Dorota Folga-Januszewska talks with Zygmunt Januszewski
DFJ: Looking at your drawings a strong link with our reality can be easily noticed. What worries or upsets you most about it?
ZJ: Probably my limited influence or even lack of my influence on it at all. This may be the reason for my drawing. My drawings are for me the only reality I can shape and change. The other thing is the fact that I am not in the place I want to be. I start drawing and then I feel I am in my element. I catapult myself into my self?created world hoping that the reality I have created is strong enough to survive in.
DFJ: Are there any autobiographical themes in your drawings?
ZJ: I think there are not not any. The drawings "happen" by themselves (a mirror!). The only autobiographical ingredient is the struggle with the process of drawing, which is an energetic and therapeutic process. The struggle remains recorded in the drawing and plays an important role in later perception of it as it is most probably received by viewers as the "power" of drawing, an internal tension, which pushes away some of the viewers and draws the others. The tension is the reason why some drawings are masterpieces and others are not. I still can not understand why drawing (unlike painting) is seen as an intellectual process, while it is grappling with the world, lines and reality. Having finished a drawing I usually feel tired as if I had done some hard physical work.
To say more, one drawing has a strong influence on the next one. They are like balls - pendulums. They transfer their kinetic energy to one another. The transfer of energy is the perpetuum mobile of drawing process.
Without it there would not be the process of creating and constant transformation.
DFJ: About transformation. What changes in an artist's manner of drawing as time passes?
ZJ: The length of "lines of life" changes. A line in a drawing is like the "line of life" carved in your palm. You were born, you made your first steps, then the next ones, you grew up. At this point most people stop, but an artist goes further. A circle, a ball of wool, a line unravels more and more. The main point of drawing remains the same - but the way of reaching it, recognition of a drawing are the signs of "maturity".
By this I want to say that the sense of drawing is constantly the same, but we discover more and more of it. There is something unchangeable that you are getting closer to, which can be felt as a change, even though the very idea of drawing remains unchanged.
DFJ: But how can we discover that this is the process of "approaching" and be aware of the "maturity"?
ZJ: You can achieve that through the feeling of infinity in the finite dimensions of a piece of paper, a pencil and a pen for example. One day you realize that the longer you do something, the less finished it is. That is the reversed impact of time. It can make you feel good that you take a piece of reality ? a thing that is condemned to anihilation by the assumption of temporality and you feel the sensation of infinity explode and arise. The hyperspace opens. You draw it and you know it will remain out of temporality. The nature of "maturity" is divine, it is given, and you need time and work to skim it, but you must remember that "maturity" is not a talent. It is probable that "maturity" along with talent make drawings and paintings recognized masterpieces.
The artist emerges from them. Everyone dreams about "maturity" and talent and in this unease crosses the river of drawing.
DFJ: So does "maturity" evoke changes in drawing? Let's assume talent is somehow given at the beginning.
ZJ: Not only that. The pace, the speed of drawing, the pace of life mean a lot as well. They are the reflection of reality and "biology" of line. But the most important is the change of parameters of psychological space between me and my drawing. I can feel it as a battle with lines, a chase, a hunt. An artist becomes "naughty", the sack with ideas becomes heavier and heavier, the struggle harder and harder. My drawn actors get into deeper and deeper trouble with me.
We have to perform new plays. The time of performances change, there is less and less time, but on the other hand the audience becomes more and more critical. Who are my actors? They are lines, smudges, strokes, creations of imagination and thought. The whole caboodle of a ruthless drawing's companions. Everybody is afraid of New Strokes, even though they know that without them there is no Continuation.
From a catalogue "Zygmunt Januszewski. New Strokes" 1999.
