The Life and Metal Art of Zdzisław Beksiński

You may not recognize Zdzisław Beksiński’s unpronounceable name, but you probably recognize a few of his works. Many pervade the public sphere, and numerous heavy metal bands, from Leviathan to Blood of Kingu, have adapted them to serve their aesthetic purposes. Zdzisław hated people trying to interpret his art, so we’ll try to avoid doing too much of that. Instead, we’ll go over the basics and let you form your own opinions.

Poland

Beksiński was born in Poland in 1929. I don’t know if you’re a history buff, but this wasn't a great time to be in Central Europe. He was around 10 when the Nazis invaded the country with Stalin’s underhanded approval. 

Of all the countries involved in the Second World War, perhaps none suffered so terribly as Poland. Caught between two megalomaniacal tyrants, it was ground zero for the holocaust. Throughout the war, several of its oldest cities were flattened to the ground by relentless bombing campaigns.

Warsaw in 1945

Beksiński wouldn’t have been of fighting age, even by the end of the war, but he certainly would have been exposed to the nasty realities of foreign occupation. Though he never liked to talk much about the war’s influence on his art, it’s worth knowing that his country lost nearly a fifth of its general population and 90% of its Jews. By any historical metric, this is a terrifyingly high death toll.

Photography

Beksiński wasn’t just a painter. After studying art in the slightly reconstructed city of Warsaw, he forayed into photography. Unlike the other photographers of the era, Beksiński wasn’t interested in capturing reality as it was. Instead, he preferred to distort it into something abstract and disturbing, twisting human forms into uncomfortable positions and hiding complete figures in darkness.

Critics and other photographers alike had plenty of negative things to say about these photographic experiments. Perhaps, this was because they innately knew their art form was destined to follow the path Beksiński had first trodden. Whatever the case, he became disillusioned with both the medium and culture of photography and soon ventured into painting. In retrospect, this transition seems inevitable, as it's hard to picture such an imaginative mind settling on an art form so tightly bound by the rules of physics.

Painting

By the time Beksiński perfected painting, he was a complete novelty. He intentionally shielded himself from influences and evaded speculative interpretations. Still, everything he did seems to have been grounded in the darkness surrounding the Polish experience of World War II.

“Hellscapes” is perhaps the best one-word summary of his career. He occasionally described his paintings as dreamlike, referencing authors like H.P Lovecraft. While all of his works are surreal and dreamy, with violations of light, biology, and gravity, they’re also dark, moody, and disturbing.

Common themes across multiple paintings include war helmets, emaciated bodies, body parts blending with stone surfaces, skinny creatures, and disembodied faces. Several paintings depict large, cathedral-like buildings seemingly made of flesh.

No artist can create without inspiration, but Zdzisław vehemently denied that he ever deliberately imparted special symbolism into his work. Some aspects of certain paintings, however, appear deliberately cryptic. Several Latin inscriptions seemingly beg viewers to come up with their own interpretations.

On symbolism, Zdzisław said:

“Meaning is meaningless to me. I do not care for symbolism and I paint what I paint without meditating on a story.”

Viewers and critics, of course, have since done exactly the opposite, and today you can find hundreds of dubious interpretations across youtube, google, and Reddit.

Digital

The early digital age was a nightmare of half-cooked artistic ideas. Remember when George Lucas forever tainted Star Wars with a Toy-Story-quality cantina CGI scene? The problem is, we tend to see ourselves as occupying the end of history, not the middle. 

Beksiński, though one of the most imaginative and accomplished artists of the 20th century, was not immune to the allure of technology. In his later years, he took on numerous digital projects, which were creepy but which failed to surpass anything he had done on canvas.

In the end, the artist would face a death as grisly as the ones he had witnessed in his early life, as he was stabbed to death over a few bucks. At least he managed to carve his name into history, even if no one knows how to pronounce it.

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