Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2015 8 (5)

Authors

Koptseva, Natalia P.; Reznikova, Ksenia V.

Contact information

Koptseva, Natalia P.:Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041, Russia; E-mail: ; Reznikova, Ksenia V.:Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041, Russia

Keywords

Zdzisław Beksiński; Polish surrealism; form and content; art “after Auschwitz”

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the art work of one of the most significant Polish surrealist artists, Zdzisław Beksiński. The article reveals the main periods of the artist’s biography, lists the people of art who influenced the establishment of the author’s individual style and the art works Z. Beksiński preferred. Special attention is paid to the dichotomy of form and content as well as Z. Beksiński’s original opinion of it: the artist believed that the major significance was borne by the form, not the content: what he created was the form, while content is something contributed by the spectators. The article continues with the review of three works by Z. Beksiński, leading to the following conclusion: in the situation when god has been crucified but not resurrected, when the human loses his last hope for salvation, when his forces are a null in the face of an unknown but horrifying enemy; in the situation of the End of the World, the total night when the monsters (such as the monstrous words) come alive, the only thing left for a human is to remember of this situation at every moment of time, to understand the nature of words and the threat they present, to understand the mechanism of protection from them; to take care of the closest people, to protect them, thereby allowing neither themselves nor himself to turn into stone of the horrors the reality brings. The final analysis of art works by Z. Beksiński is performed through the prism of “after Auschwitz” art concept

Pages

879-900

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/16819

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).