BEAUTY AND THE BEAST – Stanisław Wyspiański
The work devoted to Wyspiański is entitled “Beauty and the beast”, and composed of two parts: a painting and a photocollage. These are two shots of Stanisław and Teofila from their wedding session, in which the artist’s wife, nine months pregnant, is sitting on a chair and Wyspiański is standing next to her. In the painting, which uses a convention close to photography, the wife’s head is not visible, replaced with a stain, a rub, which deprives her of her identity, making Wyspiański himself all the more prominent. In the photocollage, on the other hand, Teofila is presented in all her glory, so to speak, while her husband is standing next to her. This is the figure of the artist, who has a different face – that of the work’s author. The work itself is inspired by an analysis of the relationship between Stanisław and Teofila, which was one of the most rejected by the milieu, in which “she” was perceived as the opposite of the genius husband. This was me facing up to the fear of what might have been… In memories of Wyspiański one may find the account of Teofila calling her husband “Lala”, which in the regional dialect meant “the beautiful one”. In the Wyspiański household, was there the beauty and the beast? Was it the domineering husband who was the “beauty” and his wife the “beast”? I suggest a need to look into the history of the couple, in which the role of neither of the spouses is self-evident.
Another series of works uses photographs from archives once again, and the stylisation of the picture brings to mind the effect of a damaged photograph, in which – despite the crumpling, tearing – the gaze of Wyspiański reaches the viewer. The triptych of collages, “Stanisław W’s anxiety”, makes a reference to Wyspiański’s illness and the difficult therapy, which caused hallucinations and excessive nervousness of the artist. These side effects were the reason many saw the artist as mentally ill.
A personal relation is part of the context for each of the figures described above, an identification with someone close, a way of taming fear. If fascinations can make up part of a “self-portrait” then this is precisely the case here.