Art on the Brink, Ergo the Margin of Life: Marek Chlanda’S the Tango of Death
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Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les arts 2014, vol. XVI ISSN 1641-9278 Eleonora Jedlińska Department of Art History, University of Łódź [email protected] ART ON THE BRINK, ERGO THE MARGIN OF LIFE: MAREK CHLANDA’S THE TANGO OF DEATH Abstract: Marek Chlanda’s sketch Cosmos – Tango of Death was created as a picture of the artist’s yearning for sense. This sketch and the triptych are based on the photo from 1942 taken at the extermination camp in Janowska Street in Lvov. The photo shows a circle of musicians- prisoners, who play the Tango of Death on the SS-men’s order. The sketch quite accurately repeats the ‘composition’ of the photo. Here an artist puts the viewers in the face of the literal and metaphorical understanding of the marginal: the group of musicians is situated in the center of the drawing, but the margins of this work are filled with the artist’s notes. My reflections do not concern marginalization in general, but the marginalization of the artist and art on the brink of life, indirectly and probably briefly involved in the machinery of extermination. I want to reflect on the incredibility of the existence of art during the Holocaust. I analyze how contemporary artist tries to penetrate into that special event, through the thought and premonition of future, provoked by William Blake’s poems and drawings. The black and white photograph, which presents a group of musicians playing the Tango of Death is literally a representation of a segment of the circle of the camp orchestra, whose remaining fragment, invisible in the photograph, is located off the frame. On the other hand – it is symbolic because it documents the existence of this odd orchestra in the death camp and factually depicts its membership. Keywords: Chlanda – Tango of Death – sketch/triptych – photography – music – death camp – margin of Life – Shoah – William Blake. And all the arts of life they changed into the arts of death. 1 William Blake, Night This paper is an attempt to examine one of the issues which have preoccupied me for many years. How can art exist in a dark time? How can a contemporary artist reflect on both the experience of the Shoah and the special role of the artists during that period? 1 In The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. D.V. Erdman, New York 1988, p. 374. 258 Eleonora Jedlińska My reflections do not focus on the issue of marginalization in general, but on the artist and his/her art on the brink of life, indirectly and probably briefly involved in the machinery of extermination. I want to reflect on the incred- ibility of the existence of art during the war, in an extreme situation – when it was forced into existence. Art which is highly transient, yet persists on the margin of life. I will examine how a contemporary artist tries to penetrate into that special time, through the thought and the premonition of the future contained in William Blake’s poems and drawings. This paper concerns the life and oeuvre of the contemporary Polish artist Marek Chlanda (born 1954), the oeuvre being exceptionally complex, constantly searching for its own roots, getting to the heart of the matter. Ten sketches or exercises – drawings and notes, form together a visual letter- biography of the artist. I will focus on one sketch from the group of panels by Chlanda. It is titled Cosmos – Tango of Death – in Relation to William Blake (2004), and is a sketch for the triptych Study of Soundlessness (2005). This sketch and triptych are based on the photo from 1942 taken at the extermination camp in the city of Lvov occupied by the Nazis. Photo 1. Phot. anonym. Orchestra from Janowska Street, an extermination camp in Lwów, ca. 1942 ERGO 259 ART ON THE BRINK, THE MARGIN OF LIFE... The above-mentioned single war-time photograph, one sketch and one picture (triptych) will be the basis for my reflections on how art and an artist existed on the brink of life and death, and what was their fate. As the author wrote in his message to me, the ten preliminary sketches, drawings, and notes constitute, so to speak, a visual letter, “suggesting a linear sequence, which illustrated with other examples would still remain similar […]. This sequence is a metaphor of my autobiography.”2 The parcel consisted of a set of Bristol boards, ca. 32×29 cm (12.6×11.4 in), created between 1973 and 2008: 1) A study – Wróblewski’s atelier (winter 1973); 2) After Brze- zinka, anthropological optimism (1976); 3 and 4) Last space with intro- spector (1991); 5) A ‘dreamy and prayerful’ drawing (1994); 6) The Cosmos – Blake’s3 aphorisms (2004); 7) The Cosmos – a complete copy of Blake’s Laocoön; 8) The Cosmos – Tango of Death – in relation to Blake (2004); 9) The Cosmos – a rational drawing with a quotation from an interview with Piotr Rawicz; 10) two notebook pages from 2008. A fragment of the series After The Rift in Time (‘this is my reply to eight paintings entitled The Rift in Time by Kupferman4. His only reference to the Holocaust’)5. I have decided to focus on one of those ten works: number 8, entitled The Cosmos – Tango of Death – in relation to Blake from 2004. The drawing is a sketch, a note for the triptych A study of soundlessness from 2005 [acrylic on canvas 55×38 cm/ (21,6×15 in – each of 3 plates)], presented during the exhibition Marek Chlanda. Porządek [Marek Chlanda. Order], which was organised in November and December 2005 in Poznan6. It originated from a famous photograph taken probably in the winter of 1942 in Lvov at the extermination camp (KZ Janowska) situated at 134, Janowska Street. THE PHOTOGRAPH The photograph shows a circle of men – musicians-prisoners, who play the Tango of Death on the order of SS-men. The black and white photograph depicts the musicians standing in a big circle and playing different instru- ments: the violins, clarinets, flutes and saxophones. It is literally a representa- tion of a segment of the circle made up by the members of the camp orchestra; 2 A letter from Marek Chlanda to the author from 28 March 2009. 3 William Blake (1757-1827). 4 Moshe Kupferman (1926-2003). 5 Ibidem. 6 Porządek: Marek Chlanda. Studia, Listy do Williama, a catalogue of the exhibition “Marek Chlanda. Porządek”, November–December 2005, Muzalewska Gallery, Poznan, page un- numbered. 260 Eleonora Jedlińska its remaining fragment, invisible in the photograph, is located off its frame. On the other hand – it is symbolic because it documents the existence of this odd orchestra in the death camp and factually depicts its membership. We do not know how long the members of the orchestra will survive and when they will be killed. Their collective being / existence remains on the margin of life and simultaneously on the brink of death. Two men standing inside the circle are playing the accordions. A conductor, wearing a light coat7, is standing opposite the playing men, also inside the circle. The musicians have stands with scores in front of them. In the bottom right-hand corner, we can see a group of six uniformed SS-men of various ranks: officers and ordinary soldiers. Engaged in conversation, they seem to pay no attention to the play- ing men. Only one of them, dressed in a black uniform and a forage cap, is facing the orchestra. The group of SS-members and functionaries is situated next to the circle of the musicians, to some extent outside the experience of the group of musicians-prisoners in a German death camp and on the margin of the frame of the photograph. We know that the musicians will be killed, and the SS- men will survive. Near the group, a little to the side, away from the talking men, is a dachshund. The photograph, which shows ca. ¼ of the circle of the musicians standing in the camp square, is very dynamic, the picture is ‘hasty’, diagonal, yet not accidental; it was taken by a ‘confident’ hand – with no hiding, no fear. It seems ‘aesthetically’ arranged according to the perspective rules of a bird’s eye view. The uniformed men visible in the bottom right- hand corner alarmingly resemble the inscrutable group of three people from the painting Flagellation of Christ by Piero della Francesca (ca. 1415-1492), placed ‘outside’ the scene of the Torment, away from the pain and suffering of the flagellated Man, and away from the torturers. The photo was probably taken by an SS-man, the scene was presumably snapped from the building whose windows looked out on the camp square. From this window, the photographer and music lover may have seen the full circle of the camp orchestra. The picture is clear enough to distinguish the playing men’s faces, their bodies characteristically leaned over the instruments, their eyes directed at the stands with the scores, a hand holding a bow, streaks of grey at the temples, the glasses… . 7 The camp at 134 Janowska Street was a temporary one; the prisoners did not have their heads shaved, nor were they tattooed or had to wear camp striped uniforms. Comp.: E. Kessler, Przeżyć Holocaust we Lwowie, ŻIH, Warszawa 2007, p. 19; D. Kahane, Dziennik getta lwowskiego [n.p. and n.d.]. ERGO 261 ART ON THE BRINK, THE MARGIN OF LIFE... A SHORT HISTORICAL SKETCH – LVOV, 1930s/1940s In the 1930s, Lvov was inhabited by 312 thousand people, including some 157 thousand Poles, 109 thousand Jews and 50 thousand Ukrainians8.