ART, WHATEVER IT TAKES

Since the early pandemic in 2020, Rome Art Program has conducted a series of interviews, “Art, Whatever It Takes.”
Artists, Art Critics, and Art Historians living in Italy, the U.S., and U.K., share their insights during these powerful times.

Interview with Arnold Ananicz

Arnold Ananicz is a painter of Polish nobility,  graduated from New York Studio School.   Some of his paintings are in Polish Museums.  Arnold is member of the Polish Artists Association.  Culture animator, he writes on art, and got the Honorary Distinction for Polish Culture and Scholarship of Ministry of Culture.

RAP: What is your definition of “art” today?

Arnold Ananicz: Art is poetry. Often the definition of Art is misguided by the lack of clear concepts, criteria and ideas. We live in a world of boundless freedom but ideals and metaphysical matters are reasons of cynical sighs, how ironic. Nihilism, desire to demolish sacrum, disregard the splendorous legacy of the past. Paradoxically, freedom, widens spectrum of imagination but obliges responsibility. The actual human condition, it’s like a Grand Opera that opens a fascinating stage. The man figure is closing eyes, struggling, fleeing from metaphysical experience, devoid of divinity, being tempted like never before, defecting from truth, takes refuge in comfort and mundaness. It’s a spectacular scene of a man in not antegral civilization. The hierarchy of millennia is disintegrating like just discovered ancient painting, in a result of sudden contact with air, evaporates. Dramatic prelude has gone with the sob of the audience. This act is in a curious circus with a very serious scenography. Often, artists subjective existential issues are not understood by the public. Strive for shock and exaggeration of meaning that is fed on ideologies. But there are artists who are true to authenticity of human universal values. Art esprit is ingenious, mastery, proficiency and prophecy. Without beauty there is nothing, paraphrasing Dostojewski.

RAP: Art is dynamic and regenerates itself… how does it change, and how did it change us?

Arnold: Poet Herbert said: “the poet looks over a broad terrain and over vast stretches of time.” In artist soul lives the art of the past. References to ancient art are present. Art changes us magnificently! Without culture, we become just shadows of humanity. Art once leading in depicting mystery and religious world, became secular, now alienated is becoming a document of our times. In a sophisticated world, the viewer needs exquisite stimuli, not a journalism.

RAP: When (and how) did you understand that art was becoming very important in your life?

Arnold: As a child, drawing and forms of creativity gave me joy that I loved. I was lucky to have guiding Angels. I was around 20, I realized that art will transform my being. It did beyond recognition, and I’m grateful to Divine providence for care over my soul.

RAP: What role does art play today? What are the “great figures” who have recently changed it? Do you feel close to any of these figures?

Arnold: Art elevates us, through transcendence, merges beauty and truth, beyond realistic illustration. I admire artists who continue the classical current, that is set in historiosophic context. From Witkacy, Malewicz, Balthus, Tarkowski, Wiesław Markowski, Mitoraj, Oskar and Czesław Miłosz to works of living artist as Carole Robb.

RAP: Are there still traditional figures such as collectors, muses, mecenate and patrons, in today’s art and society interaction model?

Arnold: The muses exist! Certain models will be always there. Some institutions are promoting contemporary art are drenched by ideologies and that is a cul de suc. Mercantilism & corporations replaced the top hierarchy of the structure, art to them is redundant. Much of modern Europe’s elite is infantile, irresponsible, intellectually empty, tasteless, too blind to see life treasures.

RAP: How have the new technologies and media culture changed art today, improving or worsening it…? What do you feel are your biggest challenges?

Arnold: Paramount question for European civilization. Our world is filled with a moving pictures & virtual image that has an impact on our perception of the world and changes our imagination. Creating work of art takes passion, physical effort & vision! My aim is harmony, synthesis and timelessness.

RAP: Art as a mirror of man, in this moment of emergency seems to be shattered …what do these fragments reflect now?… Shadow or light of the moment?

Arnold: In western & Easter Europe, the portrait of a man as a protagonist and his drama has different visage. Defragmentation of a human, disinheritance, “corrosion of imagination”. More people believe in God in East Europe than in the west, hence less existential torments, emptiness, psychoanalists (laugh).

RAP: Understanding, interpreting, and then possibly judging the work of art; which is the right path when we are in front of a piece of art?

Arnold: Human nature, must comprehend, name and give the verdict. Our senses are the first to be delighted. The richer is our interior, more we will read from art. Art visage speaks to us in dialog. The pilgrimage takes a lifetime. Our soul undergoes transitions, we listen to Bach differently when we are older. The same is with ancient art, we see it not like its contemporaries.

RAP: Which is the real role of Academies and Art schools today? What can artists learn from these institutions today?

Arnold: Imagine a classical musician without knowing the craft, these are means of artist expression. Studying from life, the model and history of art & what art is. The principals, proportions, perspective.

RAP: Art too has undergone a complex process of globalization; can having an authentic and genuine style be an advantage or a drag for an artist?

Arnold: An artist is an individual being with a unique sensitivity and voice. The louder and authentic the vocation, the finest the art. The main stream of pop culture blurs the view of reality & forms entities that don’t differ from each other. Phenomenon on such scale on masses is unprecedented.

RAP: How do Art Galleries and Museums position themselves today, and, in your opinion, how should they?

Arnold: Museums open its view to the public but at times they appear as bastions or islands of treasures that are floating surrealistically above ground, disattached from real life. They should serve as the bridges of the past to the future. The sudden emptiness between the old masters and contemporary Museums, leaves an unsettling space.

RAP: “Figuration” vs “Abstraction”. Which of the two is better descriptive of the period we live in? Which one will have a better future?

Arnold: Profound meaning can’t be articulated in a newspeak. Art language can’t narrow itself to isms. Reality is more complex and more difficult to persue. Culture was build upon the heritage, now is in a process of disintegration. Four pillars of civilization are shaken, like a temple from antiquity, by an earthquake. Art aim is to describe, to capture reality in a broader sense, its context in the past makes a whole effigy. Part of reality is abstract and should be incorporated in a pictorial depiction into a larger picture. Artist observes, diagnoses and questions reality. Artist is partly a scholar, monk, magician, philosopher and a scientist.

RAP: Today we often speak of “emerging artists”; what advice based on your experience do you feel you can give to young artists?

Arnold: “An Artist, that sound proud”. Chastity, innocence, must be nourished. Patience, perfecting craft and imagination, despite obstacles, not to think about money. Life was given for free. Effort and suffering will eventually turn in to beauty. Young life like clay sculpture is a mosaic of experience, then mature apparition appears. Art demands rhetoric, virtuosity, eloquence, otherwise is mediocre.

RAP: Art as a lens for reading the present, can it modify the space and time we pass through? …will art save us?

Arnold: Art is maturing with our European Culture Odyssey. It reminds of sound of bells, to wake us up to sublime, to a real purpose of life, that is a creation and experience the mystery. Dante guided by a Poet visited Hell, not to stay there, obviously. There was no great Artist of the past who didn’t believe. Nothing will save our souls but God, we have to cultivate faith to believe.

www.ananiczius.wixsite.com/-art