Walked to the National Museum of Art in Warsaw in the morning, arriving at nine, an hour too early, so I perambulated its environs. Of initial note, the building itself, fenced all around with high black bars, the museum had all the charm of a medium security penitentiary. To keep viewers out or the art in, I couldn’t determine. A military museum of 20th-century weapons of war was parked at one end, vintage tanks, helicopters, half-tracks, fighters, with assorted ordnance lying about—shells as big (or as small) as me. The green at the rear of the museum was calf-deep and weedy. At ten o’clock, I was the first patron. There was no line.(13-15)
In A Defense of Ardor, Adam Zagajewski wrote of the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert that he “wandered through [museums] with his sketchbook, not for thirty minutes or an hour, like ordinary, distracted tourists, but for half a day, a whole day.” Neither a poet nor a painter and extenuatedly Polish, I aspire only to a status one or two echelons above that of an ordinary, distracted tourist. I spent half a day at the National Museum and make the following observations but no sketches.
Franciszeck Zmurcko’s The Sinner’s Past (1895): a big canvas, the goatish face of a sinner contemplates seven young beauties revealing six breasts and what appear to be four erect nipples. I identify with that sorry old Epicure and recount my own loves and lusts (seven), though current research indicates we fall in the quartile of least turpitude—that is, measured by number of partners.
Jozef Simmler’s The Death of Barbara Radziwill (1860): the last of the Jagiellonian kings on the Polish throne, Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) contemplates the expiration of his pallid beauty, Barbara Radziwill, at the age of 31. To us, it looks sadly romantic—and not that it wasn’t—but Sig married again, and philandered for both natural reasons and reasons of state, heirs, you know. Convenient excuse.
Jan Matejko’s Karol Polewska (?), Skarga’s Sermon (1864), The Battle of Grunwald (1878), Self-Portrait (1892): Matejko was liberal, republican Poland’s chief visual propagandist, incredibly prolific and accomplished, though of course, during his lifetime, Poland had ceased to exist as a political entity. He rendered Polish history with magnificent panache and profusion and considerably less historical accuracy. My historical mind does not overly object to his republican myth-making; rather, one could use his paintings and discuss their historical errors to teach better history. I like Matejko. He looks like my brother, James.
Henryk Siemiradzki’s The Christian Dirce (1897): The collection guide explains the subject matter as follows: “In the times of the Emperor Nero (1st century AD), Roman women professing the Christian faith were sentenced to a martyr’s death, tied to bulls which were killed by gladiators during gladiatorial combats.” In this large canvas, we view the result, a dead, spear-perforated black bull spouting blood from his nostrils: a mostly naked martyr, fine white flesh, blond, without a drop of blood or physical injury to be seen. She has been strapped to a bull and dragged through gladiatorial combat and shows in death all the trauma of a nap. The absolutely powerful and absolutely corrupt Nero, obese, wrapped in paisley and wigged with laurel, looks on appreciatively with attendants. A pig in a blanket. To the far left, a sadly stoic looking figure, probably the wise, school masterish, and completely ineffectual Seneca. Sex, power, violence, corruption, and irony, this picture has it all. Stylistically—classical academicism or academic classicism—it’s about a century late. Not much impressionism to be seen in the National Museum.
One cannot view paintings without being amazed by the time, the work, the skill, the attention to detail required to produce a single frame of visual information and emotional effect before the age of photography. I moved from the Polish gallery to the European collection.
Luca Giordano’s The Communion of the Apostles (1659): a scene with Christ distributing communion to nine of his apostles, five of whom are bald, four of the five in his inner circle.
Gaspare Traversi’s Job Ridiculed by His Wife (1752): a naked Job, thankfully prior to the afflictions by boils and leprosy, endures his wife’s reproaches. I realize that as I tour this museum, I am attracted by images of old men suffering, old and purportedly wise men. I turn fifty this autumn.
Simon Vouet’s Ill-Matched Couple: An Allegory of Vanitas (early 17th century): a young beauty repels the touch of a white-haired suitor (but he does have abundant white hair) by pointing to a skull on the table.
Balthasar Denner’s Old Man with Sand Glass (early 18th century): well wrought hands, pink lids and rheumy eyes; Cornelius Bisschop’s Portrait of a Scholar in His Study, a fine image for a man who would visit the University of Warsaw, briefly, after his tour of the museum.
Warsaw National contains an unusual number, to my eye, of Martydom(s) of St. Sebastian. How many times must a saint absorb such slings and arrows? In one altar triptych, an Adoration of the Child, stepfather Joseph looks both dazed and bored, and the face of his stepson, strangely mature, though fatuous; baby Jesus looks like Lou Dobbs. There is a female portrait of the Czapski family, a Polish noble family I encountered in Zagajewski’s book, though the displaced gentleman Czapski who fascinated Zagajewski had himself made a career in art after his disennoblement. A higher nobility.
If a castle is any evidence, the royal are different from you and me. Not biologically, of course. Blue blood is no redder or bluer than ours, the red-blooded commons. Socially, and perhaps economically, the privileges would seem obvious, but I’m thinking more culturally, or even cognitively. The extreme elite, occupying built environments like these, these massive architectural confections, these infinitely appointed apartments, these constant sensory assaults of class consciousness, these carefully and minutely crafted hierarchies, condition their minds to images of both fantastic splendor and fantastic order. Not sure which of the two is more dangerous to us—the quite happily less splendid and the more or less disorganized. The gilt, no doubt, bedazzles; the sugary reliefs and moldings, tempt; the iteration of pattern and motif pleasurably benumb; the enamels, the marbles shine, the draperies hang in routines of seriousness so unrelenting as to seem ubiquitous, careless. Too much, entirely too much. A nice place for the likes of us to visit once in a long while, like Disneyland, but a ridiculous place for anyone to try and live in. How it must warp a mind or require the strongest of tonics. Beauty to choke on, to wallow in. Little wonder royals are so effed up.
And there are paintings because the walls require them. Acres of landscape, multitudes of portraits and portrait busts, libraries of visual history, roomsful of still life, complete bibles of Christian parable, and here, at the end of the day, completely out of place, Rembrandt van Rijn’s pensive Scholar at the Pulpit (1641).
Had trouble sleeping. May have gotten four hours.
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