
A compulsory self-portraitist constantly asking himself who he is, Witkacy tries to establish an identity through endless self-interrogation.government credit report Helena The artist made a lifetime study of his own face; he was obsessed with what he called mugs and would eventually establish a portrait painting firm and earn his living by turning government credit report Helena out pastel portraits in one or two government credit report Helena sittings.As the proprietor of a government credit report Helena large mugs-made-to-order firm, or in other words, being a psychological portrait painter, I have the foible of being uncommonly interested in the human mug, Witkacy declared. Our country does abound in mugs: profoundly mendacious, intriguingly masked and bizarre, complicated and ravaged by lifeone must give Poland government credit report Helena credit for that. The playwright was struck by how people stare at one another and drain and suck one another with their obsessive looks and glances, and in his dramas ocular attraction and repulsion constitutes an essential element in the dynamic tension among the characters.Under the influence of The Isle of the Dead and other fantastic canvases government credit report Helena by the Swiss-painter Arnold Bocklin, which he saw on visits abroad, Witkacy definitively abandoned faithful reproduction of nature in government credit report Helena landscapes in favor of the macabre and grotesque. how to get my free credit report At this period he did a long series of bizarre charcoal drawings (affectionately dubbed monsters by his father), with titles such as The Prince of government credit report Helena Darkness Tempts Saint Theresa with the Aid of a Waiter from Budapest, Suicide-to-be Five Seconds Before Pulling the Trigger, A Family of Pimps, and Introduction to Cruel Perversions.
These cryptic mini-dramas with government credit report Helena narrative titles, condensed casts of characters, and submerged plots reveal, in a humorous government credit report Helena cartoon-like style, the horrors of domestic life, of sexuality, and of existence itself. Witkacy was destined by his father to be a high-minded artist with a noble mission, but he was unsure of his vocation and consumed by ironic doubts about himself. Because he could not overcome his lower impulses or conquer his demons, he underwent a severe crisis of identity in his mid-twenties. Through parody and playfulness he called into question the grandiose mission accorded to the artist in Poland and challenged his government credit report Helena own artistic importance by constantly clowning before the camera, making faces, and staging hundreds of partially costumed auto-Witkacieshis own version of performance art. free credit card report This aspect of Witkacythe artist as prankster, displaying a fondness for jokes, tricks, and exhibitionist gameskept his contemporaries from treating him seriously. Fearing a breakdown or incipient madness, Witkacy was analyzed in 1912 for several months by Dr. Beaurain, an artistically inclined psychiatrist living in Zakopane who had taken government credit report Helena up Freuds theories.According to Witkacy, government credit report Helena the doctor told him he was suffering from an embryo complexin other words, he felt himself to be in competition with his father as an artist.
Psychoanalysis fascinated Witkacy as a theory that located the sources of human creativity government credit report Helena in the sublimation of erotic feelings, but it failed him as a therapy, and he discontinued his sessions with Beaurain.
At the beginning of 1913 the troubled young man became engaged to Jadwiga Janczewska, whom he decided he must marry in order to salvage his government credit report Helena wasted life.Then on February 21, 1914, Witkacys fiancee committed suicide, shooting herself at the foot of a cliff, after government credit report Helena placing a bouquet of flowers nearby government credit report Helena in a modernist gesture linking Eros and Thanatos. If it were not for this unexpected tragic event, Witkacy might have spent the rest of his life in provincial Zakopane as a local prodigy laboring under the oppressive shadow cast by his fathers national glory. official free credit report website Instead he was thrust out into the larger world of social and political realities, forcing him to transform himself.Janczewskas deathprobably the result of some staged scenario or mystification involving Szymanowskiplunged the guilt-ridden Witkacy into a state of suicidal despair. Throughout his life he was gripped by self-destructive impulses, which he feared would finally overpower him.Suicide and the corpse government credit report Helena occupy a central position in his work.
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