Solo Exhibition
Galeria Art at Hala Koszyki
Warsaw, Poland
17 May 2024 to 31 May 2024
PL ENG
SALIGIA,
or Seven Quite Serious Issues
Bogusław Deptuła
Lately, the arts, the theatre have been shying away from speaking seriously. Seriousness has become too serious... You can’t be serious because you’re running the risk of being ridiculous, and ridiculousness is probably the worst thing in the world.
At the same time, there are still a few things left in the world worth talking about, but they remain hidden, distant, abandoned. Abandonment is frequent. It may happen, however, that the desire to ask about important – and in a way completely fundamental — things appear out of nowhere. Except today, viewing a phenomenon in the context of the word ‘sin’ sounds ridiculous. Whom would we dare to call a sinner today? It’s only ever used as a joke, or a backhanded compliment, as it we were to say, ‘you libertine!’ Surely there is nothing better one could hear? Many would feel rather flattered by such an epithet.
Years ago, while reading Czesław Miłosz’s essay collection The Garden of Science, I came across a chapter titled ‘SALIGIA’.
I didn’t know the word, so I dove in eagerly, and it turned out that it was a word from the Middle Ages, made up by the first letters of the seven capital sins.
S uperbia
A varitia
L uxuria
I nvidia
G ula
Ira
A cedia
As Miłosz writes, the word is ‘[...] considered doubly useful because it allowed for easy memorisation of the seven capital sins, or rather vices (vitia capitalia — capital vices), all while emphasising the link between them. That much I knew, but I was tempted recently to look in a few encyclopaedias and check what they have to say about saligia. I did not find a mention of it in any of them. What’s more, Catholic encyclopaedias and dictionaries of theological terms are also silent about it. The clergy no longer like to deal with sin, as if they wanted to apologise to the world for having considered it one of their main callings for many centuries. Even the concept of sin is discussed half-heartedly, so they are not inclined to bring up ‘old classifications’ in their compendia and catechisms.
I don’t think I have to add that I did not find saligia in the dictionaries I had on hand. Intrigued, Miłosz began a thorough search, and its result is this rather subversive and unexpected text, a text that flowed from the poet’s deeper convictions about the Manichean construction of the world, which he expressed on more than one occasion (and this is probably the inspiration for his excellent novel The Issa Valley, somewhat inspired by the writer’s youth). Miłosz conducts a kind of dialogue with sins — or vices, as he prefers — which, according to what I wrote at the start and what Miłosz wrote years ago, have lost their significance and impact, but which still exist in the general human inventory of faults and transgressions, intentions and failures, desires and inabilities.
The funniest things in Miłosz’s essay are the polemical tone and the etymological quest on which he sets out, searching numerous European languages and comparing the names of sins or vices with their existing translations in Polish. Let us then follow in Miłosz’s footsteps:
Superbia translated as conceit — is more often the English pride, or the German Stolz.
Avaritia — greed, which would become lack of moderation.
Luxuria — impurity, lust — in Polish porządanie. The Latin word means exuberance, fertility, abundance, superfluity, excess, splendour and debauchery. The French luxure has retained something of the latter and is similar to the Polish rozwiązłość, or promiscuity.
Invidia — envy, which is closest to the Polish zawiść or the French envie.
Gula — overindulgence and overconsumption of food and drink, but perhaps translated best as gluttony.
Ira — wrath, or perhaps an explosion of wrath. Anger, collère, Zorn, the Old Church Slavonic gniew.
Acedia — sloth, which perhaps should be neglect, although the Greek source word akedia is perhaps best rendered as apathy, discouragement, close to indifference, which was considered a sin in the Middle Ages, and to which much space was devoted in monastic instructions of the congregation of the Camaldolese Hermits. Miłosz mentions that it was often linked with tristia, or sadness, as it is best expressed with the words ‘nothing is worthwhile’.
Miłosz sums up his reflections as follows: ‘The seven deadly sins [...] were considered at most a stimulus for deeds that would have one damned, but none of the components of the seven, nor saligia as a whole, had to lead to ultimate perdition. After all, vitia capitalia were more or less common symptoms of the rotten human nature, and this nature is not so rotten as to leave no hope at all’. That is why the word ‘capital’ was used, and not ‘deadly’, which is worth emphasising as that is probably how we think of them, and it turns out that theologically, it’s an exaggeration, so we will only end up in purgatory for them, which we can read about in Dante’s Divine Comedy, which Miłosz also quotes in his text.
Saligia popped into my head again when I found out that Julia Medyńska was preparing a new series of paintings, depicting the so-called capital sins. Seven paintings with various inspirations, sometimes obvious, sometimes not. Furthermore, paintings that are commentaries, . Paintings that expand the painter’s field of view with further, film-like frames. Unnerving, perhaps a bit criminal, with a horror that is not obvious but lurks somewhere outside the frame. Because after all, you can’t fit everything into a frame, so why even try?
Julia Medyńska painted her sin-inspired series most likely because she is a serious artist. An artist who believes that art should deal with serious issues, fundamental subjects. We will return to the sin paintings, but I would like to recall one of the most difficult film viewings in my life — Michael Haneke’s Funny Games.
The German director keeps incredibly close to pure evil, an evil that is embodied in people. It is an evil that is as natural as breathing. It does not ask about its origin. It is ancient, pre-established, satiated by itself. It cannot be disputed. It can take someone over in an immeasurable, unrestrained and irrevocable way. It feeds on itself and it finds ultimate and total fulfilment in itself. This kind of evil is the most terrifying. An evil in a pure form, an evil that is a space for itself. Evil above all else. Absolute evil. That is how I remember Funny Games, and I am still afraid of it. Years ago, I decided never to watch it again. Evil in its pure form is difficult to handle and far beyond what I could hope to deal with, so I prefer not to return to it. Such evil is certainly fatal.
My recollection came back to me while writing about Julia Medyńska paintings, as some of the paintings look like the sets of unproduced films by Haneke. Perhaps this statement will surprise her, but since I have made it, I will not keep quiet about it. One might say the scenery is similar: a seemingly benign landscape from a neighbourhood, perhaps not Sieraków or Zaborowo — the area where the painter now lives — but some small American provincial town. Julia has lived in the States, and these American landscapes are quite natural for her. Siding-covered homes, green lawns, gently sloping driveways. The scenarios are similar, too. This whole world of the American countryside, as in the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, turns into
a horror story in an instant.
I’m not really scared by films — I know they’re films. I don’t know how to get into screenplays, but Haneke knows how to create absolute horror, to which I am not immune — Funny Games (1997), Code Unknown (2000), The Piano Teacher (2001), Caché (2005), The White Ribbon (2005).
Let us return to Julia Medyńska’s paintings. Painted in oils, ostentatiously shiny, mounted on tall, double stretcher frames, most often with dark backgrounds from which emerge lush, colourful compositions with figures or still lifes. Their origin is easily seen in old paintings, especially Baroque, but also Romantic. The author is a realist and doesn’t have the least problem with that. She wants to paint this way, reference old art; sometimes I even get the feeling that she would like it if her paintings were confused for those from centuries ago, or maybe even if they were hung in museum galleries among them, with their contemporary origin revealed only upon closer inspection. However, Medyńska does not use old painting techniques. She uses impasto, she applies glazes, naturally, but that is not what matters the most. What matters most are those last strokes, shining with light and colour and bringing the canvases to life. I know that perhaps Medyńska adopted painting technique will not be to everyone’s liking, but no one can accuse her of a lack of consistency. She is consistent and attached to her methods.
The paints are not her element, as it sometimes happens with painters — the stories she tells are her natural habitat. Maybe not always easily perceived and clear, but born in the depths of the imagination and given to us in paintings that are sometimes simple and obvious, sometimes surprising and — one would almost like to say — supernatural, although I am not fond of that particular characteristic. I think that Medyńska has not yet resolved her religious issues, and thus, this painting series was created.
It seems she knows her stuff, but whether it is because of a lack of certainty or her commitment to tradition, she revisits issues that perhaps once seemed closed. After all, it is always worthwhile to revisit important and fundamental issues — even if one does so cynically — because they continue to attract and intrigue audiences, because they pose important, top- shelf questions. Such as, for example, Gaugin’s ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’ Medyńska wants to ask questions of this format, although, as I wrote at the start, it is incredibly easy to slip into triviality or ridiculousness... Apparently, however, these paintings successfully defend themselves from such dangers with its dark and understated atmosphere, which the author skilfully creates in these often small-scale, dark frames, composed of the simplest elements — Shoulder, Neck, Hands, Son, Young Mother. There should be nothing uncomfortable, strange or surprising here, but Medyńska, a bit like Haneke in Caché, makes us start to look anxiously at even these most obvious or ordinary frames. (There
is a scene in the film where the protagonist enters an empty apartment, and we’re certain that something terrible is about to happen any moment, but nothing happens, at least in this specific scene.)
We may not fully understand the eponymous seven of Saligia, but perhaps it’s better if they remain a little enigmatic and understated, creating the opportunity for many diverse answers. After all , the titles remain, and they will prompt viewers to find the ethical and eschatological content of these canvasses.