Everyday Painting

  Stanislaw Mlodozeniec left Poland in 1983 and settled permanently in New York. However, he systematically reports upon his art with exhibitions which take place every couple of years, most often in Warsaw. The last one was "Mlodozency", together with his brother and father, in 1994. What he had been leaving with was expression painting, situated outside the "wild" style that was exploding at that time. The artist, inspired by the contemporary painting of the great avant-garde period, did not fit in that formula. He did not place much importance on the choice of politically or socially active topics, either. His was the painting focused on internal states. The selected motiffs, portraits, were put through a filter of personal expression, where the emphasis was on the compositional integrity of the work, as well as the actual work of the painter. The work that was long in the making, done in many approaches. Consisting of many overlapping layers, showing through each other, creating a varied texture. These seemingly formal qualities put forward often dramatic senses. Some works were done basing on photographs, therefore in an especially realistic manner. The author extracted the symbolic meaning of the photograph, its psychological truth, carried by the moment frozen in a split second.
   The clear inspiration by the work of the fovists, the expressionists and the Ecole de Paris was accompanied by an artistic and spiritual fascination with the art community, where music and literature was equally important. Hence the themes of the artist's studio, the street life, the Mediterranean moods, the portraits of artists-gypsies, so common in the work of Stanislaw Mlodozeniec. Equally important was the fascination with the naive or low-brow art, so common with the artists of that time. Stanislaw introduced an interesting formal concept, especially visible in his portraits. It is shown in the flat texture of the faces, and a conscious awkwardness in painting the hands or the silhouette, as is the case with the travelling painters, making portraits ex post from photographs. This similarity to naive painting, a certain idealization, especially the luminosity of the female faces, did not prevent Mlodozeniec from rendering the physical likeness, or even a certain psychological truth. The selection of topics or persons depicted in portraits or larger compositions was mainly the result of their position in the internal world of the artist. This could be Bob Dylan, as well as Holly Golightly.
   Drawing, often transferred very literally onto painting, was very important in the everyday practice. The famous "ecolins"- the phantasmagorical journals - were created in a manner similar to the automatic drawings of the surrealists, but always included micro-situations and signs, with the emphasis on the human figure - transformed to the point of non-recognizability, therefore associated with exotic or primitive art. The drawings created internally logical, but crazy-moving worlds, opposing the laws of gravity.
   The artist's popularity in Warsaw before his departure resulted in murals painted on apartment walls. However, I know of at least one that was painted over by the flat-owner because it depicted an especially tough time of the martial law, and because of personal reasons.
   New York, with its energetic atmosphere and the availability of the works of the great contemporary artists made a lasting impression on the work of Stanislaw Mlodozeniec. The iconosphere of the city, its graffiti paintings, the popular artists and the electric atmosphere, the possibilities and the temptations, all catalyzed what was present and formed in the work of the artist. His paintings absorbed the simple and brutal form of the street graffiti, the ornamental iconography of Haring, or the modest line of the latter Picasso.
   The New York painting of Stanislaw Mlodozeniec is very varied. He is not obsessed with one idea detached from the circumstances, but absorbs the city, its atmosphere, and paints the nearest everyday life - the classroom of his son, the human types, the streets, their overwhelming visual character, the view of Brooklyn over East River, as well as the cinema, the important factor of the cultural identity and a mirror of life, so much more important over there than down here. He is an especially sensitive witness, coming from Europe, and he sees more clearly, but he also accepts what life brings in full humility. He often refers to different conventions and trends in art that seem to him appropriate in their atmosphere or the manner of picturing to the theme he is working upon; after all "the mode is the message". Sometimes he paints accidental but always symbolic situations, as the interior of the subway car in the manner of the "artistic" black-and-white photography, but at the same expressively deforming the space and the faces of the passengers. The printers' screen and and the pointilism, always sanctifying the depicted figures, are the visual techniques of the painting from this year, showing the all-time football "eleven".
   The artist, always in favour of a clear composition, rarely using illusionistic tricks, always placing great importance on the quality of the drawing and the type of texture, often experiments with different materials. He adds sand, glues over and only then scratches the drawing. Convinced of the importance of a personal gesture, of the emotional content it carries, he leaves expressive surfaces and intact traces of the brush-strokes. Equally important is the everyday practice, an artistic compulsion almost, of making a large number of drawings and sketches - often painted with oil on paper, sometimes on pages of newspapers. As Piotr, who often watched his brother at work, says: "This is also a way of spending time; he sits down and makes the first drawing, the second, the fifth, the twenty fifth". Simplicity is all-important. The drawings often depict simplified human figures or mithological creatures.
   Another matter are posters, always painted, requiring a sophisticated printing technique. Some of them, not made to a specific order, refer to the Academie des Beaux Arts, the museum exhibitions, and represent a longing after the presence of art in the visual everyday life. Music is often the theme of the posters, as is also the case with drawings and paintings. Sometimes it is classical music ("Music", 1996), but the picture of naked women playing the strings and a flute - a collision of antique and the concert-hall reality - reminds one of the sources of music and its hot experience, freeing the subconscious contents. Jazz is a dark, sultry atmoshpere with white flashes of the trumpet riffs, or a thick, rhythmical screen laid over a vibrating surface. The contemporary rock archetypes are shown in the painting made after the famous "Abbey Road" cover of the Beatles' album.
   The painter's sensitivity, an "ear"for the formal qualities and an exceptional openness in selecting themes add a great authenticity to all works of Stanislaw Mlodozeniec. Sometimes this is a result of accepting the anarchical, uncontrollable reality, which the artist emphasizes, often by calling upon what is mythical and alive in art. The paintings of Stanislaw Mlodozeniec remind us that art is also, or perhaps first of all, a non-speculative attitude, that using one's own passions is not only a way to make beautiful objects, but also makes the artist a person who more easily gets in touch with the absolute and the unconscious.

Krzysztof Zwirblis
translation Marcin Wawrzynczak
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