiological studies have shown that experiencing loss and disturbance of balance and being on the verge of falling occupy a crucial role in our development. A haptic empathic subject needs to lose balance to be able to function properly and adapt to lack of stability and changing reality – not only in the Polish People’s Republic that saw the emergence of these works, but today as well. I lose my balance, therefore I am; I balance, therefore I am – suggest Bereś’s objects and manifestations, and these identity matters have their origin in muscles and skin, and as they transform into haptic thought and embodied wisdom, they become universal.

translated by Monika Ujma

• 1
  Jerzy Bereś, 2002, online:https://beresfoundation.pl/en/about-him/ (accessed: 4 Mar 2024).
• 2
  Cf.: G. Didi-Huberman, Ähnlichkeit und Berührung. Archäologie, Anachronismus und Modernität des Abdrucks, translated from the French by Ch. Hollender, Köln 1999, p. 8.
• 3
  J. Vojvodík, “Siła dotyku – nowoczesność anachronizmu. O filozofii sztuki Georges’a Didi-Hubermana”, translated by H. Marciniak, [in:] Teksty Drugie 2009, 5, p. 12.
• 4
  J. M. Krois, “Tastbilder. Zur Verkörperungstheorie ikonischer Formen”, [in:] J. M. Krois, Bildkörper und Körperschema. Schriften zur Verkörperungstheorie ikonischer Formen, Berlin 2011, p. 227.
• 5
  M. Smolińska, Haptyczność poszerzona. Zmysł dotyku w sztuce polskiej drugiej połowy XX i początku XXI wieku, Kraków 2020.
• 6
  Cf.: B. O’Shaughnessy, “The Sense of Touch”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1989, vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 37–58.
• 7
  L. U. Marks, The Skin of the Film. Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, Durham – London 2000, pp. 162–163.
• 8
  A. Garrington, Haptic Modernism. Touch and Tactile in Modernist Writing, Edinburgh 2013, p. 16.
• 9
  G. Dunstan Martin, “Proprioception, Mental Imagery and Sculpture”, in: From Rodin to Giacometti. Sculpture and Literature in France 1880–1950, ed. K. Aspley, E. Cowling, P. Sharatt, Amsterdam – Atlanta 2000, p. 213.
• 10
  Ibidem, p. 207.
• 11
  B. Montero, “Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 64, No. 2, Spring 2006, p. 231.
• 12
  Ibidem, p. 236.
• 13
  Ibidem, p. 237.
• 14
  M. Paterson, The Senses of Touch. Haptics, Affects and Technologies, Oxford and New York 2007, p. IX. See also: M. Paterson, Seeing With the Hands: Blindness, Vision and Touch after Descartes, Edinburgh 2016.
• 15
  M. Paterson, The Senses of Touch…, op. cit., p. IX.
• 16
  See: U. Zeuch, Umkehr der Sinneshierarchie. Herder und die Aufwertung des Tastsinns seit der frühen Neuzeit, Tübingen 2000.
• 17
  J. M. Krois, op. cit., p. 215.
• 18
  Ibidem, p. 219.
• 19
  Ibidem, p. 229. Within this context, Krois points at such items as a hammer in a worker’s hand or a feather adorning a woman’s hat.
• 20
  Ibidem, p. 258.
• 21
  Ibidem, p. 265.
• 22
  R. Poloczek, (Motiv-)Geschichte der ‘aufrechten Haltung’ und des ‘aufrechten Ganges’ in Polen: Ursprünge und moderne Ausprägungen, University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2019, p. 619.
• 23
  Ernst Bloch, “Aufrechter Gang“, [in:] E. Bloch, Gesellschaft und Kultur. Ausgewählte Schriften, Band 2, Suhrkamp, Berlin 2010, pp. 91-212.