In Łódź, there are numerous legends that attest to the transformative effect that „the city” has had on its habitants. Such change, as a myth, is a convention of remembering the violent social transformations that took place in the great industrial Molochs of urbanisation in the 19th and 20th centuries. It may be because life here can fluctuate considerably.
In such conditions, the imagination directly overlaps with violence, agency, desires, dominance, and submission.
The concept of the sacrum and fate becomes a poignant, impassively acting force. The industrial machine is as simple and ruthless entity. It is understandable why our analytical minds gravitate towards viewing it as a purely technical factor, one that can be exploited for mass production. However, it is crucial to consider the nuances that matter more: such as its size, speed (number of changes), developing distribution networks, capturing the market, and ultimately profit.
It is still common to describe industrial (and post-industrial) cities in terms of sports cars, with numerous technical parameters being considered. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to overlook the instinctive forces and reflexes that are activated by such symbolic specification.
It is often said that Jerzy Nowosielski painted (wrote) icons. This is indeed the case.
If we analyse the icon as an image, without any preconceptions, and reveal how it is and how it will be it can be considered a “label” that fits what is seen in his works painted in Łódź between 1950 and 1962.
Even Łódź can be considered an icon.
In more precise terms, the Łódź Museum of Art at the corner of Gdańska and Więckowskiego streets is the location of the only cinematic iconostasis in the world, constructed for the excellent exhibition Nowosielski in Łódź, which took place from 10 October, 2023, to 25 February, 2024.
Nowosielski spent a period of twelve years in Łódź, during which he sought refuge from the constraints of socialist realism. He was able to free himself from Krakow, establish his own unique style of painting, which was characterised by a combination of incorporeal holiness and painful cruelty. This approach can be seen to reflect to the character of the city itself.
The exhibition afforded us the opportunity to observe paintings displayed in a manner reminiscent of an iconostasis, while simultaneously viewing an old film chronicle projected in the semi-darkness behind them, through an opening that imitated the “royal doors.” The experience allowed us to reflect on a the genius loci of Łódź for an extended period.
Te viewer will gain an understand of the direct connection between the details of Łódź’s streets and their almost otherworldly perspectives with avant-garde abstraction.
It is unlikely than an urban planning course or film history will provide an explanation of this phenomenon. This prodigy has been created for the exhibition by curators Paulina Kurc-Maj and Julianna Goździk.
The iconostasis is a construction that serves as a conduit for enlightenment.
It is a construction composed of solid images on boards that shields the viewer from complete blindness and the confusion of the senses in the face of the incomprehensible and unfathomable. Such situations are feared and longed for. The cinematic iconostasis from MS1 united urbanism and film, perspective and projection, detail and rhythm in the minds of the viewers. This equipment is of great benefit for the future.
The Łódź Institute of Architecture and Urbanism must buy this idea and shorten the suffering of students who for years do not understand what gingerbread has to do with windmills, and Łódź with film.
For Nowosielski, Łódź was a place of “ugliness and sickly urbanism.” He usually added, “I loved this Łódź very much and remember it very well.”
Does a contradiction take place here?
Only for minds which have never been exposed to transcendence. It is for those who still believe in the power of central planning, in which one column can accommodate both physics and metaphysics, and only net profit counts.
Those who are skeptical are invited to Łódź. The city still boast unassuming, simple streets, such as tram rails, where, within a hundred metres, lived next to each other: the Nowosielskis, Polański, Skolimowski, Marek Edelman. The atmosphere of the city is woven from such entanglements. The atmosphere is best depicted by a cinematic, living frame, akin to an icon, where a beam of light is sufficient to create a building, a person, and happiness.
In Łódź, Nowosielski experienced a late, final religious epiphany. He spoke of it, like if it was a woman, as he knew how to paint. “I looked at her and suddenly, at that moment, everything turned around, it was certainty.” What was a subject of image? The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.
In the present year of 2024, the cathedral appears to be a projection from a parallel reality, situated in close proximity to the Łódź Fabryczna station.
Come on, then take a few minutes to stand calmly and look at the old film chronicle by Marek Nowicki between Nowosielski’s icons.
Who knows, maybe the gift of accurate, though strange illuminations will stay with you longer? Then you will always fit into this city, you will always feel at home there.
Even if not everything succeeds, you will learn to see entanglements of images denser than QR codes, and that without any magic glasses, with the naked eye.
In Łódź, it’s simple.
Projections in images, sounds in images. In Łódź we embrace a unique blends of culture and styles , with a nonchalant ease. Our local vision is truly one of a kind.
That Cellist attired in white is an image from 1959, probably playing like Komeda from the times when he composed music for Polański’s Knife in the Water, Morgenstern’s Goodbye, Until Tomorrow, and Wajda’s Innocent Sorcerers. If you want to see with your own eyes what this melody looks like, watch Nowosielski.
We have gotten used to it, in such avant-garde-rich places, we quickly get bored. The new logo (by Justyna Żychalska) and the new slogan: Łódź creates have been with us since 2011. A lot of time has passed since then. Some still believe, others have lost spirit. It is just an ordinary story of navigation in difficult conditions.
In the Museum of Art, you can check with your own smartphone to see if you standing in front of the strangest iconostasis of this century, you can feel, see, or hear who or what is creating it. Is it the avant-garde spirit of the city, or is it (logos) something much older, something like in Romanesque and Byzantine mosaics, which directed rays of light, capable of conjuring and animating dead matter? If your phone do not have the automatic spirit recognition function, it might be worth taking a risk of temporary disorientation. The Museum of Art and similar exhibitions in it play a really important role for the city’s prosperity: they are meant to distract occasionally. To free oneself from the calming certainty provided by residents’ free access to Wikipedia and the latest information. It is believed that this is when the primary, personal, attentive, and thoroughly reasonable ability to think and decide independently returns. Without this, creation is impossible. This particular dogma is especially exceptional; it is believed in both by traditional religion supporters and radical avant-garde followers. Without it, the city ceases to develop.
The Nowosielski in Łódź exhibition could be described as modest in scale, occupying only four rooms. The iconostasis – yes, there was only one piece. An example is taken from a group of friendly animals depicted on an old Byzantine mosaic from the Norman Cathedral (Santa Maria Nuova) in Monreale. We moved confidently towards the source of that which creates the world. And you move with an instinctive trust that perhaps in our heads, too, some a strange, simple ray of light or sound will strike. It will strike and change everything, “just like in the movies”. Who knows, we might even begin to create by ourselves.
Illustration: three excerpts from paintings from the Nowosielski exhibition in Łódź at the Museum of Art (Fantastic Landscape, 1959; Landscape with Window, 1957; Street, 1959); one current automotive advertisement, two „verified information” about the artist, two drawings (Execution, probably from 1949, Untitled, 1950) not shown in the exhibition; interior of MS1, Nowosielski exhibition in Łódź; interior of a Łódź pub in 1962, filmmakers at work; https://www.wirtualnemedia.pl/artykul/lodz-kreuje-nowe-haslo-i-logo-lodzi; film frame (quite Łódź-like) as one of the images of an iconostasis compiled from paintings by Jerzy Nowosielski, the pieces painted in Łódź; on the left: a mosaic from Monreale Cathedral from the late 12th century (c. 1180), a fragment of the scene of the creation of man with a simple gesture and a breath; unfortunately, the details of this technology are still not clear enough.
