Page 62 - Studio International - December 1969

Ernst Niezvestny's increasing dexterity from this point on. The observation creates assumes the stand-point
left rectangle shows once again a mouth
The Scream: the screaming, but this time horizontally. You to which all his experience refers. Such an
intensity of vision and feeling precludes the
working out of an follow the profile from the chin to the end of possibility of emotional cohesion being con­
intuition the nose to meet a vertical division-a demar­ stantly attained. The attainment of resolution
in most of his works would not be a remarkable
cation that allows the shape immediately
protruding from it to be seen simultaneously achievement; it would be false. In order to
Russia's most important contemporary artist as a chasm, the eye (which is reintroduced attain such unity Niezvestny would, as it
Ernst Niezvestny has, owing to poor working above), and also the mouth. The more you were, have to recede from the world. In
conditions, given up sculpture. His most recent concentrate on this point the more you feel other words, he would have to anaesthetize or
work has mostly consisted of etchings which that the expression of the features are indistin­ ossify his awareness of it. By considering his
continue themes originated in his sculpture. guishable; in other words, the face is not work in full we will obtain a more intimate
Considering each project as a thematic recognized simply exhibiting pain but is pain. knowledge of the way in which this artist
resource, Niezvestny explores it until it de­ The chasm emits a line which is like an transforms his experience of the world-which
fines its own end. This has meant that his work electrical current. Through skilful use of fry­ is intolerable and oppressive to him-into a
continues to be prodigious. The Scream con­ point the artist creates an urgent, stabbing, movement towards unity which is constantly
sists of twenty prints (each measuring 12 in. energized line which encircles, leads through incomplete. We can, in short, observe him
by 8 in.) which are inextricably bound up and around itself; it discontinues in a blind expressing his developing responses to the
with each other and mutually dependent. frustrated confusion; it avitates around into condition of the world and reconstituting a
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From these I have chosen six on which to the mouth and surges upwards linking and de ee of parity with it.
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write. dividing to find expression in its extremity in If this is admitted, we can now say that the
The first etching is divided diagonally in half. the form of two hands. The man is spirit general disenchantment shown by critics
The upper is immediately recognizable as a materalized, incarnated in an expression to towards Niezvestny's work was premature:
classical head and the lower shows a structure which his whole self yields: abject despair. it was based upon an unquestioned assump­
of interlacing lines in a dynamic tension. The Niezvestny, then, is attempting to find a tion concerning aesthetic unity. And Niez­
value of this division is that it profiles two complete and trenchant language that will vestny's work obliquely challenges that
alternative languages of expression against embody and disclose his vision of the indi­ assumption as being a possible false security.
each other; but the meaning of the work vidual experience at its highest degree of ten­ Niezvestny's fragmentation of forms and
resides in the mutl,lal dependency of each and, sion and lucidity. Both divisions and doublings space is the stylistic equivalent to the dis­
if you will, how each passes into and trans­ of forms and mutually permeating meanings memberment that is its content. His style is
cends the other. are, in the following etchings, drawn together the exigency that issued from the perception.
The tensely agonized face is urgently present. in a more complex configuration. We know that the artist has been constantly
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The artist's use of line is sparing, incisive and The fourth etching depicts a head which preoccupied by the idea of death. In this con­
deft. Your eye follows the expression from the allows a double reading. Through the skilful nection these etchings represent an advance;
inside of the mouth, through from the upper use of a linear shading you can discern the they are concerned �ith the pain of endurance
to the nostrils, along the nose to the eye. You outlining of two interpenetrating profiles. The and therefore surpass his earlier fatalism.
sense its harsh contraction through the prin­ frontal view isolates the suffering of the indi­ Let us consider the last two prints simultane­
ciple points of tension which are the mouth vidual. The alternative reading allows you to ously. The double profile (fifth print) permits
and the orbit of the eye; the mouth opens see two heads anchored within each other: a sense of violence being done to a man; the
involuntarily, the eye can only look inwards. a sense of mutual subjectivity is thus realised. thrust of the head upwards in an immediate
Through this recognition the purpose of the The pain that passes between and is expressed reflex. A hand reintroduces the same desperate
lower half of the etching becomes clear. by each unites them; their extremity is gesture of the third print-but here, within
These calculatedly indeterminate and tense through mutual recognition reciprocatingly the head, establishes more transparently the
lines are partially the inward projection of supporting. The right profile shows a fissure artist's attempt to unite spiritual and bodily
the facial contraction: they are also the which extends our acute awareness of both suffering within a unified image. The veins of
sickening vertigo into which he falls uncondi­ mental and physical agony; above it, in the the severed arm leads to the mouth to become
tionally, ineluctably. region of the brain, the introduction of the the scream. The technique of doubling and
Strict division is again used in the second four fingers complete this awareness. interiorizing of images is used most forcefully
etching. At first you feel that the head con­ The extreme intensity of the print is given in the sixth print. The muscular, despairing,
fronts you frontally. Then you recognize that through the precise sculptural articulation of violent arms wrench the eyes and mouth
the approximate horizontal and vertical divi­ bared ligaments, distortions and dislocations. open. This cavernous mouth/mind sets the
sion creates an ambience which turns the face However, it remains to be said that the pathos extremity of disembodiment and spiritual
violently around itself; an ambience, more­ which this etching expresses is excessive. The distension: the scream is the purest articula­
over, that portends catastrophe. The eye on artist transforms the tears into a scream; thus, tion for the agony of a man's entire being.
the left stares, rigidly transfixed; the other is in so doing, the pathos created is recognized Niezvestny's work draws us towards a truth
thrust along its trajectory like a hypersensitive before we begin to understand the prints full in relation to which our responses are prone
distended nerve where its intensity of pain expressive intention. It becomes rhetorical. to a constant running down, our minds prone
blinds it to everything but horror. The white However, in considering this print in context to a constant forgetfulness. Through it we can
back ound isolates and intensifies the expres­ the rhetorical urgency that it possesses does observe the expression of pain and endurance,
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sive power of the individual dislocated features. not inhibit a desire to penetrate beneath this spirit and body being brought together in a
Looking at this relation you begin to sense the obvious failing to discover its most positive higher synthesis and transposed intact to the
back ound as an intimation of absence; an intentions. It was this that the above descrip­ mind. We must recreate and continue its
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absence that circumscribes the man and tion attempted to achieve. meaning for ourselves. □
through which he is depleted. A more general point concerning the rhetorical CHRISTOPHER FOX
Division in the third etching performs a differ­ nature of some of Niezvestny's work can be 1 From John Berger's 'Art and Revolution' which de­
ent function of allowing Niezvestny to use a made. Being a man who faces the cruellest scribes Niezvestny's part in the Second World War.
technique of doubling which is employed with realities of the world, the awareness that his He was severely wounded but miraculously survived.

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