11. I'm Goddamn Falling!
I'm Goddamn Falling! is a series of five autobiographical paintings by Tadeusz Kantor created in the late phase of his career, during which he focused on himself. The first work in the series, Return Home, was created in Berlin in nineteen eighty-six; the artist painted the next four in April nineteen eighty-eight in Milan, while working on the Cricot Two Theater production I Shall Never Return. The last painting in the series, featured in the exhibition, was created after June nineteen ninety in Kraków. Invited to participate at the Seoul Art Festival competition, Kantor repainted his nineteen eighty-eight motif using paper sent by the organizers.
In the aforementioned performance, the artist declares:
“And in order to create something [...] I have to fall. And I fall. I am goddamn falling! [...] The artist must always be at the bottom, because only from the bottom can one shout to be heard.”
In the paintings of this series, the figure – almost always of the naked artist – is falling, one might say: at breakneck speed, into the landscape of Wielopole Skrzyńskie. Its uniform, austere line is broken only by the image of a church – it is a special place, for it was in the rectory of this very church that Kantor was born and raised. Each time, the fall takes place at night, against a black or brown background; twice the scene is illuminated by the moon, and in two paintings the artist is accompanied by figures holding his hand.
Motifs of danger and falling are emotionally and personally charged. The nudity of the figure and a radical reduction of painterly means make the return home appear as an attempt to confront oneself – it is an act of identifying and defining one’s own identity. By returning to his childhood, reflecting on it and then transforming its symbol into a recurring motif, Kantor placed himself before the prospect of the end.
In the context of his return home, as suggested by the title, the image of the church becomes particularly significant – it becomes an icon of the artist’s mental journey. It is through this image that Kantor delineates the axis marking the beginning and the end, while simultaneously tracing the trajectory of his journey. The process oscillates between opposing yet coexisting values: looking toward the past and the future, toward birth and death. At the end of his life, the artist returns to the place where he started his journey into the world— as if to a motherland or a mother's womb.
During the same period, Kantor created numerous drawings inspired by the work of Jacek Malczewski, with particular reference to the series My Life (nineteen fourteen - nineteen nineteen), and especially paintings such as Setting Out into the World (nineteen fifteen), Return (nineteen fourteen), and Homecoming (nineteen eleven). Kantor paraphrased them in his drawings Ulysses d’après Malczewski. I Have Not Returned (nineteen eighty-five) and Homecoming d’après Malczewski. In reclaiming his own work toward the end of his life, Kantor seems to perceive a parallel between Malczewski’s “returns” and his own return to Wielopole. In both cases, these are self-portraits, both literal and symbolic. There is also a common motif of a familiar landscape: for Malczewski, it is the family manor in Wielgie; for Kantor, it is the church in Wielopole.
The motif of the road recurs frequently in Kantor’s drawings and sketches from this period, as well as in works directly preceding it. Beginning in nineteen eighty-five, a series inspired by the work of Witold Wojtkiewicz is created, titled Time of Departure and And Only This March. In these works we often recognize the artist himself. In the drawings from Travel Diary from nineteen eighty-seven - nineteen ninety, the motif of the road appears with exceptional frequency. Some of them were created during bus trips with the theatre company, though they are not just a record of the landscape observed. These drawings are characterized by a distinct selection of reality: a road leading to nowhere becomes the main theme of the image, while the other elements of the landscape fade into the background. The figure of a traveler carrying a large amount of luggage appears frequently as well – a motif present in Kantor’s work as early as in the late nineteen seventies, which at the end of his life takes on a distinctly autobiographical character.
In this context, the series I'm Goddamn Falling! re-emerges as the ultimate symbol of this journey—violent, inevitable, and at the same time representative of the artist’s condition which leads both to the beginning and to the end.
