Concept-shapes
First Concept-shapes – 1967
The year 1967, when he began to practise concrete poetry in a systematic manner, proved to be a turning point in Stanisław Dróżdż’s artistic work.
His first concrete works were created before he became aware of the existence of this international movement, as they emerged at the end of 1967 as a natural evolution of his poetic practice. Only somewhat later, at the turn of 1967 and 1968, Bogusław Sławomir Kunda – having just returned from Prague, where he had realised that this type of work belonged to concrete poetry – informed Dróżdż of this fact. In May 1968 he brought him the anthology Experimentální poezie. It was then that Dróżdż began searching for analogous solutions in Polish poetry and encountered Marian Grześczak’s Miasto [City] (1951) and the volumes of Andrzej Partum. However, these were not concrete poetry in the strict sense. The first Polish concrete poet, initially working in isolation within this field, was Stanisław Dróżdż.
Nevertheless, as a philologist, the emerging concrete poet initially questioned the status and value of this type of work. At the 7th Poetry Spring in Kłodzko in 1969, he asked Miron Białoszewski, whom he met there, whether it was worth pursuing such activity. As Dróżdż later recalled: “And he looked at the works I presented and replied: ‘Of course it’s worth it. What will come of it, we don’t know, but… it’s worth it.’ In this way he encouraged me. We became friends and met whenever he visited Wrocław.” Among already recognised poets, concrete poetry was received positively by Artur Międzyrzecki and Witold Wirpsza, yet, somewhat surprisingly, it was also accused of heresy by Julian Przyboś.
Public Presentation – 1968
Author Talk
On 2 February 1968, a meeting with Stanisław Dróżdż, combined with a display of his concrete works, took place in the hall of the Municipal and Provincial Public Library. Janusz Styczeń delivered an introductory lecture on concrete poetry. Archival accounts indicate that the meeting, organised within a series devoted to young artists, broke attendance records – instead of the usual 30–40 participants, around 100 people were present. It may also have set a record in terms of the intensity of discussion, as the topic was controversial; it proved impossible to reach agreement on whether these works could still be considered poetry. This event was Dróżdż’s first public presentation of his proposal for concrete poetry.
From the outset he referred to his works as concept-shapes, or shapes of concepts. The meeting should be regarded as the mature articulation of an artistic programme that defined the creative path he would follow for the rest of his life. According to the memories of those present, Dróżdż declared that he would devote himself to this kind of work permanently – which was received with irony at the time, yet today inspires admiration for the consistency with which he pursued his chosen path. Critics likewise noted the coherence of his programme: “…there is no doubt that Dróżdż undertook the effort to publicly crystallise his own poetic stance, and did so with far greater success than Group 66 had two years earlier. His programme is above all an example of theoretical and logical thinking, something that was lacking in his predecessors.”
When Dróżdż was later celbrating the tenth anniversary of his work in 1978, he emphasised the groundbreaking character of that library meeting.
Galleries
In December 1968, Stanisław Dróżdż and Zbigniew Makarewicz held a joint exhibition entitled Concept-shapes. Dramatic Analysis of the Object at the Mona Lisa Gallery in Wrocław. This was the first gallery exhibition of the concrete artist’s works. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition was a reprint of the December issue of Odra and included the author’s programmatic text. The exhibition marked a transition to a new stage – from two-dimensional works on paper to the three-dimensional space of the gallery.
His first individual exhibition, Concept-shapes. Structural Poetry, took place in the now legendary odNOWA Gallery in Poznań in March 1969.
In the same year, Dróżdż presented his concept-shapes at the 7th Poetry Spring in Kłoszko, while also receiving the ZO FWP award in Polanica and a private prize funded by Sławomir Cieślikowski – the Chinese Mask award for the best metaphor in the Single Poem Competition for Parody and Literary Paraphrase. That year he also took third place in the Single Poem Tournament at the Confrontations of Young Poets in Wrocław. His interest in poetry extended beyond concretism: he continued to write and publish traditional poetry, albeit increasingly rarely, as he became progressively absorbed by new poetics.
In 1970, the international exhibition Klankteksten – Konkrete Poëzie – Visuele Teksten [Sound Texts – Concrete Poetry – Visual Texts] was held in Amsterdam. Among the invited participants was Stanisław Dróżdż, the only representative from Poland. Today, this event is regarded as a summary of the global achievements of concrete poetry at a moment when the movement was beginning to lose momentum internationally. In Poland, however, it was only just developing and its most intensive phase still lay ahead.
In the autumn of 1971, Dróżdż’s exhibition at the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw inaugurated a regular collaboration that continued until the end of his life. He became one of the gallery’s regular collaborators; for many years, including into the 2000s, it remained one of the most important contemporary art galleries in Poland. Two artists exerted a particularly strong influence on its profile: Henryk Stażewski and Tadeusz Kantor. The gallery had been founded in 1966 on the initiative of critics (Wiesław Borowski, Hanna Ptaszkowska, Mariusz Tchorek) and artists (Zbigniew Gostomski, Henryk Stażewski, Edward Krasiński, Tadeusz Kantor), and became a venue for numerous events of major importance for Polish art. After his first exhibition there, the work of the Wrocław-based concrete artist attracted the attention of Henryk Stażewski – a member of the Blok, Praesens and a.r. groups, a close collaborator of Władysław Strzemiński, and an artist deeply interested in typography. Interestingly, Strzemiński had taught typography in Łódź according to his own reformed programme of “functional printing” and had designed Julian Przyboś’s volume Z ponad [From Above]. Dróżdż himself summarised the support he received from such figures with the following words: “On the one hand there was Białoszewski, the poet, and on the other Stażewski, the painter, so I had good ‘backing’, but I still had to determine my future.”
Polish Writers’ Union vs. the Association of Polish Artists and Designers
In an attempt to clarify his professional status, Stanisław Dróżdż undertook efforts to become a member of the Polish Writers’ Union (ZLP). Andrzej Waśkiewicz and Jerzy Koperski suggested that he present his catalogues. He was ultimately not admitted, however, due to an unspecified “lack of statutory grounds.” Dróżdż himself later explained the circumstances: “At a board meeting, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz took one of these catalogues – the catalogue Dlaczego [Why] (a dozen or so loose sheets placed in a portfolio). He picked it up and… of course, everything fell apart. ‘Is this supposed to be a book?’ he asked. ‘A book should be bound,’ he declared. And that was the end of my contact with the Polish Writers’ Union.”
Unexpectedly, it proved possible to establish a connection with the Association of Polish Artists and Designers (ZPAP), and in October 1973 Dróżdż began efforts to be admitted to the painting section. In the vote at the Wrocław branch he fell short by a single vote. After submitting an appeal to the central authorities in Warsaw, he was accepted in April 1975 and was even invited to the Main Board. His admission was based on his artistic output, and his sponsors were Wanda Gołkowska and Eugeniusz Smoliński. Initially he held the status of an extraordinary member, but from 1977 he became an ordinary member. He remained affiliated with the Wrocław District of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers until the end of his life.
As a result, his ties with the literary milieu gradually weakened. Whereas in the years 1967–1973 he received scholarships from the Main Board of the Polish Writers’ Union, after 1974 these took the form of grants from the Ministry of Culture and Art, either from the Department of Fine Arts or the Authors’ Fund. From 1980, owing to his membership in a creative union, he received a creative pension.
Consequently, the classification of Dróżdż’s work within the domain of literature or the visual arts – and thus within the scope of literary studies or art history – remained unresolved, even though this very dilemma became a central topic in discussions on concrete poetry, often diverting attention from the essence of the phenomenon itself. Nevertheless, the roots of his work, deeply embedded in the literary sphere, remain indisputable. Concrete art appears as a consequence of the author’s development and of the evolution of his poetic craft. Stanisław Dróżdż regarded his work as literature until the very end. His education was of fundamental importance: he constructed his world out of texts rather than images, and it is from this foundation that his poetry emerged. He consistently avoided commenting on the visual arts, not considering himself competent in this field. Among his favourite writers he mentioned Bolesław Leśmian, Miron Białoszewski and Tymoteusz Karpowicz; among prose writers he valued Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Alfred Kubin and Jorge Luis Borges, as well as books such as Elias Canetti’s Auto da fé, Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch and Ray Bradbury’s 451° Fahrenheit.
His connections with the art world were partly conditioned by the specific circumstances of the period: the Wrocław art scene of the 1960s and 1970s was exceptionally dynamic and considerably more open to experimentation than the literary milieu. This, in fact, reflected a broader nationwide tendency – when compared with the transformations taking place in the visual arts at the time, literature appeared to remain enclosed in a kind of rigid armour that hindered rapid development.
Dróżdż’s Text on Concept-shapes
Stanisław Dróżdż wrote the text Concept-shapes in 1968. It was published in the monthly magazine Odra, no. 12/1968, as a self-commentary accompanying the exhibition of his works at the Mona Lisa Gallery, held in December 1968 as part of a joint presentation by Zbigniew Makarewicz and Stanisław Dróżdż. The text was later reprinted in the catalogue of Dróżdż’s solo exhibition Structural Poetry. Concept-shapes at the odNowa Gallery in Poznań (March–April 1969).
Stanisław Dróżdż
CONCEPT-SHAPES
The changes constantly occurring in various spheres of human activity, transforming reality and significantly shaping our consciousness – and thus our relationship to reality – do not remain without consequence in the field of art. The situation that has arisen creates a need for a new aesthetics: one that shifts its emphasis from the sensual to the intellectual, is adapted to contemporary conditions, and enables a more direct, non-elitist engagement with art than before – conditioning the emergence of a new aesthetic consciousness and accepting its criteria grounded primarily in mathematics and logic, understood as more objective and universal than historical and cultural determinants – and the resulting individual or collective subjective preferences – testing the value and usefulness of a work of art integrated with science. Traditional aesthetic criteria appear increasingly inadequate and dysfunctional; the pursuit of truth inclines us to know and understand rather than to feel – irrationally, that is, without a more objective test.
A work of art, in the name of objectified verifiability and the ever greater elimination of inconsistent and random arbitrariness – which may be replaced by another arbitrariness – must be shaped by universal and strict determinants, creating such an intensity of objectified artistic-cognitive impact that there is no possibility of retreat into narrow, unverifiable subjective irrationalities. The information conveyed by a work of art must be unconditionally accepted by the recipient and, irrespective of their will, must subjugate them absolutely and, as part of the reality it encompasses – overwhelm them. This has the additional value that the recipient, voluntarily or involuntarily, directly or indirectly, finds themselves within the work of art, constituting an individual-objective test of its value in terms of its usefulness in signalling and introducing the problem of the registration of consciousness, and in making the recipient aware of themselves within this situation.
Such an objective and subjective objectification of reality in art – which is neither erudition nor a culturally and aesthetically conditioned sensitivity to the creations of alien (closer or more distant) psycho-personalities, leading ultimately to far-reaching subjectivisation and hindering communication – cultivates the human capacity for thinking, which is primary in relation to knowledge. In an era of knowledge that is already incomprehensible and continues to expand, this perspective appears to offer genuine prospects of success.
In literature, these general aesthetic postulates are realised by a type of poetry known as structural, whose sources are strictly rational – mathematical and cybernetic. Although difficult in themselves, once recoded into language they become more accessible, and language lends them precision and consistency. Yet this language, as the language of poetry – the language of abbreviation – is not, owing to its mechanised precision, strictly literary. The tension between graphic arrangements of signs and arrangements of meanings arises autonomously or is revealed through a title-key. Considering the chronic lack of time and the constant haste of modern life, as well as the psychological changes resulting from these conditions, such an abbreviated and communicative form of information transfer appears increasingly indispensable. While employing, in its main current, the word as the broadest and most communicatively accessible means, concrete poetry is not limited to purely linguistic effects; recognising the mechanisms of its material, it employs them in multiple ways, both within the linguistic and extra-linguistic – that is, visual – spheres.
The fundamental determinants of this material are a system of stereotypes and a mechanised structure, and the apparent narrowing of expressive means is only superficial. On the contrary, they enable an effective revaluation of the conventional means of expression available to poetry. Thus, the introduction of new formal means in this domain simultaneously entails the emergence of new or newly constituted content. It need not analyse a problem in depth, as science does; it suffices to signal it to the recipient, whose contribution determines the richness of reception, consisting in the “creation of a poetic text” inscribed upon a “record”-like surface.
The use of abstractions – which make it possible to systematise concrete reality – possesses, in addition to its broad and universal field of designation and meaning, another advantage: it shortens the perceptual cycle by eliminating the initial stage, namely the recipient’s “journey” from the “concrete” created by the author to the “abstract” expressed by that concrete. Only two stages remain: from the author’s “abstract” to the recipient’s “abstract,” and from the recipient’s “abstract” to the recipient’s “concrete.”
Concrete – structural – poetry can and should be created and evaluated not only by those directly engaged in literary creation, but by anyone familiar with the fundamental laws and obligations of the material with which this poetry operates.
Concept-shapes (created by me) become formally associated with this tendency. They are so named because they concretise, in a visual (graphic) form, the material shape of a concept – determined by scientific premises and not resulting from an imprecise, subjective act of artistic creation – as a “record” bearing abstract meaning, formally integrated in terms of content through feedback relations. Such “records” dealing with the structures of abstract concepts are universal by virtue of their signifying capacity and favour the expression of timelessness and thematic non-locality. Their spatiotemporal relations, although not applicable to every “record,” may be considered against the axis of time and space, thus generating their – seemingly positive – dynamics and spatiality.
The verifiability of the cognitive value of a text, so unreliable and subjective in the case of traditional poetic language, becomes, as is evident, considerably simpler and allows for a thorough evaluation. The semantic systems of concept-shapes, although open, are nevertheless structured by mathematical and logical exponents, revaluing – or rather modernising – words devalued in literary language by bringing them to such a state of meaning that they cease to signify in a conventional sense, cease to “lie,” and function solely as intersubjective associative signs of individual content, understood informationally through analogy.
Owing to their appearance, concept-shapes may be superficially associated with calligrams; however, this resemblance is only external, since calligrams are merely “self-illustrative,” whereas concept-shapes – as “self-analysing” “records” – possess greater cognitive functionality.
Concept-shapes are therefore substantively and formally synthetic – like ideograms – codifiers of reality, integrating science (mathematics, logic) and art (poetry, visual arts) – once united and perhaps tending towards reunification. They are thus creations situated at the intersection of these disciplines, containing a maximum of content in a minimum of notation, expanding the possibilities of expression and perhaps pointing towards the prospect of poetry as an international language in which translation – owing to the originality, abstractness and symbolism of its means of expression – will be simplified or even rendered unnecessary.