So apparently I’m moving this weekend – somebody canceled on their lease at the last minute so we had like a week’s notice (we’re moving 6 floors down to a bigger unit which is gonna be awesommme). In going through all my books while packing I found one on Witkacy, aka Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. It’s all in Polish so who knows what the eff it says. But the pictures are cool:

Nena Stachurska

I went to visit his house in Zakopane on some field trip or another – the only thing I remember is that he would keep track of which type/amount of drugs he was on while making the piece to see how they affected his work. Wiki confirms my memory:

After 1925, and taking the name ‘Witkacy’, the artist ironically re-branded the paintings which provided his economic sustenance as The S.I. Witkiewicz Portrait Painting Firm, with the motto: “The customer must always be satisfied”. Several grades of portrait were offered, from the merely representational to the more expressionistic and the narcotics assisted. Many of his paintings were annotated with mnemonics listing the drugs taken while painting a particular painting, even if this happened to be only a cup of coffee. He also varied the spelling of his name, signing himself Witkac, Witkatze, Witkacjusz, Vitkacius and Vitecasse — the last being French for “breaks quickly”.

Maria Nawrocka

In the postwar period, Communist Poland’s Ministry of Culture decided to exhume Witkiewicz’s body, move it to Zakopane, and give it a solemn funeral. This was carried out according to plan, though no one was allowed to open the coffin that had been delivered by the Soviet authorities.

On November 26, 1994, the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art ordered the exhumation of the presumed grave of Witkiewicz in Zakopane. Genetic tests on the remaining bones proved that the body had belonged to an unknown woman — a final absurdist joke, fifty years after the publication of Witkacy’s last novel.

Falsz kobiety (Maryla Grossmanowa i autoportret)

Kompozycja z portretem podwójnym Marii i Wlodzimierza Nawrockich