Anna Grocholska “Gislebertus hoc fecit”

Anna Grocholska “Gislebertus hoc fecit” [in] “Art in School”, September 1972, No. 7 (111), p. 194.

It is a very difficult task to write something about one’s attitude towards art, towards one’s own creativity. Apparent simple answers are met with doubts. The first of them is that I am a woman. Today, it seems obvious that women work in all professions on an equal footing with men.

Undoubtedly, since ancient times, women have been involved in art, but in a way that children create art today. It was a natural need to adorn herself and everything around her, it served her and her closest ones.

In the 18th – 19th centuries, young ladies from wealthy families began to learn music and drawing, but women’s art always remained within the internal, domestic circle. The only exception were probably church vestments embroidered into real paintings and offered to churches by nuns and ladies. As we know, these were masterpieces, which to this day adorn altars worldwide.

Only after the last war did it become obvious that girls study at the Academy of Fine Arts in equal numbers with boys and thus acquire a profession. So they officially and legally entered social life with art. They design many everyday objects, illustrate books, organize exhibitions, and their works are purchased by museums.

Ironically, this decisive entry of women into art coincides with a moment in the history of artistic creativity when art is experiencing its greatest crisis. All criteria are relative, and all directions and fashions follow one another and pass as quickly as spring clouds. The only salvation in these labyrinths of uncertain attitudes is to fight for and constantly build even the most modest, but one’s own thinking, one’s unique, unrepeatable path in art. We have embarked on this path, and we must fight against routine, imitation, fashion for the rest of our lives.

And here is a new paradox. In a world legally so enabling individual development, we are, thanks to established life models and the development of mass media, more stereotypical than the Egyptians building pyramids.

Therefore, I believe that one of the most important tasks of parents and educators is to teach independent and responsible thinking.

Is art needed by people today? I believe it is immensely. Despite the fact that we “produce” so many artists annually, we still encounter ugliness and neglect in everyday life. This happens because painting a picture, making a sculpture, or graphics for oneself and the muses is considered pure art, while performing commissioned work is labeled with an ugly and contemptuous term “hack work”. Every artist today measures their success by the number of national and international exhibitions, the number of reviews written about their exhibition, the number of works purchased by museums, but least of all by the number of works that serve their beauty in life.

My beloved master is Gislebertus. He was a sculptor who between 1120-1130 made all the sculptures in the Church of Saint Lazarus in Autun (France-Champagne). He indeed made 72 capitals and a huge tympanum himself, and did not work with an entire workshop.

The great signature placed in a prominent place on the tympanum, proudly stating Hoc fecit Gislebertus, testifies to the measure of sculptor Gislebertus. The mere fact of being allowed to place such a signature testifies that the prelate, who was the initiator of the church’s construction, and all the then-spiritual authorities fully appreciated the greatness of Gislebertus’s talent. We do not know any other of his works. They were probably swept away by revolutions. And the whole world got to know his art only after eight centuries when copies of all the sculptures were made with reverence. Many works have been written about Autun.

When we visit the church in Autun, we see how a great master like Gislebertus subordinated himself to the strict requirements of the servitude of sculpture in architecture. At the entrance to the church, we are greeted by the great scene of the Last Judgment on the tympanum. But inside the church, we see only tall, palm-like pillars topped with the famous capitals. The smallest piece of sculpture does not go beyond the strict rhythm and architectural order anywhere.

How differently the creativity of painters and sculptors decorating interiors began to operate in later centuries when they showed their mastery without considering the architectural assumption at all.

I joyfully undertake work on monument conservation, even though this work is seemingly not creative and extremely tedious. The most interesting object, from those conserved so far, were the sculptures adorning the Szczuka Palace in Radzyń Podlaski – a palace erected by A. Locci (1686) and adorned with sculptures by Jan Redler in 1750. During conservation work, one can learn a lot from masters, painstakingly reading the shape or expression of a gesture given by the sculptor, which must be reconstructed identically.

In addition to conservation work, I have completed a few modest sculptures in architecture, and designed a few interiors. For the rest of my life, struggling with difficulties of all kinds, from which no one is free, I will serve people with art as much as they want, and I will never stop dreaming that maybe someday I will create a work worthy of my master signing: Hoc fecit Anna. [in] “Art in School”, September 1972, No. 7 (111), p. 194.