Kryszkowski, Jacek.

[RARE SURVIVING WORK BY A CULT FIGURE OF POLISH UNOFFICIAL ART – KULTURA ZRZUTY AND NEO-DADA] Original modified drawing: Untitled [Performance for Vodka]. Original art object, with drawing and hand-lettering in black ink over vintage print of “Die silberne Hochzeit” (1890) by C. W. Allers.

[Łódż], 1983. Three card leaves measuring 29 × 35.5 cm, arranged consecutively to form a single image measuring 29 × 105 cm. Framed. Item #55377

A rare original work by a cult figure of Polish unofficial art, Jacek Kryszkowski (1955–2006), an artist who largely destroyed his own works as part of his deep-seated institutional critique. Kryszkowski was one of the most active animators of Kultura Zrzuty (Pitch in culture) which originated in Łódż during the Martial Law and operated throughout the 1980s. This work, typical of the irreverent and anarchic tendencies of Kultura Zrzuty, lampoons a nineteenth century popular genre of the Silver Anniversary Album, a hallmark of bourgeois propriety of Wilhelmine Germany. The original image was created by the German painter and printmaker Christian Wilhelm Allers (1857–1915) and depicts the silver wedding anniversary of the Hamburg master tailor F. Heinrich Battelman and his wife Christine. Taking this vintage print as a base, Kryszkowski animates it with caricature drawings that range from bawdy and lewd to macabre, and surreal. The sign for WC dominates the central panel where the husband is preparing to make a speech over a full dinner table. The musician to his left is drawn with his legs wide open resting on the dinner table, with a thought bubble that includes lewd comments. The mood changes in the left panel where a woman seated on the left is depicted as a double amputee, with the guests standing behind her holding daggers. In the right panel, a female guest holds a machine gun, with a thought bubble that reads “what a joke”. Kryszkowski also gives us a glimpse under the table, where the feet of a male and a female guest are absurdly connected with a thread that reads “telegraph”. The hand lettered text at the bottom of the central panel reads: Siedzimy w krokodylu pobierają systematyczne piwo 12 iv 1983 (Performance for vodka). W spektaklu wzięli udział: Ela Kacprzak; Jacek Kryszkowski. [We are sitting at the Crocodile, systematically drinking beer on 12.VI.1983. Performance participants were: Ela Kacprzak, Jacek Kryszkowski]. Elżbieta Kacprzak was Kryszkowski's wife. This rare surviving work of the artist comes from the personal collection of another artist of the Kultura Zrzuty circle and a member of the Łódż Kaliska group.

Today Kryszkowski is remembered as a vocal critic of the commercialization of unofficial art in Poland and of the commercial creep within Kultura Zrzuty itself. Graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1980, Kryszkowski was named the most promising artist to graduate that year, an honor that did not prevent him from developing an extremely critical approach to art institutions, to art objects as commodities, and to culture itself. His view that “the production of artworks is only an element in a game of “gifts” and “cash” played by the artists, gallery owners, and the public” and that the game is “empty and meaningless, regardless of the system in which it takes place” led him to destroy his own works (as well as numerous issues of Tango, the signature publication of Kultura Zrzuty). As a result, very few of his works survive. He is best remembered for one of the most scandalous mystifications in the history of Polish art, a “well documented” fictitious 1985 trip to the grave of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) to retrieve the avant-garde artist’s remains. Kryszkowski claimed to have recovered the remains, ground them to powder, partitioned them into small bags, and distributed them to friends and colleagues, attached to his publication Hola Hoop. Likely designed as a play on the “fetishistic tendencies of the public,” the action caused a scandal and numerous investigations, thereby proving his point (See Kościelniak 2016). Kryszkowski continued to prank and provoke the unofficial art scene with fakes and scandals until his departure from art in the 1990s.

Kryszkowski's anti-performances and anti-exhibitions were part of a deep institutional critique. During a joint performance with Kryszkowski in 1980, Janusz Banach greeted the audience with the words: “You came here to see something interesting, and I am supposed to satisfy this need of yours. I am not going to tell you anything of interest. But I think that you, each one of you, can suggest something interesting to us and try to solve the situation that has arisen. The floor is yours”. The following year, Kryszkowski’s exhibition “Zaproszenie do razmowy” (An invitation to a conversation) at Galeria Krytyków greeted the spectators with empty walls and a catalog text that simply invited the visitors to meet him at the nearby Gallery Repassage. The curators of Galeria Krytyków were forced to shut down the “exhibition” due to lack of content. Fake invitations to major figures of the art world, and auctions where the participants were invited to bid down on art, and destroy the remainder were further provocations. Other major figures and institutions targeted by Kryszkowski were Tadeusz Kantor, Foksal Gallery, and even Józef Robakowski. A 1985 article by Robakowski in the German magazine Neue Kunst in Europa connected Kultura Zrzuty to the Polish neo-avant-garde and attempted to contextualize the movement in art history. Kryszkowski responded to this claim in Tango, calling out the “usurpation” by “Professor Robakowski” and refuting the connection on the grounds that Kultura Zrzuty had nothing to do with culture.

Kryszkowski marked his exit from the art world in 1990 with the creation of a life-sized replica of the grave of Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, a symbol of anarchist independence for many Kultura Zrzuty artists. For an exhibition of Polish unofficial art titled “Bakunin w Dreźnie” (Bakunin in Dresden), Kryszkowski installed the grave at the entrance, forcing all visitors to step over or on the grave in order to enter the exhibition. (Kościelniak 2016).

Given his destructive tendencies, Kryszkowski’s works are extremely uncommon in the market. Surviving works are held by the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Art in Łódż, with his artist books and publications held by Yale University.