From
the Surreal to the Fantastic
by
Jean-Louis M. Monod
Éditions Lefeuvre, 1980
13 major European painters
Becciani Bogaert Chapelain- Midi Deonna Dzyga Eekman
Petit- Jean Poncelet Respaud Schuchard Spiro Vogel
Von Morl
Just as there is
"alternative" literature, so there exists a painting which exudes a
compelling force, one that in most cases derives from a common
inspirational source. Painter and not writer, Dzyga no more poses
as an intellectual1 than he does as a philosopher. He
leaves to those who interpret him the responsibility both for any
judgements they care to make about his work and for interpreting it.
In his quest for
perfection, the artist able to acknowledge his own weaknesses and
constantly demanding of himself has every chance that his quest will
succeed. Dzyga is an example of this. How he conceives his art and
the objective assessment he makes of it encourage balanced analysis
and impartial appreciation.
The artist's
guiding sign, as well as his magnetism2, may help to
account for his determination to make a success of his life, in a
world infested with the unexpected and the chimeric.
Invoking the origin of man is
also to invoke the sources of his work, of its fertile resurgence. The
evolution of the one goes with the transformation of the other, both
of them shaped by contacts, profound or superficial3,
combining with ancestral heritage to give the artist his spiritual
belonging.
"Belonging to" such a school
means acknowledging the ascendance of such great — or smaller —
masters as constant, indeed inevitable givens, eagerly encouraged to
satisfy some, to the point where the very connections that foster
affinities become, quite literally, nothing but promiscuity. So
there are, inevitably, what some might term "influences". While the
artist does not disavow them (the fantasms of Bosch clearly made
their appearance in his paintings, just as there are demons that
marked the beginning of Creation)4, it is nonetheless
more accurate to speak of concordances5. But Dzyga's
self remains intact, despite elements of Paul Delvaux, Claude
Verlinde ou Félix Labisse, not to mention (and this is pure personal
conjecture) the radiance of Samuel Bak.
On occasion close
to certain visionary architects, Dzyga is nonetheless no adept of
functionalism. And yet he is, in his own way, a builder of dreams6
and not of nightmares. In his unusual "landscapes", the emptiness
sometimes to be found does not give rise to the space-filling
anxiety typical of someone like De Chirico. The cathedral emerging
from the waves, for exmple, does not inspire the anguish that floods
from the buildings of a Monsu Desiderio. The artist does not make
us look at cities ravaged by war or disaster: his are merely unreal
places worn away by time, or even simple ruined monuments or
sculptures, mirage-like, with no shocking contrast with their
environment. Firmly based and solid-looking, his citadels border on
the intangible. "Dream Mechanism", impulsions, sudden desires,
switches in direction, forecasts — all of them mood swings similar
to changes in the weather translated into images, in an ephemeral
coherence. Dzyga may depict a sky, clear or cloudy, and then may
suddenly switch to a barren or cultivated landscape, to an open
space or an enclosed one. But, painter of the open7, if
he gives us glimpses of imaginary cities, his real purpose is that
these glimpses will direct our attention to other universes. The
paths that lead us to them are not just of gloomy, slippery tiles,
unstable and shifting, solid or less so, becoming laths and lianas
and, ready to reveal themselves along the way, mere tracks garnered
with split stones, startling cleavages, such as those of the
uncertainly marked breach which the artist has bounded to perfection8.
For an understanding of a
painter's language, to know how to appreciate his symbols, to
analyse his emotions, to explain what he is about, it is generally
necessary to adapt to how he proceeds, to follow him step by step
along a journey that takes us, progessively, into his work. It is
sometimes enough to look inwards. It is this way with Dzyga, whose
very real world exists right beside an imaginary universe that lies
somewhere between the reality of the awake consciousness and the
illogical engendered by sleep. To enter it, to be able to
contemplate it, we have only to believe in it. But we have to know
how to observe it — for if the images that please us appear to need
no explanations, the seducing colours seem to require a certain
initiation. Regarding them with a fresh eye allows us to discern
them like a child undergoing a learning process. Dzyga's skies are
sometimes azure, with blue balloons that have chased away the clouds,
but they may also be rainy or lowering, over a mineral world where,
in the torpor that is typical of dream and meditation, beings turn
their ears to silence — unless, in the contemplation of domes,
bulbs, belfries or arrows, they are pondering the virtues of their
subtleties9. The huge diversity of his colours, with
their subtle shadings, help to give his compositions their fine
eurhythmy. Over the decades, Dzyga has managed to refine his
palette and soften his graphism. His colours and images are no
longer so aggressive, the outrage of a "Songe Cardinalesque"
replaced by the poetry of a "Rêve de Poulain"10. It is
also certain that the virtuosity of the technician in no way
detracts from the sensitivity of the artist — or should I say from
his sensuality, that of an aesthete whose sharpness of intellectual
sense reinforces the illusion of a manual dexterity capable of
translating a tactile emotion by means of mere two-dimensional
images.
Jean-Louis M. Monod
Notes
1 - An
artist may in one sense regret not reading, or perhaps reading too
little. But on the other hand he can consider it a good thing that
there are no recognisable literary references to be found in his
work which might be interpreted as "illustrations".
2 - Born on
5 January 1945 at Briessen-Cottbus in Germany, of Polish
farm-labourer parents, since 1946 Kazimierz Dzyga has lived in
France. He became a French national in February 1977.
3 - Early in
his career, a difficult but enriching period, Dzyga met many artists
and writers. He has always considered the interest they showed in
his work and the advice they gave as sources of encouragement.
4 - Dzyga has exorcised
his demons. They have vanished. Victims of not only a developing
technique, but also of a change of mindset. The uncertain hand has
deferred to the artist's touch. What remain s of the demonic is the
painting of the female form — green, orange, blue … The
draughtsman's view has yielded to the colourist's vision.
5 - Dzyga
borrows equally freely from Pieter Breughel and Coustou (William
I). His sculptural beauties have been much admired — but on no
matter what support, the result is always striking.
6 - His
imaginary citadels are part of no utopic or symbol-based
town-planning like those of people like Ledoux or Boullée.
7 - For this
idea, cf. "Espaces inquiets", chapter IV, in "L’Art Fantastique" by
Marcel Brion, Éditions Albin Michel, 1961.
8 - The special
atmosphere of these fog-drenched micro-climates is rendered by
subdued colours on unobtrusive, mainly red backgrounds.
9 - Arthur
Rimbault's sonnet about vowels is well-known. It is interesting to
note that, ifn we refer to Frahçoise la Perrière's classification of
colours and attribution of letters in her description of her
coloured vision of the letters of the alphabet, the name of the
artist is "written" in his palette. See "Atlantis" n° 283, May-June
1975: "Symbolisme des couleurs - II".
10 - Works
dating from1976 and 1970 respectively.
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