Piotr Piotrowski: The Artist’s Body (1995)

(The text was published in exhibition catalogue: Jerzy Bereś, Zwidy, Wyrocznie, Ołtarze, Wyzwania, National Museum in Poznań, Poznań 1995)

For Bereś’s art the point of departure is the rawness or purity of the stuff, its “pre-material” state. The artist writes,

I did my best to start from scratch, from nature. I gave up all the processed materials. What interests me is wood. The most concrete piece of nature. Each tree is different. This is a property of nature.¹

On another occasion, he says:

The material is something that is susceptible. The more susceptible it is, the better. To make a figure from wood brought from the forest one must cut it into small pieces, glue the pieces together in a proper way, and only then cut the block. To make a head one needs a huge trunk. It cannot be raw. It must be glued, or otherwise it would crack. That’s how it is done. Then the wood ceases to be itself. It tums into mass which may be freely modelled. But when I pick up a piece of wood and I want to work on it, I must take into account its condition. It means the necessity of cooperation with raw wood.²

The artist stressed it several times that the use of raw wood has nothing to do with the tradition of folk culture. Such interpretations appeared at the moment when folk art became a manipulated and ambiguous ally of the communist authorities. Understanding the mechanism of an ideological recuperation of the figures of saints chiselled by mountaineers, folk costumes, and bawdy songs, Bereś consciously tried to distance himself from it. Between his art and the “song and dance” folk ensembles there is a world of difference.

I consciously tried to ignore the whole tradition of sculpture, carving, and all that which developed in the stylized folk art. I consciously decided not to enter the realm of “the olden days of the Piasts”, says the artist.³

It may easily be proved that to Bereś the folk culture was not “pure”. Contaminated by the ideology of the establishment, it could not provide the instruments of its critique.

The rejection of the material as a basis of the culture of the establishment would sometimes take very radical forms. An example may be the GREAT PHANTOM which was made in 1966 during the Symposium of Artists and Scientists in Puławy. The GREAT PHANTOM was a young oak, over 100 years old, removed by the constructors of the factory from its natural location. The tree was just rooted out of the construction site and abandoned by the working crews. With a considerable technical effort, the artist brought it back, as it were, and put it in front of the factory as a part of the symposium exhibition.⁴ The GREAT PHANTOM expressed the solidarity of the artist with nature maltreated by ruthless industry and arrogant culture, but it was also a critique of the far-reaching connection between art and power.

In communist Poland the brutality of the industrial constructors paralleled, as it were, the megalomania of the artistic establishment which did not even care to realize the symbolism and significance of the location of the Puławy symposium. The strategy of the authorities was quite perfidious and in fact undisguised, as there was no need to conceal it. Relying on an “old” avantgarde ideology of the connection between art and industry, they could easily persuade artists, particularly those who desired an avantgarde legitimation, to take part in the celebrated opening of the Artificial Fertilizers Combine in Puławy. The strategy of the artists themselves consisted in “exploiting” the authorities which, by organizing such meetings, allowed for artistic “experiments.” The artists believed that “on the margin” of various propaganda events they would be able to take advantage of the generosity of the party-state administration and organize a meeting, an exhibition, a symposium, etc. In the sixties such cases were quite common – for instance, the Elbląg Plein-Air Spatial Forms Meetings or “Wrocław ’70” Symposium.

Naturally, such an arrangement worked both ways and in itself it was quite complex both from the political and the artistic point of view. Its analysis would go beyond the limits of this essay. Let us just say, that it was usually welcomed by the artists, although there were also exceptions. One of them was Włodzimierz Borowski who during the Puławy symposium ironically presented the management of the Artificial Fertilizers Combine a huge container as his own work of art, thus not only sneering at the generosity of the authorities which for a few days “gave” the factory to the artists, but at the artists themselves who after such events would usually present their works (as the “plein air meeting aftermath”) to the hosts. Another exception was Jerzy Bereś who attacked the very core of the art-industry relationship and, by the same token, the relation between the artist and authorities. He laid bare a certain area of common interest of both parties: the opportunism of the communist party patronage and the conformity of the artists, as well as a certain common tradition of both partners: the avant-garde mythology of the “alliance” of modern art and industrial production, and the communist postulate (known since the times of Lunacharsky, the Bolshevik patron of the October revolution avant-garde) to treat art as an instrument of propaganda. It may be interesting to add that the GREAT PHANTOM was not – contrary to the custom and expectations – presented by the artist to the factory, while other participants of the meeting, artists and critics alike, did not appreciate it.⁵ The latter would rather prefer the “chance” paintings by Ryszard Winiarski (the laureate of the I prize of the Symposium) to commitment in potentially “dangerous” discussions.

However, Bereś is not a political artist in the common sense of the term – in terms of the “presentational mode” defined by Hal Foster as political agitation and propaganda.⁶ Hence, he does not quite agree with such suggestions.⁷ He is not a political artist, even though he remains a homo politicus in his essays and autobiographical texts.⁸ In his own works, he is interested in more than just one dimension of art.

To refer to Foster’s terminology again, Bereś is not a “resistant artist” either, although he is involved in the critique of the mechanisms of power (including art, in the case of the Puławy symposium). The critical attitude of Bereś transgresses the boundaries proposed by Foster; it is – as he himself would put it – related to the defense of one’s personal freedom, to the 19th century motif of a romantic, model idea of the artist, and to the tradition of national identity. As such, it defies the postmodern breakdown of the “grand narratives”, described by Jean-François Lyotard.⁹ Moreover, Bereś critique makes use of a different methodology: as we will see, it is neither Marxism, nor feminism, nor psychoanalysis, but the heritage of national culture that provides the fundamental frame of reference for his artistic method.

Considering the problem of freedom, Bereś defines it by means of the concept of “independence”.¹⁰ Incidentally, he does it by comparing his approach with that of Tadeusz Kantor who, condemning artistic conformity, was much involved in the trends coming from the West.¹¹ Thus, the idea of “independence” gives Bereś a more attractive point of reference: it alludes not only to the freedom of an artist to choose the most suitable means of expression, but also to liberty in a more general, collective sense of the term. The concept of “independence” has been one of the key words of Polish culture, and it is used by Bereś in the context of familiar associations. One of the close observers of the artist’s work, Jerzy Hanusek, writes:

To be independent in a dependent country… To be independent in a totalitarian state in which social life was reduced to an overwhelming system of dependencies. Almost from its beginning the artistic career of Jerzy Bereś has been involved in a quarrel with the system which tolerated independence only in its tamed version…¹²

Bereś himself makes the same point in an even more poignant tone:

I have simply resolved to be an artist working in Poland and not in the PRL [the Polish acronym of the Polish People’s Republic – trans.] That is, I wanted to recognize the difference between the artificial, the PRL-like, and the authentic, the Polish, with the whole drama of the conquered land.¹³

A striking example of such kind of reasoning was a lecture-manifestation, NEW CONTENT.¹⁴ Presenting, as he put it, the dispute on the highest values, Bereś made there a distinction between two dissident attitudes: the attitude of the “tragic hero” and the stand of the “defender of faith”. The former meant identification of the individual with the community – the dissolution, as it were, in the mass of the people; the latter was the stand of a loner who by his individual effort and unique destiny implemented universal values and in that context took responsibility for them. By his simultaneous non-conformity and solidarity with the community, the “defender of faith” opposes various kinds of collective hysteria, such as nationalism or religious fanaticism. On the same occasion, Bereś remembered another idea, that of a “lonely ranger”, introduced once by Albert Camus. According to the French writer, the “lonely ranger”, active outside of the “regular troops”, expresses the ontology and axiology of rebellion, the existential cogito: “I rebel, therefore we are“.¹⁵ The Camusian tension between the singular and the plural refers also to the dilemma of Bereś-an artist who defines his independence in a precisely determined historical context.

The GREAT PHANTOM and other, smaller-scale objects: CLAPPER, DIPLOMATIC PING-PONG, POLISH WHEELBARROW, BOYCOTT, etc., express the same attitude. Sometimes they critique a very specific fragment of the PRL reality (e.g., CLAPPER refers to enthusiasm characteristic of the Gierek rule in the early 70’s, while BOYCOTT alludes to the choice of most artists under the martial law in the early 80’s). Still, these works are only a fragment of the artist’s activity. It seems that Bereś expressed himself much more profoundly in his actions; in the arranged events which he has been organizing since the mid-sixties. He did not agree to call them “happenings” in order not to be incorporated into the artistic establishment and lose his “independence”.¹⁶ The actions not only gave the artist extra opportunities to contact the audience, but also provided him with a wider spectrum of the means of expression. Namely, he could expand the range of raw materials of art – apart from wood, Bereś used also other “pre-materials”, even so archetypal as fire. Another “pre-material” is the body. The naked body of the artist, exposed in all his actions, may be treated as intensification of the previously signalized problem of rawness and purity as well as loneliness of the “defender of faith.” It may be deconstructed in a very specific context of the political situation in Poland from the late 60’s (the first action) until the late 80’s, and the tradition of national identity, in Poland commonly associated with the heritage of romanticism. The exposure of nakedness is then dressing the body in meanings, situating it in a complex system of political and historical references. Tadeusz Nyczek writes:

The set of natural objects used by Bereś includes his own body as a sort of obvious crowning. The body which is naturally naked. If it wears any “garments” or costume, it may at most be a symbolic raiment of a ritual, that is, magic, primary type – such a raiment is also somewhat “natural.” And so sometimes Bereś would dress his body with two pieces of wood tied with a rope covering the genitals, on other occasions he wore a square piece of canvas, usually white or grey, decorated with the elements of a painting that is made during the ritual ceremony.¹⁷

This is another comment, by Ewa Gorządek:

In Bereś’s actions the artist’s body identifies with the material of art… The artist’s nakedness is something as natural and primary as wood or fire used by Bereś in his art. At times the body is treated as an object – it may be painted as a piece of canvas, covered with words – keys to the action, called “a living monument.” Otherwise, as in “Altars,” “Masses,” and “Transformations,” it becomes a subject, acquiring magical and metaphorical meanings as a ritual sacrifice.¹⁸

And finally, the words of Andrzej Kostołowski:

It was no accident, that his art became at that time [in the 60’s – P. P.] even more simple and honest, and that he himself, in order to emphasize his intentions, started appearing naked. The artist’s nakedness is, as it were, intensified purity signifying his distance from the caricaturized masks of the so-called surrounding reality.¹⁹

Now let us concentrate on what Bereś himself says about his body:

Nakedness which I often use in my actions may be explained by:

– the endeavor to keep the activities performed during the action as pure as possible. When I use very simple means (e.g., a piece of canvas or wood), garments become something complicated. An industrial object of a high degree of sophistication. I always try to use the simplest available tools.

– the endeavor to be honest. Significant nakedness is honesty and a manifestation, as it were, of no falsity. It excludes any kind of disguise.

– an almost practical necessity. In many actions I make distinctions on the body with paint. And that could not be done on clothes.²⁰

On another occasion, making a comment on his nakedness, Bereś added: It has nothing to do with eroticism or sexuality.²¹

Let us present a brief description of selected actions. Besides, it should be noted that in almost all manifestations the naked artist touches, as it were, two spheres: political, or even historical, and always local, Polish reality in the broadest sense of the term; and the problem of artist, an artist involved in that context and responsible for the shape of that reality.

A very significant event was the first action of Bereś, PROPHECY I (Foksal Gallery, 1968), and the next one, referring to it and repeated several times, PROPHECY II (Cracow, 1968-1988), concluded with a show PROPHECY II COMES TRUE (Cieszyn, 1989). Ewa Gorządek, already quoted above, writes that Bereś asked in those actions questions about free Poland.²² Let us add that not only; the other question concerned the role of the artist in that process. With the help from the audience, in PROPHECY I Bereś dragged to the gallery a tree felled in the Łazienki Park (no doubt a reminiscence of the GREAT PHANTOM made two years before), and then, wrapped in white and red canvas, he assembled a “work” crowned with a bow with a white and red bow-string made from his “raiment.” PROPHECY II was a response to a violent reaction of the press, taking place in a very tense political situation (the beginning of March 1968). Known as an author of arrogant and ignorant publications, Hamilton [a pen-name – trans.], a journalist of an influential Warsaw weekly “Kultura”, provoked, as it were, Bereś’s action.²³ To a gallery (that time the Cracow “Krzysztofory”) he brought a cartload of firewood. Clad again in a white and red raiment, the artist, helped by the audience, built fires, using copies of “Kultura.” After a while he climbed a high pile of wood (at the same time someone was reading Bereś’s manifesto THE ACT OF CREATION) and made on its top a huge bow with a white and red bow-string. Then he asked for a chip from one of the dying fires, blew off the flame and signed the “work” with the carbonated tip. In the last “prophecy”, shown at equally dramatic historical moment right after the round table negotiations (April 1989), Bereś, repeating some of the elements known from the earlier executions of PROPHECY II, finished the presentation by writing on his body the words “[PROPHECY – P. P.] COMES TRUE” and making a white and red dot on his penis.²⁴

In the “Prophecies” the artist referred to his body as to a “monument.” The same motif was developed in the action MONUMENT OF THE ARTIST (Warcino-Kępice, 1978).²⁵ Bereś, wearing a wooden girdle (perizonium) with an inscription “the body of the artist”, and carrying on his shoulder a flag that bore another inscription, “the spirit of the artist”, walked several kilometers from Warcino to Kępice, dragging – as if it were a wheelbarrow – an oval tree trunk with still another inscription, “monument of the artist.” Having arrived at Kępice, he marked a circle with his feet dipped in white paint, and in that circle he put the wheelbarrow on which he burned the perizonium (“the body of the artist”). After that he put on the robe (flag) with the inscription “the spirit of the artist”, while on the ground he spread a sheet of fabric (an inscription read “contact with the audience”), finally treating the viewers with a shot of vodka.

A sort of summation of the early period of Bereś’s actions (the first ten years) was the action entitled ROMANTIC MASS (Cracow 1978). On his naked body the artist put twelve grey canvas sheets which “documented” his earlier actions, and then taking them off one by one signed each with the title of his earlier manifestations: PROPHECY I, PROPHECY II, BREAD PAINTED BLACK, BREAD PAINTED IN MANY COLORS, TRANSFIGURATION I, TRANSFIGURATION II, AUTHOR’S ALTAR, AUCTION, ALTAR OF THE FACE, SOUVENIR, EROTIC ALTAR, LAP OF HONOR, WOODEN ROAD, FIRE OF ART, RITUAL OF HONESTY, EXISTENTIAL RITUAL, RITUAL OF CULTURE, WORK OF THE LIFE, ARTISTIC MASS, and MONUMENT OF THE ARTIST.²⁶ After that, having hang them on walls, he signed his own body – the final, as he put it, “document”.²⁷ Next, wearing a white sheet with the word written “sacrifice” on it, Bereś chopped pieces of wood and lighted a fire called the “Altar of Fulfillment.” When the fire burned through the construction of the altar that had Been prepared in advance, two big logs loudly hit a gong, which was a signal to begin painting red flowers on the white robe of the artist and to pour red wine in glasses, later covered with a piece of canvas marked as “decoration.” At last, after putting out the fire and taking off the raiment (with the inscription “sacrifice”), Bereś left the room naked.

The beginning of the eighties, with its political tension, the revolt of Solidarity, and the martial law imposed by the authorities intensified Bereś’s activities, putting them in a more dramatic framework. One of the first actions was the WHEELBARROW OF FREEDOM, shown during the “Osieki meeting” in summer 1981 – Ewa Gorządek called it the metaphor of the destiny of Polish people.²⁸ Let us add, that it was a metaphor of a unique kind, since the wheelbarrow became an unintentional symbol of the workers’ revolt against the nomenklatura. It served as a vehicle on which the striking workers would ostentatiously remove from the factories their unwanted managers. Yet, as such, the wheelbarrow did not have even a bit of sublimity – it was plain and quite banal in its irony. Nevertheless, Bereś transformed it into a symbol with a pathetic and dramatic force, just like he did it before with burning newspapers. At Osieki, the naked artist pushed along the park alleys a symbolic – as he stressed it – wheelbarrow (made of dry wood found in a nearby forest), stopping every now and then and writing on his body the following sequence of dates: “1939, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1976, and 1980”,²⁹ – the years of national martyrology in the second half of the 20th century.

A more elaborate action, executed in the fall 1981, was ROMANTIC MANIFESTATION in which the artist used the ROMANTIC CART from 1975 which was then exhibited in the Cracow BWA Gallery. Describing it, we may quote the words of Bereś himself, as they reveal the tensions and emotions that accompanied the event:

This time the situation in the country was such that we were granted permission by the authorities of Cracow, but under the condition that the organizers, and above all the artists, would take the whole responsibility for the action upon himself. There would be no protection provided by the authorities, they stated. I have never been afraid of spectators and I had no idea what they meant. So, on November 18th, 1981, in the afternoon, with some help from the audience, ROMANTIC CART was taken out of the gallery, and from there I set off, pushing it along Szczepańska St. towards the Market Square. I was at the limits of my physical abilities, for the cart was rather heavy, the wheels were rough slices of the trunk, it cracked and wobbled, but it went forward. The onlookers on the Market Square, at first few, turned into a crowd, pressing forward. I stopped between the water pump and the Cloth Hall. My daughter Bettina handed me some white paint and a brush which, apologizing to the people and asking them to move slightly back, I made the inscription in big letters: FIRE OF HOPE, composed in a circle. That was the reason that made the people stand in a broad, compact circle, too. Then I took a bundle of wooden chips off the cart and tore a piece of the “Kultura” weekly pinned on it, and made a stack in the middle of the circle shaped by the letters. When I set the stake on fire, the audience fell silent and, as though hypnotized, watched FIRE OF HOPE, burning still more intensively. In the place of the bundle of chips I tied a bell to the ROMANTIC CART. Leaving a part of the audience contemplating the FIRE OF HOPE, I set off with the cart. Besides creaking, you would hear the bell ringing. In from of the Town Hail, after making an inscription, I lit FIRE OF FREEDOM, and tied a second bell to the cart. On the other side of the Town Hall FIRE OF DIGNITY burnt, and behind the back of Adam Mickiewicz [a figure on the monument – M.W.] there was FIRE OF LOVE. There were four bells ringing on the cart, the crowd grew bigger and bigger; when I reached the other side of the Cloth Hall after painting the inscription I lit the last fire – the FIRE OF TRUTH – at the outlet of Saint John St. It looked at its most beautiful, for the dusk had fallen in the meantime. Five symbolic fires bum around the Cloth Hall on Cracow’s Market Square. There were still people gathering around them, the ROMANTIC CART pushed by me rang with five bells, and when I was leaving the Market Square a hooligan attacked me. A strong man dashed at the cart, kicked it trying to destroy it, but the spectators accompanying me calmed the madman down in time. The rest of the way back was peaceful. On my last legs I reached the gallery pushing the cart all the time. It was carried in and put in its place at the exhibition. But it was now not only a sculpture, but a document of manifestation as well. I thought that the titles of the fires would remain in the Square at least for a few days, as it had been settled with the authorities. Alas, on the same evening they were carefully wiped off.³⁰

In a similar context one may consider two actions shown in the late eighties in Britain: II DIALOGUE WITH MARCEL DUCHAMP (Oxford, 1988) and PICTURE FROM POLAND (London, 1988).³¹ The references to the romantic tradition, however distinct, were confronted there with a different sphere – the tradition of modern art or the avant-garde. Obviously, the latter was present also in earlier works (e.g., ARTISTIC MASS (1978), AVANT-GARDE MASS, (1979), as well as in single objects). The Oxford dialogue with Duchamp had its anticipation in 1981 in Lublin. At that time Bereś gave a critique of the abuse of art which comprised – in his opinion – anti-art and the ready mades introduced by Duchamp. The naked artist played chess with a dressed female model. Each move of a pawn resulted in a line painted on his body, and finally the lines formed a question mark. It may be noteworthy that more than ten years earlier the doubts about the myth of Duchamp were also raised by Joseph Beuys in his action THE SILENCE OF MARCEL DUCHAMP IS OVERRATED (Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet) broadcast by the German TV.³² In fact, Beuys was not the only Fluxus artist representing such an attitude – at least in this respect he was quite close to Bereś. Both Beuys and Bereś rejected Duchamp’s specific kind of nihilism, instead advocating commitment; the utopia of the great art. Let us also digress that in I DIALOGUE WITH DUCHAMP Bereś in a simple way reversed the relation of power defined in terms of gender by Duchamp who, completely dressed, played chess with naked Eva Babitz in the Pasadena Art Museum in 1963. To the same event, and also a rebours, referred Robert Morris in his action WATERMAN SWITCH (1965): the naked artist (and Lucinda Childs) danced to the rhythm set by Yvonne Rainer wearing a full men’s suit (a three-piece suit, a tie, and a hat).³³

In the II DIALOGUE WITH MARCEL DUCHAMP there were no elements of gender difference. Bereś appeared in a hall of the Oxford Museum wearing a wooden perizonium with the inscription “object” which after a while – i.e., after delivering a short talk on the fetishization of the object in art – he hung on a rack. Next, all naked, he started playing chess with himself, and each move of a pawn resulted in painting the fragments of a slowly emerging word “shame.” When the word was completed, the artist stopped playing and said, We in Poland are perfectly aware of the drama of objectification of our subjectivity which took place after the Yalta conference.³⁴ It is obvious that the artist formulated in that way the question of the non-artistic meaning of the fetishization of object in art – i.e., the relationship between the seemingly isolated salon of art (or of anti-art) and the political situation concerning all and everyone in particular. Art or, for that matter, modern art, is not innocent in its general tendency to turn a human being into an object and to deny his/her subjectivity. Somewhat less obvious, at least in the context of that specific action, was the field of positive references. Those, however, were revealed most distinctly in the PICTURE FROM POLAND demonstrated a few days later in London.

That action was simple enough, although – particularly to the foreign (in that specific case, British) audience it must have been quite striking. On his stripped back the artist painted with red paint wales which looked as if they had been made by whipping, and then on the torso he wrote a white question mark ending with a white and red dot on his penis. At last, he asked the audience whether the picture was good or bad, and then there was a discussion concluded with a ballot (the opinion that the picture was good actually prevailed).

Let us note that on that occasion Bereś used the elements of his art which had already been known – at times, he cited them quite literally: the naked body, red wales, a white and red dot. It was important that the artist identified himself (and, what’s more, he did it abroad) with the lot of the Polish people, showing to the audience the picture of national martyrology. Bereś compared his body to Christ’s Ecce Homo, and that was close enough to Mickiewicz’s idea of Poland as the Christ of Nations. Moreover, consciously or not, but anyway in accordance with the tradition of Polish laments, he accused egoistic and – as he said – fetishistic Western culture of complicity in our misfortunes.

It should be emphasized once again that for Bereś the main frame of reference has been the romantic heritage which, in the Polish context, almost always has political significance.³⁵ The romantic tradition is the tradition of Polish struggle for independence, but also of the sacrifice of art and the artist, of its prophetic and cathartic functions. Mapping out the position of artist in Polish society, it is relatively easy to refer to the concept of prophet – an individual suffering for millions, alt alone touching upon the most painful matters of the Polish people. Bereś has been referring to such mythology quite consciously,³⁶ which is why Andrzej Kostołowski compares him to great Polish romantic writers: Mickiewicz, Krasiński, Słowacki, Norwid as well as Wyspiański.³⁷ It is perhaps possible to add the name of the painter, Jacek Malczewski, who combined the vocation of the artist with the prophetic obligation of art. Malczewski would connect individual responsibility of the artist with a vision of the national destiny, and he did it in a particular context of the romantic tradition, though not exclusively, as the interpretive consensus goes, in reference to Słowacki or Mickiewicz, but also with respect to the mythology of the artist formulated by German romanticism.³⁸

Bereś’s actions distinctly foregrounded the motif of the artist as a ritual sacrifice: a stake of wood, fire, simple habiliments, the solemn and silent atmosphere of rite, etc. It is not, however, an abstract sacrifice, but it takes place in a specific context whose traces are definitely recognizable in the white and red coloring of the artist’s raiment, the bow-string, and the paint used to make signs on the body. The sacrifice is then of a distinctly national character; it refers – as it has been mentioned above – to the romantic idea of Poland as Christ-the Redeemer who resurrects when the sacrifice has been made. It is not, though, that Bereś takes that role literally and completely; more a “defender of faith” than a “tragic hero”, he would rather ask a question about the function of such kind of thinking nowadays, in the contemporary world. An almost blunt, virtually journalist commentary on current affairs was the burning of newspapers in PROPHECY II, evidently referring to a slogan of the protesters in March 1968 – “the press lies. ”

In Bereś’s actions there are many recurrent motifs: fire, raw wood, the trace of a human being. The artist refers to the pathos of Polish tradition – the motif of sacrifice – as well as to contemporary symbols, the elements of journalistic commentary, and the topoi of modern culture. With their help he creates critical discourse, asking questions about Polish past and present, and the role of art and the artist’s commitment to reveal the mechanisms controlling our reality. This explains enormous emphasis – on the one hand – on the romantic tradition with its topics and rhetoric, and – on the other – of the tradition of modernism with its specific myths and mystifications. The critique of modernism, however, is never undertaken from a postmodern point of view. As it has already been claimed, Bereś not only does not reject “grand narratives”, but even reactivates them – exactly for that purpose he has been using the heritage of Polish romanticism. Still, otherwise he neutralizes the “grand narratives”, at times even reducing them to the level of banality, combining a “sublime subject matter” with some trivial thing borrowed from every-day reality: a wheelbarrow, the audience casting votes about the quality of the “picture”, a burning newspaper etc. This combination of pathos and journalistic commitment allows him to maintain a critical stance, but also to keep a certain distance from current life.

I believe that the artist’s body, his nakedness demonstrated in public, is the proper focus on Bereś’s attitude and his artistic method. Let us then ask a question about the meaning of the body in a specific context, that is, in Poland between 1968 and 1989. It should be stressed that the dates of the actions overlap with distinct historical boundaries: the first action mentioned in the paper (PROPHECY I) anticipated March 1968, the last – (PROPHECY II COMES TRUE) – immediately followed the signing of “round table” agreements.

First of all, though, let us make a distinction between two things: the nude and nakedness. The former is just form, a conventional “costume” of nakedness; the latter is the absence of form, a non-artistic state. The former signifies conventional beauty, an artistic expression of aesthetic tendencies to shape the human body. But not only that. According to John Berger, in the nude one may perceive the relations of power defined in the context of gender. The nude (here: female) strips the portrayed person of her subjectivity – it is painted for the beholder who is the subject. The painted model, or lover, is shown to the man.³⁹ Consequently, the nude, understood in this way, has become an object of penetrating critique, in particular from a feminist point of view. The most noteworthy in this respect is a study by Linda Nead, a polemic with the famous book by Kenneth Clark.⁴⁰ Nead’s study is very interesting because the author not only launches a critique of the modernist canon of the interpretation of female body, but because she demonstrates how contemporary art made by women attempts to challenge the canonicity of the representation of female body as such. This, Nead writes, is the source of “obscenity” of the nude in the literal, etymological sense of the word. According to Clark, the nude is a form of art, an “ideal”, nakedness that is conventionalized, i.e., put on the scene. The nakedness which breaks out of the systems of artistic representation, nakedness as a fact – that of a woman-artist, the subject of communication – is the nakedness beyond the scene (beyond culture), and thus “obscenity” itself.

However, the nakedness of Bereś is neither nude nor obscenity. It cannot be considered in the context of gender critique. In fact – as the artist himself would put it – his nakedness appears beyond the sphere of sexual connotations,⁴¹ which does not mean that it has not been interpreted in that way. Paweł Leszkowicz writes:

Among them [i.e., the artists who perform happenings – P.P.], the most unusual figure is Jerzy Bereś who has been exploiting his own body. Naked women could be seen quite often, but a naked man was in the socialist culture an absolute taboo (and he is, by the way, until now), something unimaginable and intolerable. Male genitals in themselves have been a challenge to all restrictions, a symptom of anarchy – their presence has been censored as strictly as the most subversive political tendencies.⁴²

The meaning of nakedness, writes Mario Perniola, reveals itself first of all in the context of its opposition to clothes.⁴³ The cultures of the Near East, including Judaism, interpreted nakedness in terms of degradation, humiliation, and submission. The symbol of power and domination were garments. Naked were the slave, prisoner, and prostitute: dressed were the priest and ruler. Greeks reversed that relationship – to them, nakedness (here: male) was not associated with shame, defamation or derision; on the contrary, it meant the glory of victory and paradigmatic purity. A classical metaphor of the “naked truth” documents an ancient belief that the truth may be seen, for the interior (the soul) presents itself in the exterior, visually perceptible mortal coil (the body). Then Christianity returned to the Judaic tradition: the attire became a symbol of glory and power, although nakedness (male nakedness again) was not ignored, but – conversely – acquired precise meanings, occupying the very centre of Christian iconography.⁴⁴ Nakedness is the evidence of guilt (naked Adam) and damnation as well as suffering and death (Christ and martyrs). The pathos of nakedness is most poignant when it relates to the representation of sacrifice. Christ was stripped of his clothes to be humiliated, but thanks to that God could partake in humanity.

The nakedness of Bereś challenges the tradition the male nude with its sexual, heroic, and idealistic connotations drawn from the classic heritage of modern European art.⁴⁵ Even though one of the crucial points of for Bereś’s art is the heritage of romanticism, it is obvious that his nakedness be considered in the context of the tradition, but rather in relation to the medieval, mystical, and anti-classical tradition of Christianity. In such a context, the body of the artist is not pure – it cannot stand for the zero-point, the absolute rawness that may be formed again. It is laden with meanings as it is – naked. Here we are approaching the problem of the pre-existence of meaning which may be ascribed to the body in Bereś’s art; the pre-existence that is quite consciously proclaimed by the artist. When Bereś says that nakedness is “purity” or “honesty”, when he claims it to be “primary”, he does not really create anything, but he evokes or refers to these concepts with all their history. Just like, in the words of Jacques Derrida, the language of Western metaphysics is not neutral,⁴⁶ the body of the artist is not innocent either. Actually, its supposed “rawness” or “purity” and “honesty” emphasized by the artist⁴⁷ are dressed in the pathos of such meanings as humiliation and degradation, but also – according to the function of ritual sacrifice – resurrection.

In the political context of communist Poland Bereś ignored the postmodern universe of discourses and referred to the “grand narratives” of Polish romanticism, revealing their disruptive significance both in the national and individual dimension. Realizing that the authorities also looked for their legitimation in romanticism (which could be seen, for instance, in school syllabuses, in the military-heroic rhetoric of the martial law propaganda, in the pantheon of Polish romantic heroes largely accepted and manipulated by the regime, etc.), we can understand the unfavorable attitude of communist aparatchiks towards Bereś’s art.⁴⁸ Bereś referred to the romantic foundation of national identity not as a “tragic hero”, but as a “defender of faith”: he stripped his body not as a victor crowned with the laurel of glory, but as a victim and an initiated priest. The naked body of Bereś is the opposite of the (half)naked sculpted heroes standing in front of the Warsaw Palace of Culture. It is clear that such connotations were contrary to the manner in which communists looked for their legitimation in romanticism. They may, however, have had a sense of an already fulfilled prophecy as those who embodied the romantic dream about Polish independence.

Asexual and devoid of eroticism, Bereś’s body is a symbol of resurrection and revival of a – paradoxically – spiritual character. Burnt on the altar like his perizonium in the action MONUMENT OF THE ARTIST, thanks to a mystical transformation it changes into an immortal spirit, opposite to drab reality of the flesh, so despised by romantics.

Bereś’s resistance is then directed both against the communist usurpers and – what must be stressed – against contemporary postmodern culture. His body is more mystical than physical in character, it does not signify pleasure, sexual tensions or eroticism, it is not a critique of sexism and patriarchal hierarchy, etc., but a sign of sacrifice, transformation, independence, and national identity. Unlike the artifacts and gestures of postmodernism, it is instrumental with respect to the spirit. Paradoxically, however, the art of Bereś has been supported and appreciated by (post)modernists and not by conservatives. The latter, e.g. the Catholic Church, rejected it as adamantly as the communists, which was demonstrated, for example, by a 1984 discussion in the Papal Theological Academy in Cracow.⁴⁹ The (post)modernists accept Bereś’s art because of its form, that is, actions or “performances”, even though the artist himself would not adopt this term, just as some time earlier he objected to the concept of “happening”.⁵⁰

The problem is that in Central Europe, and particularly in Poland, the current dominants of artistic and ideological identity are different than in the West. Marxism, one of the basic modernist and postmodernist instruments of the critique of the bourgeois world, in Poland used to be considered conservative, if not outright reactionary. On the other hand, such conservative ideologies as Catholicism, especially in the version of the present Pope, which elsewhere has been labelled by radical critics as reactionary, in Poland – at least till the end of the previous decade – was recognized as revolutionary. In Poland, then, the system of ideological references, and in particular their historical identification, functions according to completely different principles than in the developed countries of the West. Eventually, one can say that Jerzy Bereś, an artist who is ideologically conservative, and not only by the mode of presentation but also by the historical context, became critical of the previous status quo, and his actions acquired the status of art of resistance – paradoxically, almost precisely in the sense specified by Hal Foster. Moreover, it acquired that status just because it used a thoroughly traditional, logocentric – to repeat after Jacques Derrida – system of ideological reference, including such ideas as truth, love, freedom, and independence as well as the symbols of sacrifice, resurrection, and national identity.

translated by Marek Wilczyński

1
J. Bereś. Nie jestem rzeźbiarzem [I Am Not a Sculptor]. Odra No 11. 1978. p. 49.
2
[J. Bereś] Jestem za otwarciem dialogu [I Am for Starting a Dialogue]. Interwiew by Ł. Guzek and W. Bosak. Tumult, No 6, 1990, p. 45.
3
Ibidem
4
Cf. Bereś. Rzeźby [Bereś. Sculptures], Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej BWA, Częstochowa 1993 (pages unnumbered).
5
Ibidem
6
H. Foster, For a Concept of the Political in Contemporary Art, in H. Foster, Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, Bay Press, Seattle, WA, 1985, pp. 154-155.
7
Jestem za otwarciem dialogu [I Am for Starting a Dialogue], op. cit., p. 41.
8
Cf. in particular: J. Bereś, Zwidy, wyrocznie. ołtarze. Szkic autobiograficzny [Phantoms, Oracles, Altars. An Autobiographical Sketch], Grupa Krakowska, Cracow 1991; J. Bereś, Moje kontakty z Tadeuszem Kantorem i Grupą Krakowską w latach sześćdziesiątych [My Contacts with Tadeusz Kantor and the Cracow Group in the Sixties], in: Cricot 2, Grupa Krakowska i Galeria Krzysztofory w latach 1960-1970 [Cricot 2, the Cracow Group and Krzysztofory Gallery in 1960-1970], Grupa Krakowska, Cracow 1991, p. 3 ff.; J. Bereś, O awangardzie w Polsce i w Krakowie [On Avant-Garde in Poland and in Cracow], in: Grupa Krakowska. Dokumenty i materiały, Cz. VII [The Cracow Group: Documents and Materials, Part VII], Grupa Krakowska, Cracow 1992; J. Bereś, Trup, czy nie trup? Czyli jeszcze o awangardzie i Grupie Krakowskiej [A Corpse or Not a Corpse? Some More Remarks on Avant-Garde and the Cracow Group], in: Grupa Krakowska: Dokumenty i materiały, Cz. XII [The Cracow Group: Documents and Materials, Part XII], Grupa Krakowska, Cracow 1993, p. 3 ff.
9
J.-F. Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne. Rapport sur le savoir, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris 1979.
10
J. Bereś, Moje kontakty z Tadeuszem Kantorem… [My Contacts with Tadeusz Kantor…], op. cit., p. 6.
11
Ibidem, p. 6.
12
J. Hanusek, Gorzka ballada o artyście [A Bitter Ballad on An Artist], in: Grupa Krakowska: materiały i dokumenty, Cz. XI [The Cracow Group: Materials and Documents, Part XI], Grupa Krakowska, Cracow 1993, pp. 209-210.
13
J. Bereś, Moje kontakty z Tadeuszem Kantorem… [My Contacts with Tadeusz Kantor…], op. cit., p. 4.
14
J. Bereś, Nowa treść. New Content, Galeria Krzysztofory, Cracow 1986.
15
A. Camus, L’Homme révolté, Editions Gallimard, Paris 1952
16
Jestem za otwarciem dialogu [I Am for Starting a Dialogue], op. cit., pp. 45-46.
17
T. Nyczek, Jerzy Bereś: święta codzienności [Jerzy Bereś: Holy/Every Day], in: Sztuka otwarta. Paratheater, Cz. I [The Open Art. Paratheater, Part I], Ośrodek Teatru Otwartego ‘Kalambur’. Wrocław 1980. pp. 72-73.
18
E. Gorządek, Ciało i duch artysty czyli o sztuce Jerzego Beresia [The Flesh and Spirit of the Artist, or on Jerzy Bereś’s Art], Magazyn Sztuki, No 2-3, 1994. p. 8.
19
A. Kostołowski, Jerzy Bereś – czas i statyka [Jerzy Bereś – Time and Statics] in: Jerzy Bereś. Zwidy, Wyrocznie, Ołtarze. Phantoms, Oracles, Altars, Galeria BWA, Lublin 1990, pages unnumbered.
20
J. Bereś, Nie jestem rzeźbiarzem [I Am Not a Sculptor], op. cit., p. 51.
21
Jestem za otwarciem dialogu [I Am for Starting a Dialogue], op. cit., p. 45.
22
E. Gorządek, op. cit., pp. 6-7.
23
J. Bereś, Zwidy, wyrocznie, ołtarze. Szkic auto-biograficzny [Phantoms. Oracles, Altars. An Autobiographical Sketch], op. cit., pages unnumbered.
24
J. Bereś, Opis wydarzenia w Cieszynie 6.04.1989 [A Description of an Event in Cieszyn, April 6. 1989], in: Grupa Krakowska: Dokumenty i materiały, Cz. I [The Cracow Group: Documents and Materials, Part I], Grupa Krakowska, Cracow 1991, pp. 76-77.
25
Plener pytań [Plein Air Meeting of Questions], ed. Andrzej Kostołowski, MAW, Warsaw 1980.
26
[Jerzy Bereś] in: Grupa Krakowska: dokumenty i materiały, Cz. II [The Cracow Group: Documents and Materials, Part II], Grupa Krakowska, Cracow 1991, p. 81.
27
Ibidem
28
E. Gorządek, op. cit., p. 10.
29
J. Bereś, Zwidy, wyrocznie, ołtarze. Szkic autobiograficzny [Phantoms, Oracles, Altars. An Autobiographical Sketch], op. cit., pages unnumbered.
30
Ibidem
31
Cf. [J. Bereś] Wszystko jest zdezintegrowane i funkcjonuje na nieprzecinających się orbitach [Everything is Disintegrated and Functions on Non-Intersecting Orbits], interwiew by M. Tarabuła, Magazyn Artystyczny No 3 (64), 1989.
32
Cf. e.g. Joseph Beuys, ed. C. Tisdall, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1979, p. 92; Cf. also a discussion about Beuys’ New York exhibition and his relation to Duchamp: B. Buchloh, R. Krauss, A. Micholson, Joseph Beuys at the Guggenheim, October, No 12, Spring 1980.
33
Robert Morris, The Mind/Body Problem, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1994, p. 178.
34
J. Bereś, Zwidy, Wyrocznie, Ołtarze. Szkic autobiograficzny [Phantoms, Oracles, Altars. An Autobiographical Sketch], op. cit., pages unnumbered.
35
Cf. e.g. L. Kamiński, Romantyzm i ideologia [Romanticism and Ideology], Ossolineum, Wrocław 1980.
36
Cf. E. Gorządek, op. cit., p. 10.
37
A. Kostołowski, Jerzy Bereś – czas i statyka [Jerzy Bereś – Time and Statics], op. cit., pages unnumbered.
38
A. Ławniczakowa, Jacek Malczewski…, National Museum Poznań, Poznań 1990, pp. 17-19, 28-30, 54, 116; A[nastazja] Labuda, Koncepcja artysty i sztuki w twórczości Jacka Malczewskiego [The Idea of Artist and Art in the Work of Jacek Malczewski], typescript, Instytut Historii Sztuki UAM.
39
J. Berger, Ways of Seeing, BBC, Penguin. London 1972, p. 52 ff.
40
L. Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality, Routledge, London 1992; K. Clark, The Nude. A Study of Ideal Art, John Murray, London 1956.
41
Jestem za otwarciem dialogu [I Am for Starting a Dialogue], op. cit., p. 45.
42
P. Leszkowicz, Motywy seksualne w sztuce PRL-u [Sexual Motifs in the Art of Communist Poland], typescript.
43
M. Perniola, Between Clothing and Nudity, in: Fragments for a History of the Human Body. ed. M. Feher, Part II, Zone Books, New York 1989. p. 237 ff.
44
M. Walters, The Nude Male. A New Perspective, Peddington Press, New York 1978, p. 66 ff.
45
Ibidem, p. 94 ff.
46
[E.g. J. Derrida, De la Grammatologie, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris 1967. Among a large number of summaries and comments on Derrida’s ideas and their Impact on the humanities cf., in particular, J. Culler, On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, Cornell University Press, Ithaca. N. Y., 1982.
47
J. Bereś, Nie jestem rzeźbiarzem [I Am Not a Sculptor], op. cit.. p. 51.
48
Cf. e.g. J. Bereś. Zwidy, wyrocznie, ołtarze. Szkic autobiograficzny [Phantoms, Oracles, Altars. An Autobiographical Sketch], op. cit.
49
Jestem za otwarciem dialogu [I Am for Starting a Dialogue], op. cit., p. 44; J. Bereś, Zwidy, wyrocznie. ołtarze. Szkic autobiograficzny [Phantoms, Oracles, Altars. An Autobiographical Sketch], op. cit.. pages unnumbered.
50
Wszystko jest zdezintegrowane… [Everything Is Disintegrated…]. op. cit., p. 9.

Jerzy Bereś

Piotr Piotrowski: The Artist’s Body (1995)

jerzy
bereś

maria
pinińska
bereś

Jerzy Bereś

Piotr Piotrowski: The Artist’s Body (1995)

jerzybereś

mariapinińskabereś

jerzy
bereś

maria
pinińska
bereś