The Muses of Łódź Kaliska: Natural History. Whose History?

The history of the Łódź Kaliska group as told by its Muses is only ostensibly the history of Łódź Kaliska. In reality, it is a condensed history of the relationship between Łódź Kaliska and the Muses, presented from the latter’s perspective. That the Muses are an inseparable part of Łódź Kaliska is beyond dispute; what may be debated is how large and important a part. The film therefore raises a question: why did Anka Leśniak reverse — or rather shift — the perspective and look at Łódź Kaliska from an unusual angle, making the Muses its protagonists? And what did she gain by doing so?

Who Are the Muses?

The contemporary Muse is an earthly woman functioning in the real world, where divine qualities are difficult to preserve, although God envies us our mistakes. Only she knows how much divinity remains within her. The Muses of Łódź Kaliska featured in the film are connected with different periods of the group’s artistic activity. They include those who remember the atmosphere of the Attic and the flourishing of Pitch-In Culture, as well as those who first assumed the role of Muse in the twenty-first century. Leśniak gives the floor to Muses who participated in different numbers of projects, often at different times, and were called to their role in different ways. Outside photo sessions, they lead different lives and are of different ages. All this made it possible to outline answers to questions about being a Muse from the Muses’ own perspective. How do they see themselves? How do they understand being a Muse in general? What is their attitude towards the other Muses and towards the group’s activities? This diversity enables — or at least helps — the viewer to define the concept of the Łódź Kaliska Muse, determine the Muses’ role and place in the group’s work, and see how these changed over time. It also reveals the character of Łódź Kaliska’s practice. Although the film presents each Muse’s subjective vision, the diversity of its protagonists lends the subject a certain degree of objectivity. It also opens up the broader question of what it means to be a Muse.
The Muses of Łódź Kaliska are known primarily from photographs and films. The term “Łódź Kaliska Muse”, widely used for some time, did not have to struggle against the label “model”. The film shows very well why. A model is someone who poses — and is consequently stripped not only of personality but also of identity, surrendering both to the artist. She becomes a template to be processed, a shape the artist reproduces in a work. As Leśniak has pointed out in earlier pieces, models have no voice; they are anonymous and serve as patterns for replication. Rarely does anyone ask who the woman depicted actually was. The same is true of male models: does anyone want to know who posed for sculptures of David? It is enough that they are beautiful, reflect the tastes and style of their age, and embody perfect form. A Muse is somebody. She is no longer merely a form, but also an inspiration, a driving spirit and often a precondition for the work’s creation. Perhaps most importantly, a Muse contains an individual human element, and at times a divine one too, even if we understand her through the dictionary definition as a “guardian of the fine arts and sciences”. A Muse has a soul and a will. A Muse thinks and speaks.

Defining the Łódź Kaliska Muse

Whether one is a Muse only at times or remains one always, the role confers distinction. In the past, the Muses of Łódź Kaliska became Muses quite naturally: by being present in the same milieu as the group, through friendships and other situations during their student years, or through acquaintances. Today, the Muses are recruited more often — though not exclusively — from Łódź pubs (Łódź Kaliska itself leads the way here), from the street, exhibition openings and sometimes auditions. In a sense, this change is understandable and natural. The group is mature and has existed for thirty years; everyone who was going to graduate has done so. Perhaps the artists’ needs have also changed, and no one among their acquaintances is suitable for a Muse any longer? Regardless of how someone is admitted to the Muses’ circle, each woman emphasises the intellectual contribution that the Muses make to the artists’ works: a kind of intellectual collaboration that, if one sought to quantify it, would probably account for only a small percentage. All the Muses agree on this point and credit authorship to the members of Łódź Kaliska. “The Muses show what the boys have in their heads and what the women have in theirs” is one of the best descriptions of their role. It points not only to modelling, but also to the “personal contribution” and “added value” absent from the writing of critics and curators. Nor should we forget that some Muses did more than accompany the artists during particular projects; they spent time with the group almost every day. Beyond “being material”, these Muses performed a variety of additional roles. They produced many documents, took care of the artists during moments of crisis and witnessed the life of the artistic milieu, allowing certain ideas to see the light of another day and develop further.

All the Muses stress that being a Muse involves the hard work inherent in modelling. But the definition of a muse, and of a Łódź Kaliska Muse, goes further: ideas in which their minds also participate are “externalised” through the material of their bodies. Like every muse, the Muses of Łódź Kaliska undoubtedly inspire the group. Looking at them, the artists see ready-made images that probably do not always assume the form of the original idea; at times, the Muses surprise them with their invention.

What Do the Muses Remember?

All of them remember the beginnings of their collaboration and how they became Muses. Their other answers are highly subjective and draw upon the individual memory, recollections and sensibility of each protagonist. The Muses remember the most extreme situations — amusing and even painful ones — and, importantly, they generally remember them consciously. By recording small stories about figures important to the group’s artistic activity, Anka Leśniak has managed to present not only the atmosphere of working with the artists, which reveals the group’s character, but also a considerable part of the artistic milieu in which the members of Łódź Kaliska worked, which they helped to shape, and of which the Muses were and remain a part. This perspective allows us to look at Łódź Kaliska from within, without an art critic’s lens, without placing the phenomenon within a line of artistic development and without passing judgement. Yet the Muses cannot be accused of relying thoughtlessly on impressions and memories. Despite the approach imposed by the filmmaker, they are aware of their place in the group and perfectly capable of conveying its character and most important features — especially those sensed intuitively but, for various reasons, left unspoken, principally because they are impressionistic rather than analytical. Trusting memory, emotion and the senses, and using them freely, is neither predictable nor popular. Leśniak is unafraid to draw upon them, both when boldly proclaiming sensual painting in 2007 and now, as she invokes women’s memories to describe a group masculine in character. A female perspective and a search for the stories of women previously condemned to silence belong to Leśniak’s artistic interests, which emerge very clearly in this work.

The Muses Then and Now

When we trace the birth of the Muses and the particular role they consequently played within the group, it is striking that the earlier Muses functioned naturally within the milieu, whereas today’s Muses have been summoned to the pantheon from different places, most often those associated with social life. This is understandable, since in a sense the Łódź Kaliska Muse is also a companion in artistic activity. What must be granted to the Muses is an awareness of their role and significance in the group’s work. Whether we speak of past or present, the Muses of Łódź Kaliska have a sense of mission. Here they reveal an amusingly “feminine” tendency to diminish the role of Muses with whom they did not work: the earlier women claim that they played a larger part than today’s, while the present Muses feel that only they knew how, and had the courage, to share ideas that were frequently used in the group’s work. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle — that is, within Łódź Kaliska, whose members trusted and continue to trust women, whatever period they work in.

The History of the Łódź Kaliska Group as Told by Its Muses is a film whose greatest virtues include presenting history from a previously unseen perspective, through the prism of individual memory, and revealing a history of unquestionable value that endures as long as those who took part in the remembered events remain alive. It belongs to a form of documenting art based on witnesses’ memories. Yet it is not a “talking heads” film. That is determined by its editing, the questions asked and the atmosphere the artist succeeded in creating before the camera — and certainly also by Leśniak’s profound knowledge of Łódź Kaliska’s work from both critical and artistic perspectives, which meant that she knew exactly what to ask. Giving the floor to the Muses is as subversive as it is witty. Yet I have never before seen such an unpretentious, honest and natural history of Łódź Kaliska, even if it is selective and incomplete.

*Karolina Jabłońska is an art historian and independent curator who publishes texts on contemporary art. Since 2006 she has co-run the art portal www.lodz-art.pl.