Three Monkeys Online - the free current affairs & arts magazine

After the revelations about the government’s plans to privatise higher education there was a storm of debate on the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza – no, not about education, about something called the Hausner plan. Unless I miss my guess this is the second plan to be named after this Hausner person.  This one concerns public funding of the arts, or to be more precise, cutting public funding of the arts. Surprisingly enough, the government wants to hand over arts funding to the private sector. Corporations are to be allowed write off 1% of blah blah blah. GW has had articles on it every day and every day they printed a summary of the plan’s main points, as if you couldn’t guess to within 99.9% accuracy what a plan dreamed up under the auspices of a right wing neoliberal government consisted of.

Now I think puppet theatres and poetry and what-have-you are important but I am amazed at the complete lack of interest in Kazimierz Stępień’s expressed desire to remove the constitutional guarantee of free study. Propose getting rid of the requirement to do a post-doctoral degree and there is an uproar. Propose cutting poor people out of third level education and nothing.

The other thing that has been occupying the mainstream media of late is who gets to be called boss of the European Parliament – Jerzy Buzek or some Italian guy. We’re all supposed to be glued to our seats with our fingers crossed for Buzek even though we’re constantly told that the EU is about partnership and putting the interests of the community above the interests of individual nations. That’s all very well, it seems, but wouldn’t it be nice if Our Lads got some nice (”prestigious”) jobs out of it? At the risk of being drawn into the pointlessness of it all, here is some background information on Jerzy Buzek: he was not a very good prime minister of Poland for a few years, during which time one Marian Krzaklewski, trade union leader, was the power behind the throne. Krzaklewski also ran for the European Parliament but didn’t get in. Well it looks like he may soon get his old back seat back.

There was a stick but there was carrot too. Among the ways in which the Communist authorities in Poland tried to keep writers and creative types in line was by introducing in 1978 a tax free allowance of 144,000 zł per annum for them. This at a time when the average monthly wage was 4 to 6 thousand.

Of course, one feels honour bound to mention that our own Charles Haughey exempted Irish creative artists from income tax in 1969.

There’s a painting I particularly wanted to see so I took myself down to Kraków to have a look, spending a few days in the old place. I picked up a copy of the local paper and was dismayed to find that the good people of the newspaper are obssessed with Wrocław. How much money was invested in Wrocław last year? How much in Kraków? How rich how fast can you get in Wrocław in comparison with Kraków?

While in the National Museum looking for the painting I was reminded of a Billy Connolly joke: why do police officers always want you to describe what happened in your own words? “I don’t have my own words. What would I want with them?” he asks. In the museum there was a video playing of an artist from Israel. At first I thought she was speaking Hebrew, as I did not understand any of it but then I read the accompanying blurb (the writer of which was good enough to tell me what I was supposed to feel when I looked at the images). In fact, the artist was talking in a language of her own invention. So there you go, Billy: if you had your own words instead of other peoples’ you could be an internationally celebrated artist.

I also picked up a copy (the 92nd) of Aktivist, hoping to find that the kids were still on the verge of rioting. The editorial was written by one Łukasz Figielski: “We believe that your intellectual capabilities do not end with choosing the right gladrags.” It would be slightly more stirring if the magazine had not had three full-page ads for clothing manufacturers. To the untrained eye, sated with the radical pages of this guerilla publication (it’s free), activism is about nightclubbing and fashion.

Last week’s Polityka has an article on that most intrusive of the arts: architecture. Like their fellow members of the ??e-elity at the Gazeta Wyborcza, they seem think it a terrible shame that Poles are so backward looking. They just don’t appreciate the efforts made by thrusting, forward-looking engineers — errr, I mean architects of course. I have not read the illustrated article - hence the title - so stop reading if you think I should have read it before commenting.

The article has examples of good modern architecture in Poland and abroad. From abroad we have the tumorous bladder that is the Kunsthaus in Graz. From Ireland we have a science fiction confection from Daniel Liebeskind - not built yet and unfortunately giving ammunition to those who say architecture is just drawing nice pictures of buildings and letting engineers figure out how to make them. Still, that’s all a matter of taste. What isn’t, though, is the amazing coincidence that all the good buildings in Poland pictured (except one interior shot) are the same: big glass boxes. By a truly amazing coincidence, one of those glass boxes houses the publishers of Gazeta Wyborcza.

Unrelated item: in the latest Polityka there is a photograph of the sign at the Polish military base in Afghanistan: “Camp White Eagle,” the manly soldiers proudly proclaim.

It must be great to be an artist. You get to puncture pretentious ideas about art and literature and no one has any come back because you’re the one doing the art, not just talking about it. Here is Beksiński in conversation with Henryk Brzozowski:

Zna Pan na pewno te wszystkie komunały, które od lat wypisuje się o muzyce Beethovena. Że w Piątej i Appassionacie słychać pukanie losu do drzwi… Jeżeli puka, to chyba jest to los antropomorficzny: nosi marynarkę, prawą reką puka, a w lewej trzyma kapelusz, który zdjął, by mu nie przeszkadzał przy sluchaniu muzyki i pukaniu w odpowiednich momentach i do taktu.
I’m sure you know all those cliches people have been writing about Beethoven for years. That in the Fifth and the Appassionata you can hear the knocking of fate on the door… If it’s knocking, it must be an anthropomorphic fate: it’s wearing a jacket, knocking with the right hand while holding in the left hand its hat, which it took off so it wouldn’t disturb him while he was listening to the music and knocking at the right moments and in time.

Some of Beksi?ski’s art: here.
(Later:)
It turns out I can put pictures on this page after all… This is Beksi?ski:

Socialist Realist art (or “socrealizm”) was official dogma in Poland in the late 40s and early 50s and elsewhere for longer. Paintings, architecture and sculptures of the period glorify the working class and the achievements of socialism. Kitsch would be a kind word for much of it. Also striking is the resemblance to fascist art: there is a fascination with strong, healthy young bodies. See here, here and here for examples.

While wandering around an exhibition with its glowing reports of Polish Stakhanovs the other day I cast my mind back to the glorification and celebration of my own struggles for a better, brighter, capitalist future in Ireland. One afternoon the exciting news filtered down from on high that our section of the bank had in one day achieved the norm-busting feat of processing over one million pounds in car loans. We workers had outdone ourselves in the fight for a more car-filled future. Plainly, this extraordinary victory in the war against walking had to be marked and so our brigade leader announced that the following day after work we would go to the pub. The day arrived, another million pounds worth of automobile was put on the road and my fellow workers - women all, for progressive Ireland knew no discrimination - disappeared to change out of their work clothes into their civilian clothes (identical to their work clothes) before meeting in a local bar. Joyless, joyless. Even though the motoring public of Ireland was paying, each worker ordered precisely one vodka and diet coke or similarly emasculated product before trickling home, one by one. Where were the patriotic songs, the laughter, the collective buzz of making common cause? The rousing speeches?

Where was the company portraitist with his easel, painting a picture of me wearing a red tie?