09. Tadeusz Kantor, Self-Portrait, object from the play "Today is My Birthday", 1990
The presented object was created for the Cricot Two Theater production of Today Is My Birthday, which the artist worked on from October nineteen eighty-nine to early December nineteen ninety. Tadeusz Kantor died after one of the final rehearsals, on December eight, nineteen ninety. The premiere took place shortly thereafter, in January nineteen ninety-oneat the Théâtre Garonne in Toulouse. The production was subsequently performed in twenty-two cities around the world, until June nineteen ninety-two.
The play is set in the artist's studio, recreated on stage. The Guide to the Play reads: “It all happens on stage. / For real. Let’s assume! / I decided to live on stage— / to have a bed, a table, chairs / and, of course, paintings. Mine. / I often imagined / my apartment in the theater, / inside, almost on stage— / not in a hotel. / So my - as I call it - / Poor Little Room of Imagination— / on stage. / I must furnish it. / It shouldn’t look like a set. / I must gather on stage / objects from my room. / Just as I would do, / if I actually decided / to live and reside (!!) on stage. / So: a bed, a table, a chair, / a door (important), / a stove with a pipe, / and “canvases” on easels. / A ROOM. / Mine. / My own. / Private. / The only place in this world / ruled by the ruthless laws / of mass society, of the common / and the community. / (...) where a human individual, a person, / hounded by society, / can take refuge (...)."
Kantor constructed the stage space using three large frames resembling picture frames. Placed at the back of the stage, they served as the passage through which the characters moved from the black-canvas-draped backdrop onto the stage floor. The largest frame was positioned in the center, with the other two placed diagonally on either side. One of them, on the left, was the Self-Portrait Painting, the other, on the right, was the Infanta Painting. The birthday celebration featured members of Kantor’s family, selected artists, characters from earlier productions of the Cricot Two Theater, and figures related to the discourse on general history - World War Two in particular - which Kantor had long pursued in his work. The appearance of these figures on stage - drawn from the artist’s memory and recollections, but also from his imagination and dreams - is each time associated with going beyond the frames of the paintings set on stage. Thanks to the paintings, the figures can come back to life and exist once again.
The Self-Portrait Painting was an object intended to evoke direct associations with the figure of Tadeusz Kantor - the Owner of the Poor Room of Imagination - who, in the performance, sits at a table at the front of the stage. It is worth emphasizing that the production, much like the earlier one - I Shall Never Return from nineteen eighty-eight - takes the form of a personal confession. The artist, his life, his intimacy, and his fears constitute the subject matter of the performance. Played by Andrzej Wełmiński, the Self-Portrait of the Owner of the Poor Room of Imagination was given attributes strongly associated with Kantor: a hat, a scarf, and a suit. The actor also adopted his demeanor, gestures, and manner of speaking. The figure of the artist is duplicated twice in the play: in the aforementioned Self-Portrait of the Owner of a Poor Room of Imagination and in The Shadow of the Owner of a Poor Room of Imagination played by Lorian della Rocca.
Self-Portrait was performed mostly within its frame, where the actor sat on a chair near a painter’s palette. The recurring act of stepping outside the frame - both by him and by the other characters in the performance - is linked to one of the play's central themes - the multi-layered interplay between the real and the illusory, between reality and fiction. The discourse of the interpenetration of fiction and reality reoccurs in the paintings that were created at the same time, including the nineteen ninety work A Figure Fell Out of the Painting and It Turned Out to Be Only Fiction. The characteristic feature of the production - that of being in the picture and at the same time outside its frame - was also of great interest to Kantor in his painting, for example in the works from the series The Dead Class from nineteen eighty-two - nineteen eighty-three or Further on, Nothing from nineteen eighty-eight - nineteen eighty-nine.
The form of the object resembles a painter's easel on which a painting in a thick wooden frame has been placed. The strips of raw wood are covered with gray acrylic paint. The wooden frames are meant to look “shabby,” weathered, and give the impression that they were “barely holding together.” The depth of the image is created by a black canvas stretched over a metal structure, which also serves as the background for the “living picture” played out on the wooden platform. It is worth mentioning that the artist used the design of a folding wooden chair for the first time as early as in the nineteen sixty-three Cricot Two Theatre production The Madman and the Nun. It is also worth noting the wooden palette, frosted with silver paint, with a hole for fingers. There is an imitation of paint on it in pink, red, and navy blue.
