The grotesque in the works of Bruno Jasienski

Abstract

The chief objective of this study is to examine the works of Bruno Jasienski in order to show that he used the grotesque throughout his creative career as the most effective artistic method of highlighting issues he deemed important, as well as a means of disguising his personal view of the world and its people. The study consists of two parts: Part I is devoted to a brief survey of the development of the grotesque, with particular emphasis on the relationship between grotesque art and those artistic movements with which Bruno Jasienski associated himself, namely avant-garde and socialist realism. Part II is devoted to a close examination ofthe grotesque in Jasienski's major works. It opens with a summary and interpretation of Jasienski's personal views on art and its role in modern society. It then seeks to demonstrate that the essence of his grotesque method lies in the conflation of bizarre events with the scrupulous recreation of reality that insists on the accuracy of historically and geographically identifiable data. Such a method permits the artist to expose the absurdity oflife in a world obsessed with appearance and material possessions. Believing that art should be the reflection of life, Jasienski saw life as a constant game between form what it seems to be and content - what it really is - a perception that led him to conclude that it is impossible to resolve the conflict between the world as it appears to be and its true nature. This sense of the impossibility of orientating oneself in a world dominated by ideologies intensifies during the period of Jasieriski' s life that he spent in the Soviet Union. The closer examination of his satiric grotesques written in Russian, apart from explicitly satiric targets, betray the author's growing apprehension that Communism, especially its Stalinist version, might be yet another deceitful far;ade made of promises and alluring slogans. The grotesque character of those works that focus on the opportunism and hypocrisy of politicians, also exposes the ambivalence of ideologies which while liberating some are used as the instrument of oppressing others