Lecture: Matylda Taszycka

Self-Mythologies: Facing Wanda Czełkowska’s Self-Portrait

This paper is dedicated to the analysis of Wanda Czełkowska’s self-portraiture. Even though the artist used to say her busts and heads were abstract forms rather than traditional portraits, a closer study of her work reveals that she was often confronted with the question of self-representation. As early as 1959, the artist produced her first sculpted self-portrait, and recent research has revealed the recurrence of the photographic image in her archive, which seems to be closely related to her sculptural practice. This paper is an attempt to shed new light on Czełkowska’s understanding of sculpture and gender through the previously unexplored perspective of her early interest in classical culture, especially the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, which she represented in 1961. Applying Paula J. Birnbaum’s approach in her analysis of Thérèse Bonney’s portrait of Chana Orloff in her studio (1924) to Czełkowska, my paper will focus on Czełkowska’s ambiguous photographic self-portrait Temat (Theme) (c.1970), highlighting its similarity to several head sculptures produced during the same period. I will argue that this two-dimensional work may in fact be a conceptual sculpture representing Czełkowska ‘at work’, as both artist and model, revealing complexities, if not contradictions, within Czełkowska’s work.