Shine kills color
Maciej Przybylski was interviewed by Małgorzata Czyńska
When did you add sand to paint for the first time?
Five or six years ago. The flat surface of my paintings simply started to irritate me. This
concept of a painting as a mirror or window – it sort of dried up for me. I was bothered by a story I had once heard about how painting was taught in art schools in Russia, where supposedly professors, before making a visual correction, touch paintings and run their hand from top to bottom of the canvas, checking if there are any gaps between the positions of the paint. If there are any, the painting is not evaluated at all. Such treatment of the painting surface as something sacred kindles a rebellious streak inside of me. And although matter painting has a long tradition in our country, I still felt that I was committing a sacrilege by adding sand to the paint.
Let’s get back to the beginnings. Why did you choose fine arts?
Art took a really strong hold on me, so I couldn't have chosen otherwise. At some point it was the only thing which made sense to me, which made me want to live. Towards the end of primary school I took up two fields of art at the same time - music and visual art. I was so much into it... But whenever I was asked how I would earn a living, I would answer provocatively that I would probably become a confectioner. I went to an art high school, and shortly afterwards also enrolled myself in a music high school, and more specifically, in the double bass class. The art high school disappointed me to so much that towards the end of my studies there I thought: "no more art". And this is where a surprising thing happened: I failed my drawing exam. On a side note: It is drawing that I've already been teaching for twenty-five years so far. Having passed my maturity exam, I ended up in a post-secondary construction school
still intending to retake entrance exams to the Faculty of Architecture. In the mornings I went to music school, in the afternoon – to that construction school, and in the evenings I was all into drawing. I quickly decided to present my portfolio to the Academy of Fine Arts (then still PWSSP) in Poznań. It didn’t take me too much time to choose my major, because I had just happened to see Goya's graphics from the "The Disasters of War" series at an exhibition, and I chose to study graphics, metal techniques.
What a great founding myth! Who taught you?
I studied graphics under the supervision of Professor Tadeusz Jackowski from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Plenty of artists from Krakow came to us at that time, including Jacek Waltoś and Jerzy Kałucki. The 1980s was a golden age of the Poznań school. I studied drawing with Professor Bogdan Wojtasiak, and painting with Włodzimierz Dudkowiak, but it is Bogdan that I consider to be my artistic father. I think I had that kind of bond with him that made me feel sure that I was doing the right thing. A lot of people I met at the university inspired me. It was an extraordinary experience to belong to a community that created ideas. I believe that all the people you meet in your artistic life and not only them co-create your identity. And this is what I am very grateful for to all those people.
I’ve heard you were a figurative painter for a long time.
I was a self-proclaimed and ardent figurative painter and a portraitist. Throughout my studies, I was fascinated by the human body and such artists as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud were extremely important to me. Then I discovered Balthus and the thing I liked about him was that he interfered to a large extent with the order of the seen reality.
So no longer realism, but magical realism.
Exactly. I felt also drawn by the Spanish artist Antonio López García, the father of the Madrid school of hyperrealism. All those things felt close to me. And then the crisis came: I felt like I had hit my head against a wall and decided to change everything. It was my moment of transition. I took an interest in psychology, which began to manifest itself in the mood of my works, in the attempt to translate my emotional states into painting. I started becoming aware of mental activity, even the unconscious one.
Is it in psychology that we should seek the foundation of your art?
It wasn't that I found inspiration to create my paintings in psychology. I would rather say that it gave me a sense of freedom, that it sanctioned what I was doing. I started to look inside myself. Of course, the first book that I read in that field was Freud's "Introduction to Psychoanalysis". Then I became fascinated by Carl Gustav Jung. Some of his texts made me aware of certain fields about the existence of which I had had no idea before. I painted a series of expressive black paintings that were certainly inspired by my emotional states. I found my ideological anchor. I stick to Max Ernst's saying that you should have one eye
turned outward and the other inward.
You like experimenting in your paintings. Do you paint in series?
My paintings change a lot, as does the language I use. I like exploring new ideas. Whenever I run out of a statement, a new idea is already sprouting. Interestingly, sometimes I notice that some works from years ago could fit perfectly well into my new series. Certain ideas pop up occasionally, but they are not always powerful enough to resonate. When in a series with other paintings, they start resonating, as a series allows you to explore a given theme, mood and language.
Do music and painting work well together for you?
When I was young, music was an expression of my rebellious spirit and a kind of pleasure for me, but I didn’t feel it was connected with painting. The reflection that things were different, that these were interconnected fields, came while I was working on one of those black paintings. I was listening to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring". When the painting was almost ready, I turned on Mahler's 5th Symphony, and suddenly I saw that the music did not fit my painting at all. And the question arose whether "The Rite of Spring" was simply in line with my mental state at the time, or maybe it was so integrated with the experience of the process of creating the painting that Mahler seemed unbearable at that moment. Today I believe that it was an intermedia experience, that music can retune our perception of the painting, but I believe that it also applies to everyday sensations.
It gave me the impetus to explore the topic in my PhD thesis, where I analyzed the interactions between the musical and painting avant-garde in Europe. Now I am consciously moving in this direction, I make unambiguous references to musical issues. My two latest paintings are titled "Polyphony of Sighs" [Polifonia westchnień] and "Polyrhythm of Events" [Polirytmia zdarzeń], there have also been cycles titled after numbers of compositions belonging to opuses, but also titles such as caprice, etude, etc. Finally, music also resounds in my paintings. I also started performative activities with my friend Mikołaj Fajfer under the name of Laboratory of Sound [Laboratorium dźwięk]. We study the phenomenon of resonance, the activity of the brain of the musician and the listener. It is almost a spiritual field that is created between people. Some perceive this phenomenon of resonance as a tool enriching communities. But back to the topic of painting, it is not like I need a musical background to paint. We perceive the world with multiple senses.
It is often said about artists that "they have got ready for abstract painting". Is abstract painting for the experienced?
Everyone follows their own path to abstract painting. But looking at myself, or at the young people I work with, I can see that abstract painting is something to be achieved after what is usually a time-consuming process. I myself started to consciously reach for abstract forms only about fifteen years ago. But as I have already mentioned, everyone has their own path.
You pour sand onto your paintings, you like putting different materials onto the canvas to build texture.
Texture is important, it is a sort of provocation. Painting on different surfaces triggers or even intensifies my sensitivity but also inspires me. I look for the form of my paintings no sooner than once I start painting them. Painting a picture is a process in which I participate. We supposedly control this process, but a part of it happens outside our consciousness. I entitled my postdoctoral thesis "In Search of the Border Between Order and Chaos" [W poszukiwaniu granicy między porządkiem a chaosem], which referred to consciousness on the one hand, and to the unconscious on the other hand. I was already aware that there are mental forces that, I don't want to say that they know better, but they know it differently.
Do you like it when a painting surprises you?
I love it. I like it when something happens when I paint that throws me off the process, when
a moment of problematizing what I'm doing occurs. If I manage to
overcome the problem, something unexpected is revealed. The interference with matter in
the painting is an attempt to make it harder to place a spot, because matter itself paints
the color - red is something totally different on a smooth and on a rough surface.
I like the roughness of your paintings. It makes them nobler.
I like roughness, matt. Shine kills color.
