Art of Stanislaw Szukalski

Stanislaw Szukalski (1893 to 1987) is a sculptor and drawer. Superbly idiosyncratic.

Likenesses not necessarily do good portraits make. Often, a lifecast of a person's face will not resemble him. Brunettes will not look as well in sculpture as blondes, for black eyes and hair do not look black in sculpture.

If you are an artist and commissioned to make a portrait of a person on the condition that no words will be exchanged between the two of you for as long as it takes to make it perfect; then you are to make another portrait of the same person being permitted to be together for a solid week, eating, discussing, quarreling, and laughing, so you can make another judgement of the sitter while painting and both pieces turn out identical… you are a worthless artist. For you absolutely cannot paint the portraits identical, once you have learned the man sitting in front of you and know that he murdered seven people or saved seven from a band of Communist killers.

We stood in front of the store where this man sold any objects to the class of people who are so conscious of being the personification of Prosaicism that they often exclaim that they love Culture and things like that! There had been an accident outside the store and people gathered quickly to see what had happened. A customer had banged his bead into a board that was dangerously placed head-high. I proposed that the board was useless and should be removed. But the owner insisted that it should remain; His wife grudgingly explained that the man had placed the board there purposely, so that when people bumped their heads on it, he could roar with hysteric laughter.

On another occasion, a stranger entered the store asking directions. My model for this portrait told the man that there were two paths to follow, a short walk or a long walk, that the longer walk was much more scenic and easier to travel. The visitor thanked him and left. My humorous sitter then offered his reason for advising the stranger to take the longer route. In that section of the country there were many poison oak plants, and perhaps the foolish inquisitor would get his hands and face covered with a rash. For some reason my model had a grudge against Humanity, and not being a Commissar in Russia, he had found his personal way to assuage his craving to inflict suffering.

While I was drawing him before me, he became bored and forgot that he was not alone, falling into his pit of obsessive interests. He did not know how he looked for there was no mirror to reveal the tightening of his tin-can lips, edged like a steel trap. I dressed him into the deceptive vestment of a monk while growing Pan's horns in order to hint at a disguised potential sadist.

On seeing that I had caught him in this secular escapade, he wished to buy the portrait from me, but the drawing was worth more than his money.

This dear lady, the German-American wife of an American Pole was anemic, hence prevalently dejected in spirit. The overlapping upper eyelids, denoting kidney malfunction, made her predominant expression that of melancholic sadness. Faces are like lanterns, some of them unlighted by the spark of vivacious life.

I took liberty with her hair, standing on end some seashells.

I am always under awful tension when a lady sits for her portrait. I feel I am imposing too much when I ask her to sit this way or that in attempting to get a view that would be more picturesque. So I do not ask these things and my portraits of ladies start very badly. However, if the lady has a natural way of sitting interestingly, not merely plopped onto a seat, I am thrilled to draw her. But I fear my enthusiasm, which would exaggerate her features and displease her. My tendency to monumentalize, hence make more masculine, would be a fatal offense to her marvelous femininity. So I usually refrain from using women in my works. While I have always thought mostly of them as a form of escapism from the trivia of daily life and would rather commit suicide than be without their presence in this world, I furthermore exclude them from my creative deeds, because the subjects I carve or paint often deal with Death and Enslavement of Humanity by the Sneak-Predators, and it is too solemn and grievous a world of my mind's preoccupation to have their adorable company so misused and abused.

The first astronomer in history to apply mathematics to astronomy. He counted, located and named 800 stars so that others could follow their positions. He died in 126 B.C.

Since there is no known portrait of him, I invented his likeness, giving him an expression of great consternation, for, being that closely involved with the planetary vastness, he became tremendously concerned with individual destinies. For spending most of his 62 years fraternizing with the planets, I made him lean upon the crescent of the Moon.

Inner Portraits Buy at amazon (1980) is a selection of his portraits. (only portraits) They are superb and extremely beautiful. One of a kind. This is what we call ART. Art by definition is idiosyncratic. Otherwise they are garbage. The word “art” itself used by the vulgar is despicable. Every fucking thing is fucking art.

All quotes in this page are excerpted from his Inner Portraits Buy at amazon collection.

This unflattering portrait of Bertrand Russell. Bertrand is a logician and philosopher and political activist, very well-known in his time. The artist apparently doesn't like Russell. He has the following to say in his Inner Portraits:

Here is the best illustration of how an inferiority complex marks a face. Homeliness and rejection by beautiful girls has made him a victim of hurt ego in his formative years. I refer to these types as the backstairs brooders or future revolutionaries (pronounced haters of Mankind).

This is the tied-into-knots visage of a non-personality; a typical English sitter on chairs in a side-saddle manner, unsure of anything, least of himself.

Being trembling uncertain of everything around him and unable to come to any conclusion as to what Does and Does Not matter, he turned to mathematics in order to prove to those who could not tell automatically, what was Right. He is a specimen of the Anglosex INDEFINITENESS. As a mathematical philosopher, not a WISE human he was able to solve the profound question of What is it that makes 2 + 2=4?

Non-historic nations (the English and Anglomericans) never seem to need Patriotism. Grown to national maturity while being protected from calamities by surrounding seas or oceans, they have had no invasions or conquests, never faced total extermination by the predatory nations. When suddenly (and it always is sudden, for non-historic nations never ACT first before the foes of Mankind, but only REACT in self-defense) they have to meet the mortal dilemma, they do not react automatically with wise instinct, but turn to crank their electronic computers and push dozens of buttons so to ask For God's sake, what do we do? The answer is precisely what has been fed into the buzzing machine; a trite response that diminishes their state of being and the possibility for SURVIVAL. They are then led into the future as a cowardly mass of befuddled nincompoops.

Here you see the type of intellectual leader that the Anglo race has produced within the last few generations. A sniveling weakling, totally devoid of the instinct for Survival. Supreme nobility evolves in each normal Human by means of attraction of the opposite sex, hence it is sexual capacity that makes nations Honorable, Ethical and Moral, while the lack of normal sexual urges makes such queer-ducks as this specimen . The homosexual can not be patriotic, because that instinct is the sublimated feeling of the father for the security of his beloved family. I would NEVER give any political, pedagogic or military trust in the hands of a sterile creature who has lost the INSTINCTS of a social being. I would never place a person burdened with the malady of Anglosex, in a position of responsibility or trust.

Russell strived to bait Providence by going to Russia and offering his services. He baited the English nation by urging to give up common sense and emulate Russian ways. Eventually he was such a good Providence baiter that he became universally regarded as the Master Baiter of the British Empire.

See also Bertrand Russell's Nobel Lecture, 1950: What Desires Are Politically Important? (by Bertrand Russell)

Returning to California escaping the siege of Warsaw, I found an apartment in Westwood, California, with by beloved second wife Joan. One of our immediate neighbors was this classic looking Japanese girl, named Lotus. She generously sat for me to draw her in carbon pencil. This drawing is much over life-size. It still intrigues me that I rarely see beautiful Chinese ladies, yet I very often meet with the beauty of Japanese ladies. I have found no answer for this, though I am inclined to think that the Chinese race evolved in greater hardships and heartbreaks than the Japanese. I am positive that heartbreaks destroy our good looks.

Quite a queer quip.