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A
mong all the interiors and buildings providing
shelter and a dwelling, an artist’s studio is by
its very function and purpose an ambiguous
space. The usefulness of this home is temporary. The
roof guarantees an opportunity to work and organise
a workshop and provides time for concentration and
creative energy. It also makes it possible to safely ac
cumulate various tools or instruments, sketches in the
making, auxiliary works - all the projects and seemin
gly tiresome and yet indispensable papers that surro
und the artists’ effort, which appears somewhat ardu
ous despite the effective results. The roof provides
isolation from intruders, noise and visual chaos. Or at
least it should do so1. Nonetheless, artists tend to tre
at this aspect of the studio as a different, albeit their
own, space of clamour and chaos, filled with intru
ders, who arrive upon the authors’ request, by the lat
ter’s choice and according to their imagination2. On
the other hand, a studio roof - to adhere to the con
cept of elementary space - is not a complete guaran
tee of home isolation and privacy. After all, an
exchange of dimensions and substances is the predo
minant activity in all types of studios: be they a room
open right through, as in a sculptor’s studio, or glasse
d-in, with light coming from the north and set in an
attic, from the nineteenth century regarded to be ide
al for painters, or even in a small, half-dark duchtynia
(a cramped studiolo), the source of images and con
cepts, visionary dreams or intellectual ideas. The
exchange in question predominantly involves provi
ding the art form with everyday reality. Measurable
cubature becomes a springboard for the non-compu
table space of a painting, the astonishing scale of
a sculpture and the conceptual game played with ide
as. Essential for artistic endeavours, the commonpla
ce or even unusual objects surrounding the artist
(known for a tendency to collect just as many trifles
as sophisticated valuables) turn into a part of the sub
stance. The temporariness of a studio becomes conso
lidated as if in passing, through a transformation of
the accidental into the irrevocable and via incorpora
tion into the very structure of the work of art 3 4.
Temporary space often assumes the form of inspira
tion, a leitmotif identified with this unique place 5 6.
The artist’s stay and its outcome are intended for
the temporary and provisional home due to their very
principle and purpose. Artworks are supposed to leave
this space, ’’to go among the people”; they are in mo
tion or destined to be transported 7. This is the objec
tive of creation. Impermanence, however, often beco
mes domesticated. And if today (and not only)
artworks remain with their author, forcedly congest
and domesticate the fleeting and transitory quality of
the studio’s interior, and do not set off into the world,
then they resemble children attached to their parents,
growing up and aging with them (even in the best me-
JACEK
WALTOŚ
The Studio
- the Partially
Domesticated, Portable
or Transitory Home
aning of the term) and thus endowing temporary al
ternation with stabilizing substance. An artist uncer
tain of the fate of his works - usually non-commissio
ned - becomes their collector, forced to amass his
own output. He transforms the studio into a gallery or
a storeroom and grants it the traits of a compulsorily
created collection that, even if it is copious, remains
rather monotonous because it consists of the works of
a single author.
Over a span of years the works held in a studio,
settled down and merged with it - even though their
relation was supposed to be temporary - provide it
with the character of a "creator’s home”, while the
studio as such turns into an "artist’s museum” or be
comes celebrated as a "temple of art”. This descrip
tion could be appropriate for the family homes of arti
sts sharing the qualities of their bourgeois milieu, such
as the Kraków residences of Józef Mehoffer and Woj
ciech Weiss, professors at the Academy of Fine Arts
who, nonetheless, worked in the Academy studios to
which they were entitled.
Tales about respectable ”homes of creators” and
”temples of art” are accompanied by oft-repeated le
gends of studios conceived as the sites of Bacchic or
erotic excesses, witnessing both extraordinary creati
ve momentum and the artist’s helplessness or melan
choly 8 9. Each individual story deserves a legend of its
own, and together they all add the myth of extraordi
nariness to studio space, sometimes reasonably afflu
ent 10 and at other times movingly deprived11. This in
terior, in which transformation, transgression and
creation transpire, remains a legend also today, when
the creative act has left the studio for the streets, the
walls of graffiti artists or the showrooms, in which it
appears in the form of an installation or a performan
ce. It has become a "project”, from the beginning to
the end commissioned by exhibition or museum cura
tors. Temporariness has become an attribute of the la
test works and not of the studio. The physical space of
the studio has been replaced with virtual public spa
ce. We are far from the materialization of ideas and
from preserving the transient.
65
Jacek Waltoś • THE STUDIO - THE PARTIALLY DOMESTICATED, PORTABLE OR TRANSITORY HOME
It would be difficult to avoid discussing the essen
ce of the studio in the People’s Republic of Poland du
ring the 1970s and 1980s. Although studios were as
signed upon the basis of administrative decisions, due
to their aesthetic aura and political extraterritorial
status they sometimes assumed the function of asy
lums of an "another life” in prevailing reality. This
fact was particularly appreciated by the art milieu du
ring the martial law period12. Instead of the natural
temporariness of an interior from which the works go
further and further into the world, the studio was ga
ining the qualities of a centre of ideas and meetings a place of confessions and discussions.
In the past, for instance in the Middle Ages and in
the modern era, the artist was frequently a nomad
among settled European clients, changing countries
and places while searching for the most convenient
working conditions. It would be difficult to claim that
the traveller took root and settled down in the places
of his temporary stay. The example of Pablo Picasso
leaving behind successive residences (castles and pa
laces) filled with his works paradoxically combines the
qualities of an established owner and a travelling con
jurer. A characteristic trait of this genius, gifted with
unmatched creative energy confirmed by fame and fi
nancial success, is that his studios both preserved the
attributes of a transitory work place and gained the fe
atures of a museum collection. Abandoned by the au
thor, they did not lose their links with him.
To what extent is a studio a domesticated space?
Probably to the degree that it supports and does not di
stract the moment of creation when intention changes
into a work of art, when for a single instant it merges
conditions, time and creative energy and seems to com
prise a painting-metaphor of creation. But this meta
phor collapses and loses its significance once the studio
is perceived as a domesticated dwelling. This is also the
case when from the very beginning the artist treats it as
an alien and intentionally non-domesticated place. Ap
parently, such was, and still is Stanisław Wyspiański’s
abandoned "sapphire studio” in Krowoderska Street in
Kraków 13, probably never inviting or snug. On the con
trary, the blue colour of its walls and ceiling lead us out
side, into the faraway world, almost into cosmic dimen
sions, as does the visionary stained glass - merely
designed in the studio but fulfilled somewhere else.
Footnote:
1
2
3
4
Jacek Gaj, Visit
Jacek Gaj, At Adam’s
Zbigniew Szprycha, Studio
Marek Przybył, Imaginary Portrait of Francis Bacon - Stu
dio
5 Olga Boznańska, Study of the Artist’s Studio in Kraków
6 Wacław Taranczewski, Young Painter
7 Andrzej Okińczyc, Packaging
8 Jerzy Mierzejewski, Studio
9 Jacek Sienicki, Studio
10 Zbysław Maciejewski, Studio of Olga Boznańska
11 Antoni Kamieński, Unfinished Work
12 Barbara Skąpsza, Night
13 Illustration: photograph by Mirosław Sikorski
Fragment of an exhibition: Home - the Way śfBejng, City Rrt Gallery in Częstochowa 2009
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