Wywiad z Krzysztofem Nowickim
Patrycja Ignaczak: In your painting, you often refer to the great heritage of art history. You draw from the early modern iconographic tradition, reinterpret works by old masters, and also use formal artistic means to reference past epochs. What role does the past/tradition play for you?
Krzysztof Nowicki: The past, along with its cultural artifacts, is a means of expression for me. It is a rich resource from which I can draw to speak about the contemporary world. The art of the past will always be tainted by current knowledge. Its original context has been permanently lost, and it is in this field that I work. I find the Baroque particularly interesting, as it is the time when modern capitalism was taking shape, and its consequences are still felt today. The deeper I began to look into this period, the more similarities I started to notice. This struck me as fascinating, especially in the context of cultural phenomena related to that era. The sense of anxiety that permeates the Baroque seems to be our experience as well. Therefore, the language used by creators of that time continues to strongly influence contemporary imagination. However, Baroque should not be seen only as a style, but rather as a perspective, a way of thinking that flourished in a specific historical period and now functions as a kind of “red light” — a signal that forces us to stop and reflect on contemporary culture as well as certain aspects of the past. As a result, Baroque should not be limited to an aesthetic concept. It refers to cultural attitudes and awareness, which encompass intellectual, aesthetic, political, and scientific assumptions, both from a historical and contemporary perspective.
PI: Do you have a key for choosing the paintings you reinterpret? What does your preparatory process look like before you begin painting?
KN: The paintings are chosen based on their subject matter. This can be broad (such as a portrait of a noble person, where the motif becomes significant) or sometimes very specific (related to the history of a given painting, person, or the circumstances of its creation). The second factor is purely subjective — whether something in the painting caught my attention.
PI: Your paintings are characterized by a very distinctive technique, particularly the impression of dripping paint. Can you tell us more about your creative process?
KN: The aesthetic that my paintings have adopted is directly inspired by theoretical searches that took the form of my doctoral thesis. Early on, I identified the significance of water, or rather liquidity, in the Baroque. In various ways, I liquefy the images, realizing the Baroque ideal of liquefied mass, and, in addition, aligning myself with the aesthetics of decay and dissolution, which are inextricably linked to the characteristic vanitas motif of that era. Paradoxically, the process of decay equals development here. Ancient paintings deteriorate, creating new, contemporary ones. By elevating decay and destruction, I highlight the limited lifespan of these objects and the worldview they symbolize. On one hand, decay is understood as the disintegration of matter, and on the other hand, as an attempt to arrange and understand this process. In this way, I achieve the effect of blurring the boundary between the past and the present.
PI: In your doctoral thesis, contemporary Baroque theory occupies a central place. Since this is a relatively recent issue in discourse, it is not clearly defined. Which definition of this phenomenon resonates most with your art?
KN: Contemporary Baroque seemed to me an incredibly interesting phenomenon. I was already working within it before I even knew it existed. The key figure for me in this area will always be Mieke Bal. She was the first cultural researcher I encountered who worked with this topic, and her book Quoting Caravaggio, with its vision of a preposterous art history, was the spark for my thesis. As for the definitions of the phenomenon itself, there are probably as many as there are people writing about it, but everyone seems to agree on one thing — it is a continually updating stream of thought, flourishing in the time of historical Baroque, creating concepts to describe elements of culture, but also culture itself. It is a metaphor through which, in the contemporary world, we can redefine well-known aesthetic and socio-cultural tendencies from classical times.
PI: John Berger, in his famous work Ways of Seeing, offers a Marxist reading of oil painting. He emphasizes, among other things, the capitalist dimension of portraits, in which all the props (jewelry, clothing, and even nature, such as expansive estates in the background) were meant to reflect the economic status of the sponsor. In your paintings, rich clothing, royal attributes, or noble hunting dogs also play an important role. What critical reflection accompanies this?
KN: Exactly. These are symbols of social status. They were commissioned by wealthy and influential people. Thus, they become symbols of such a world, built on class distinctions, social injustices, and exclusions. A capitalist world that determines both interpersonal relations and our relationship with nature. In my paintings, these representations become blurred. They merge with the canvases, aligning with the Baroque tendencies for matter to liquefy, creating the impression of decay and dissolution of the image, and thus of the old world and a certain way of perceiving reality. They suggest a slow and painstaking, yet ongoing, change. At least that’s how I would like to see it.
Recently, my focus has shifted to the aforementioned hunting dogs and hunting scenes. The figure of the dog seems particularly interesting to me because, theoretically, it is part of the non-human world, but due to its utility, it was appropriated, and its natural instincts were used against other animals. Humans, as beings spread between nature and culture, somehow draw other beings into this territory. The blurring of boundaries does not make it easier to find balance in these interspecies relationships. From the paintings depicting animals emerges an image of the cynical approach humans have towards nature.
PI: Baroque, an era that is very close to you, was saturated with death. The ubiquitous motif of death in both literature and the visual arts made it something familiar at the time. What uncomfortable or repressed phenomena do you tame in your paintings?
KN: This is a difficult question. I don't think I tame anything, or at least not intentionally. Taming itself probably requires some degree of literalness, and what is hidden between the lines can easily slip away. What I would like to tame is probably not interpreted by the general public. I think I ask too many questions and give too few answers.
PI: Your painting is full of numerous erudite and intellectual themes. What theories, aside from contemporary Baroque, are particularly close to you?
KN: I find metamodernism, also called post-postmodernism, very interesting. It is an entirely separate theory from contemporary Baroque, focusing on a different group of researchers, but surprisingly aligned with it. It uses a different system of concepts, but it essentially speaks about the same thing and is also a response to contemporary sensibility. The more I delve into this subject, the more I am convinced that contemporary Baroque is not just a temporary fascination with the past, but a phenomenon that has the potential to remain in culture for a longer time.
PI: You began your painting career with geometric works, which were still strongly rooted in inspirations from old art (e.g., Paolo Uccello's painting). What led you to transition to the compositions you create now?
KN: It was probably just a natural process of development. The language of geometry started to limit me and became insufficient for what I wanted to express. The shift away from geometry did not happen through a complete break with it and a new painting. It was a slow, multi-year process in which I reconciled geometry with softer forms. Over time, it completely disappeared from my paintings. Both the geometric period and the transitional period taught me a great deal about painting itself and about being an artist.
PI: Although you focus primarily on painting in your artistic practice, you have also worked with sculptures (e.g., Dead Deer and Monument to Louis XIV). What does the medium of sculpture offer that you haven’t found in painting?
KN: Honestly, I have no idea. I never thought about it. When I felt the need to create an object, I simply did it, without asking myself such questions. Intuition is a significant part of my creative process, and perhaps it should stay that way. These objects, however, are one-time actions, and I always return to painting.
PI: The way you treat the motif of transience, which is undoubtedly the main thread in many of your works, seems to me like a pure fascination, devoid of both fear of the passage of time and a moralizing tone. How do you perceive the use of vanitas?
KN: You perceive it quite correctly. Transience, decay, disintegration — these are processes in which I find an unexpected beauty. It is an aesthetic that doesn’t appeal to everyone because it is underpinned by the fear this process evokes in us. I have the impression that similar emotions arise in us when we look at the contemporary world. The tone of contemporary narratives about the world fluctuates between an optimistic belief in science and its achievements and catastrophic visions of the future.