Forms, Falsehoods, and Laws of Synthesis, or “the Chemistry of Theatrical Quality Complexes” According to Witkacy
Joanna Stacewicz-Podlipska
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4504-1546
Abstract
The reception of Witkacy’s work can be reduced to acts of cutting pieces that happen to fit one’s purpose out of a whole that contains many other qualities and ingredients. Misconstructions of the concept of Form which, fused with its other historical definitions and uses, generated more and more misunderstandings was what added most to the confusion. Had the concept been analyzed in all of its complexity that Witkacy intended, and particularly, within the larger conceptual framework of his thought, there would have been no room for ambiguity. The closest terminological associates of Witkacy’s “Form” belong to the family of words referring to unity, namely: “alloy,” “amalgam,” or “synthesis.” Form was meant to contain all that, having been “processed,” i.e. having undergone amalgamation, constituted the primordial matter of Art. Therefore, what Witkacy wanted for the theatre was not profusion of visual qualities, not to “make theatre ‘painterly’”, not to eliminate content in favor of form. Instead, he wanted the theatrical work to be composed mysteriously, in the process of chemical, or alchemical, Formation, in a magical act of giving shape. It is precisely this mystery of Form, with all its perplexing and embarrassing metaphysics that has been persistently and pointedly ignored by Witkiewicz’s self- or otherwise appointed inheritors. And representatives of various types of “the theatre of visual narration” ( term coined by Zbigniew Taranienko), from the pre-war Cricot Theatre to the group that Puzyna dubbed “Witkacoplastic theatre” (Witkacoplastyka), did err in this respect as well. Just as long, however, as the theatre of visual narration was preoccupied with resolving the problems stemming from aporias of Modernism, references to Witkacy were more or less warranted. But postmodernism that loves the fragmentary, makes values relative and annihilates all stable points of reference misses the point completely, and the Theory of Pure Form transmogrifies into the practice of “open form” that leaves Witkiewicz’s major postulates further and further behind.
Keywords:
Witkacy, reception of Witkacy, Theory of Pure Form, stage designReferences
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Authors
Joanna Stacewicz-PodlipskaInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4504-1546
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