Tadeusz Kantor. Episode Three. Marionette

Cricoteka’s permanent exhibition presents more aspects of Tadeusz Kantor’s work. The exhibition Tadeusz Kantor. Episode Three. Marionette invites viewers to examine the artist’s creations from the perspective of motifs of marionettes and mannequins. Objects familiar from previous instalments, representing the different stages of working life of the author of Dead Class, include new exhibits inspiring us to contemplate the tension between live actors and their dummy versions, important in his theatre. According to Kantor, mannequins embody the sense of death; however, they are also able to overcome it, since life can only be expressed by its absence. Similar ideas are examined in the presentation Tadeusz Kantor. Body – Image – Drawing at the Tadeusz Kantor’s Gallery-Studio, recalling the artist’s saying “Only that exists which we can see” (to 31 July).

Some objects, including Goplana and Elves or The Pillories, subtly allude to the figure of a puppet. The former is an abstract object from 1980s, which echoes the artist’s fascination with Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism from the times of his war-time performances. The latter is an installation comprising eight wooden posts. In the performance Let the Artists Die the pillories had actors fixed to them. Their gestures and poses were reminiscent of the figures depicted in the altarpiece showing the Dormition of Mary in the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Krakow (1477–1489).

Other works presented at the exhibition are a literal reference to the figure of a puppet. The mannequins used by Tadeusz Kantor in the performances of Cricot 2 Theatre are usually joined to a specific object. The works of this kind include: the mannequin in a bath from the performance The Water Hen, latex children’s heads and hands from the rubbish cart originally made for the performance Country House and reconstructed in 1980s, the mannequin placed in the object Wardrobe – the Interior of Imagination or the mannequin of a Priest lying in bed from Wielopole, Wielopole. According to Kantor, the relationship between a mannequin and a living actor and between a mannequin-actor and accompanying object was unbreakable. The artist coined the phrase ‘bio-object’ to describe an object united with an actor. This is how Kantor as he was working on the performance Wielopole, Wielopole described the relationship between a theatre object and actor’s body and, equally often, the body of a mannequin: ‘…Bio-objects were not props used by actors. Neither were they “the scenery” one “acts” in. They formed an inseparable whole with the actors. They emitted their own “life”, which was autonomous and did not refer to the fiction (subject matter) of the play. This “life” and its signs constituted the key subject matter of the performance. It was its substance rather than the plot. The demonstration and manifestation of this bio-object’s “life” was not meant to represent some system existing outside of it. It was autonomous and so it was real! Bio-object – a work of art’. This kind of actor-mannequin-object relationship is represented in the exhibition by such works as The Machine of Torture and The Cage.

The presented works reveal the diversity – and often apparent contradiction – of meanings hidden in the figure of a puppet, which was so important for Tadeusz Kantor’s art.