ated, others were developed, etc. The word sacrum already came up before that. However in 1978 it was formulated strongly and without shame. It was a notion which, to an effect, was a bit embarrassing, particularly in the circles of Bogucki, in the circles of the neoavant garde […]
to a different location, or about a colony of spiders. These letters, so very different in style, make up an extraordinary compilation. When it comes to sacrum, indeed it was the basic idea Janusz promoted. From what I understand, Dorota focused more on the visual side and the certain political and ideological contexts. In
Nina Smolarz: First of all, I would like to thank Dorota for the
terms of ideas, Janusz’s take on the sacred would actually call
text, which I found shocking and very interesting. The Sign of
for a separate paper and separate studies. […] Wanting to get
the Cross at the beginning and the cross by Nieznalska at the
the readers familiarized with his ideas presented in «Pop-exo-
end – it reminded me of a text by Marx which, to my surprise,
sacrum», he writes on the first page: «These opinions are based
you quoted in reference to the activities of Janusz, namely that
on the conviction that faith and art sprout from the same trunk of
a repetition from history is its parody. This is how I see the coda
our spiritual existence. That the purest act of faith and the purest
you have made. In terms of the text «Pop-ezo-sacrum», it is a bo-
acts of creation are born in the same spring of primal energy. This
oklet, a small and very modest publication, in which Janusz pre-
energy is divine love which has brought the world out of nothin-
sented his basic thoughts. He wrote these texts in the 1970’s,
gness, and whose spark hidden in each and every human being,
from 1975 to 1985. He delivered them at meetings with artists,
makes him or her a person created in the image and likeness of
the avant garde, or critics. I attended only one such meeting in
the Creator. It is due to this common origin, the common source
1984, in Wrocław. A fragment of that discussion is even recorded
of faith and creation, that in the ancient, pre-modern cultures,
in his book. As to Matuszewski, that was his great friend. They
which had been established on the basis of the undivided en-
wrote extraordinary letters to each other. The letters, in which
tirety of spiritual life, there was not a difference between that
Andrzej Matuszewski would write, «fuck this, again whatever...»,
which was sacred for the artist and that which was sacred for the
and then again, this or that random word, contained very intere-
ordinary man. In most of the ancient cultures, the old religious
sting observations about art. Janusz would write back in a highly
sacrum and the sacrum seem to be one and the same thing or
sophisticated, baroque style, describing how lady bugs appeared
perhaps two sides of the same phenomenon».
in great numbers at the seaside and how they had to be carried 50
Discussion Curators and art merchants