Madonna

Madonna, one of Karol Radziszewski’s early paintings, is a harbinger of both the topics he would systematically investigate in his later works, and the artistic language he would use. The area of pop-culture, here referred to through the image of the singer who is its incontestable icon, as well as experiments with the language of pop-art as means of expression constitute an important tendency in Radziszewski’s artistic investigations. The portrait of Madonna has the stylistics of a comic-strip drawing, and its qualities automatically link it with the iconic screen-printed works of Andy Warhol.

The black-and-white image of the singer goes beyond a play upon conventions and repetition of easily identifiable clichés. The androgynous figure shown in a sensual pose constitutes a clear reference to the issue of sexuality, subverting attempts at gender typification and the resultant patterns of behaviour and perception of the ‘I’ defined in this way. Associations with the sitter of Radziszewski’s Madonna underline the issue of gayness, since Madonna is considered to be not only the icon of pop-culture, but also of the gay milieus. It is assumed that it was Madonna who introduced sexual minorities into the pop world; her video-clips, and the famous film Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991, renamed In Bed with Madonna outside of North America), are populated with androgynous dancers, transvestites and gay actors. The singer herself ostentatiously exhibits sexuality and femininity, exaggeratedly playing her culturally imposed roles. Highly contrived scenes and refined conventions bring to mind the world of opera, once so enticing to the gays, of which pop-culture inherited precisely those features that made it so alluring to them. The practices of masquerade and cross-dressing, play-acting, fluid gender identification and associated forms of behaviour are found as much in operatic classics as in pop-culture. The same issues are perceptible also in Radziszewski’s work; his strong, expressive brushwork perfectly imitating a drawing has helped him to construct another memorable visual cliché.

Izabela Kopania

translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz