Antyk i pop-art. Twórczość rzeźbiarska Michała Jackowskiego

Abstract

Antiquity and Pop Art: the sculptural work of Michał Jackowski

The study focuses on the sculptural work of Michał Jackowski - a Bialystok artist, a graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, whose works made of bronze and marble focus on people and values that shape interpersonal relationships. Through his figurative sculptural works, the artist poses many questions about the present. Superficial associations provoke comparisons of his work with the visual language of Igor Mitoraj. However, the artist, as well as being an experienced restorer of sculpture, is inspired by the work of Michelangelo as well as by Auguste Rodin, but also by the sculptures of Marino Marini, Constantin Brâncuși and Roy Lichtenstein. The text illustrates how Michał Jackowski’s classical sculptures, referring to popular culture, are for the artist himself a universal code for interpersonal communication and dialogue. His sculptures, based upon the ancient culture of the Mediterranean basin while at the same time referring to American Pop Art and its examination of consumerism, mass art and popular culture, pose a number of provocative questions directed by the sculptor at the contemporary individual. These are questions about the sense of human existence, forms of human behavior, interpersonal relationships and states of mind. The artist combines in an extremely original and individual manner the synthesis of expression (contained in his marbles and bronzes) with the classic form. And by means of traditional sculptural technique and the use of noble Carrara marble and bronze, which he combines with contemporary themes, he shows how extremely attractive works originating in humanistic anthropocentrism can be in the 21st century.