Beksiński’s 1985 Crucifixion — Art Criticism
Original Title: Untitled
Artist: Zdzisław Beksiński
Date: 1985
Movement: Dystopian Surrealism
Medium: Oil on fiberboard
Location: Historical Museum in Sanok, Poland
Zdizislaw Beksinski (1929–2005) is one of the most well-known surrealist artists in the world. His paintings, sculptures, photographs, and works created with advanced artistic techniques blur the line between elite art for connoisseurs and art patrons and popular art that is shared from blog to blog and occupies a wide niche in numerous social networks. Fans regard him as a master of our time, a rare artist who saw the boundary between the physical and the spiritual, who brought together historical metamorphoses and natural transformations, who revealed all borders and transformation on the poor human body, in the geography of the face, and in all places around the world, where each and everyone will be confronted with the horrors and fears produced by his own self.
Beksinski graduated from Cracow University of Technology in 1952, with a degree in architecture. He returned to his hometown of Sanok and even worked as a construction site supervisor for a time. However, he soon abandoned it, and during the early stages of his artistic development, he focused on modern photography and photo collage techniques. He also created a large number of innovative modern sculptures and most importantly, painting. Beksiski had been involved in painting since the early 60s. His paintings started out as abstract and evolved into realism. According to art experts, his most productive time was between the 1960s and 1980s, where the majority of his recognized ‘signature’ pieces were created. From abstract, Beksinski had progressed to portrait and the crucifixion theme by that time. Beksinski firmly claimed that he was an atheist. Despites the fact that the forms of his paintings always evoke a wide range of Christian signs and symbols, from Christ’s birth to the apocalypse. One of the examples is this crucifix painting, with no title, made in 1985.
As viewers can see, the vertically oriented canvas depicts a mountainous area with a cross and a man crucified on it. The rock takes up only half of the space. The top of the rocks are covered with grass. A dark sprawling tree with an almost spherical crown as high as half the rock may be found in the left lower corner. A tower with a conic top stands between the trees on the right side of the painting, and its silhouette vaguely visible against the sky. At the very bottom of the stone wall there is a door located on the central vertical axis of the painting. Like the door, the cross installed on the top of the rock is also standing on the central vertical axis. The cross is T-shaped; its horizontal bar is parallel to the upper edge of the canvas. On the cross, there is a skeleton of the crucified.
Despite the large number of people executed by crucifixion throughout human history, a cross is connected with Christ’s death following His crucifixion, which was also caused by the executed apostles imploring their crosses not to be comparable to His. Such a strong association of a cross with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, present in the Christian tradition, at first sight brings us to assumption that it is the crucifixion of Christ presented to the viewers. The canonical depiction of the cross, however, contains some inconsistencies. First of all, the crucified have decomposed, leaving only the fleshless bones that have bleached with time. Secondly, the cross is sole, the canonical depiction of the cross assumes the presence of several characters, including the Holy Mother, John, warriors, and others. To summarize these inconsistencies, we can say that in the depicted worldview, God has decomposed, resurrection is ruled out, and consequently, so is The Second Coming (and therefore, the Last Judgment and Eternity). The general dark blue tone of the painting, the starless night (literal end of the world), and the complete absence of people all contribute to the feeling of hopelessness. The T-shape of the cross: the Hebrew alphabet’s last letter, taw, is also associated with the end of the world.
When we compare the size of the stone wall door, the trees at the foot of the rock, and the skeleton on the cross, we face the following question: who crucified God if people are smaller than his foot? What was the source of the devine’s defeat? Even speculation on who it might be is terrifying, because realization of the force superior to the divine is catastrophic in itself. Because humankind, weak as it is and weak in the face of God, is deprived of the last hope, the last arch, in such a world. If God has been crucified, it means that mysterious forces are in control of him; it was also not a battle in which both fighters died (there are no more prostate bodies except for those who have been crucified). It implies that the human is left alone in the world, confronted with forces that overwhelm not only the human, but also the divine. In such a situation, the miserly reduction of human forces is also caused by a lack of understanding of who the enemy is, who the greatest threat is, and who or what will bring the inevitable and horrifying death.
In one of Beksinski’s interviews from 1989, Beksinski added that during all the periods of his life, the greatest influence on his art was made by Franz Kafka, a surrealist novelist who wrote the famous ‘The Metamorphosis’. Most of Beksinski’s content was contributed into works by the audience, not by himself. Maybe that was the reason why he never gave any title to his works, because he believed that titles may mislead the viewer’s thinking: title suggests a certain interpretation. Leading it farther and farther away from the art pieces themselves, of which Beksinski himself used to say: “Because I don’t know what I painted”. In the late 90s, after he paid much attention to painting, Beksinski decided to engage himself with digital photography, using computers and photocopiers for creating his artworks. He continued doing so until his tragic murder in his own house in 2005. However, his general “fantastic” style remained unchanged to this day.
Source:
- Slavomir, Zigmunt. Interview with Zdzisław Beksiński of 1989
- Kazimir Malevich’s Philosophic Understanding of Art and Life.
- Wikimedia
