Hi,

Halloween is nearing, but don't be scared - the big Marek exhibition is still going at CSW Toruń 😁

I found out today that the exhibition catalogue is on sale online here. The photos there do not do it justice, as it is a beautifully published full-colour beast. I will be getting a few complementary copies next month though, so I will probably run another competition to give some away to you lovely people.

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What Czapski thought of Marek

Looking for reviews of the Toruń exhibition, I found jozefczapski.pl had some info about it, along with a few quotes from Czapski about Marek's work.

In case you don't know, Józef Czapski was a writer and artist who lived most of his life in Paris, where he worked at the influential magazine Kultura.

Everybody Polish who was anybody wrote for the magazine, and it was seen as a vital bastion of Polish culture independent from the Iron Curtain. It also helped heal the rift between Ukraine and Poland by reissuing near-lost Ukrainian literature.

Earlier on, Czapski was a WWII soldier. He was captured and spent over a year between two Russian camps where he not only managed to stay sane, but he taught his fellow prisoners about Proust. Most notably, he was one of only a handful of POWs in these camps who unknowingly avoided being massacred at Katyń.

His most famous book, Inhuman Land, is a memoir about how he was sent back to the USSR after the war to investigate what had happened to his missing colleagues.

Here is famed historian Timothy Snyder's introduction to the book.

So, as you can imagine, I thought it was quite cool when I saw Ela Skoczek's piece from jozefczapski.pl. Below is my translation of the intro part about Czapski:

Czapski first encountered Marek Żuławski's artwork in 1932. Enchanted by one of his paintings – a still life – he wrote about it years later: "A small, unassuming still life, green pears on a white platter painted with sensitive flecks."

He'd seen this painting at an exhibition at the Institute of Art Propaganda. At the time, Marek Żuławski was still a student at the Warsaw Academy (in Tichy and Kowarski's studio). He wrote that this "small painting by an unknown young artist with an inexorable feel for colour was pleasing - lost among the other canvases that didn't have even a hint of awareness about the basic elements of painting."

He then lost sight of Żuławski's paintings for many years. It was only years later, after the Second World War, that he came across his paintings again in London. Czapski could see that the war years had led the artist to find his own individual expression.

Whenever he was in London, Czapski would visit him at his studio. He recalled in 1964:

"I still have Żuławski's canvases from that period in my mind's eye: the black bridges, the red and gold of a sunset over a black London, the geometric, simplified faces."

He could see the influence of Cubism on him; his paintings were always a treat for him, composed of themes and canvas textures that became more and more synthetic and even brutally sonorous. Czapski appreciated that Żuławski "did not become a painter of pure abstraction, neither geometric nor lyrical".

In a text about awarding Marek Żuławski the 1963 Artistic Culture Award, Czapski wrote: “Żuławski […] starting with post-impressionism, cubism, went through the varied influences of both Romanesque and Byzantine mosaics; and indirectly, abstract trends also influenced him (perhaps socialist realism at some point?)."

Czapski summed up the piece with: "Marek Żuławski, already a big name, will have a meaningful role in the development of Polish art."

If you want to dig deeper into Czapski, there is a highly lauded recent biography by Eric Karpeles.

But now it's time for something, ahem, entirely different...

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Harry Potter but in Poland

You may have heard about ChatGPT, but did you know AI is now being used to make all sorts of weird animations too? Not only are the visuals created using AI, but often the scripts seem like the nonsensical ramblings of AI too.

They are quite popular on TikTok and YouTube, with hundreds being produced. Some are better than others, but this one, an absurd combination of Polish stereotypes and the British institution of Harry Potter, made me laugh - and quite guiltily: Harry Poland but in Poland.

It's only 78 seconds long, so you'll be pleased (or disappointed) to hear there is a part 2, which is an extended 79: Harry Potter but in Poland 2. It's possibly even better than the first.

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That's it for this week. Thank you for reading. Please remember to wear a scarf.

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / Other stuff