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Title the Art of paint in Hand: An obscure artist was discovered, and quickly shelved.

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Make evidence of your Weakness,

strike meek and be destroyed by the hidden Horse,

such a building that made Walls that Doors Opened,

look to the Hinge and the Stores are the Wheat that bundle.


These days most people in the established art world see art through the lens of politics, social issues, obtuse philosophy, rarefied art theory, and radical ideology. It took outsider, underground types of artists, cartoonists, and collectors — the variety the contemporary art cognoscenti turn their noses up at — to see the obvious with their own eyes. A visually literate person need only spend a minute with the drawing above to sense that Szukalski possessed extraordinary skill. And we all know skill is poo-pooed in favor of the grandiose idea: the IDEA of putting a shark in a tank; taping a banana to a wall; exhibiting one’s unkempt bed; canning one’s shit; and going all the way back to exhibiting a urinal tilted on its side. And this kind of drawing? Well, it’s considered fossilized dinosaur shit as far as the unwitting extremist ideologues of the art world are concerned.

There is a very large part of the art world that thinks the purpose of art is to further a revolutionary social agenda, and that anything that doesn’t accomplish that is at best irrelevant, and at worst upholding the status quo (and thus is part of the problem).

But for those of us who know how to draw, and can fathom the skill necessary to make something like the drawing above, it is, like it or not, far too good to ignore. Just pause, look at the strings in the harp that is the bow, note how their shadows fall across the forearm, and then are further cast onto the backdrop. That exacting level of intricacy is so accomplished that it’s intimidating.

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ART CRITICISM

Stanislaw Szukalski: The Master Who Fell Through the Cracks.

“Bow & Arrow to Oppression.” Ireland (Predators Make Empires), Szukalski, 1932.

An obscure artist was discovered, and quickly shelved.

These days most people in the established art world see art through the lens of politics, social issues, obtuse philosophy, rarefied art theory, and radical ideology. It took outsider, underground types of artists, cartoonists, and collectors — the variety the contemporary art cognoscenti turn their noses up at — to see the obvious with their own eyes. A visually literate person need only spend a minute with the drawing above to sense that Szukalski possessed extraordinary skill. And we all know skill is poo-pooed in favor of the grandiose idea: the IDEA of putting a shark in a tank; taping a banana to a wall; exhibiting one’s unkempt bed; canning one’s shit; and going all the way back to exhibiting a urinal tilted on its side. And this kind of drawing? Well, it’s considered fossilized dinosaur shit as far as the unwitting extremist ideologues of the art world are concerned.

There is a very large part of the art world that thinks the purpose of art is to further a revolutionary social agenda, and that anything that doesn’t accomplish that is at best irrelevant, and at worst upholding the status quo (and thus is part of the problem).

But for those of us who know how to draw, and can fathom the skill necessary to make something like the drawing above, it is, like it or not, far too good to ignore. Just pause, look at the strings in the harp that is the bow, note how their shadows fall across the forearm, and then are further cast onto the backdrop. That exacting level of intricacy is so accomplished that it’s intimidating.

The Ancestral Helmet, by Szukalski, 1940.

This is Szukalski’s unique skill — and which he excels at more than any other I’m aware of — modeling imaginative forms in three dimensional pictorial space. In “The Ancestral Helmet” above, the artist places the woman’s eye precisely in the opened rear mouth of the face on the helmet. This is something a digital artist might accomplish with a 3D sculpt, after spinning it around in real time until the perfect angle emerges. But Szukalski, as a sculptor who learned to negotiate three dimensions in his teens, was able to rotate figures in his imagination, and then draw them not with line, but by laying down dots.

You can see the dots clearly in the drawing above.

The Orator.

Looking at just the images I’ve shared, if one hasn’t seen his work before, one would notice some other outstanding features. The figures are monumental, dramatic, stylized, and exaggerated. It would be impressive if they were naturalistic, but in veering from what exists, while creating the impression of space and solidity, he manifests his unique vision. That heroic vision, one would also sense, has an odd but familiar look about it. There’s an angularity reminiscent of Art Deco, but something grandiose, even propagandist about it. Something is being idealized, heralded as noble, the strong, the good, and perhaps the pure. And that’s where things get a little sticky. I detect a mid-century, East European feel about it, and that, in the extreme, raises some less than wholesome plausible connections.

Szukalski, before his sculpture, Kraków, in 1936. That insignia he’s wearing is his own design, the “heart of thorns”, and, well, this isn’t his best took, to be sure.

There is even much evidence, in his obsession over his own wild theories, that he may have suffered from a mental imbalance.

The question of, “can we separate the art from the artist?” comes into play in Szukalski’s biography, though that may tend to a very predictable, knee-jerk reaction that doesn’t take into account the full scope or the man, or the art. It’s popular now to discover the worst thing we can about an artist, extrapolate that it permeates the fiber of his being and poisons his oeuvre like a cancer, and then we demand his works be purged from the canon. It may strike some as curious that in the realm of contemporary art theory, the notion of inclusion features an excess of condemnation and exclusion. We might do better to be less eager at the guillotine, and instead look for the good in the lives of others, and appreciate their accomplishments and gifts. What makes Szukalski great is specifically that his vision is so out of sync with the dominant strains of 20th century art, both in terms of style and content, but is nevertheless highly developed, compelling, and expertly crafted.

[People are a bit dim in recent times when it comes to the issue of art and morality. Their thinking on the topic is as nuanced as a refrigerator light: ALL ART MUST BE CORRECT, OR ELSE IT IS GARBAGE! For a take with a few more firings of neurons in the noodle, you can brush up on my article: Is Immoral Art Bad Art?]


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