Unwanted Child Of a Cruel God
The 1920s are often associated with a quite sudden rise of laxity - the dust of the First World War settled on the long, uncomfortable dresses of women, sticking to the bounteous sweat of hard work. Club parties, filled with drugs and lust, smelling of sudden, fearful gratitude of having survived the living hell, are only a fragment of the reality of Poland in the interwar period; a romantic image ripped from large urban centers. For the majority, life remained submerged in poverty. Residents of villages were milked to the last drop, living in fear of surviving another winter, often forced to inhumane sacrifices.
Fig. 1. Self-Portrait photography by Marian Henel
It was this reality that Marian Henel was born into. He was most likely birthed in 1926 in the village of Przystajń in southern Poland, as a son of a beggar woman. He claimed to be the product of rape, but this information is impossible to verify, as are many later episodes of his life. Orphaned by his mother at an early age of six, he took on various jobs to earn money for his own survival. After the Second World War, he worked as a stoker for the communist Security Offi ce in Kluczbork, but - as Henel himself claimed - often took part in sadistic interrogations and executions, where he had the opportunity to demonstrate his psychopathic tendencies. Terrified by the prospect of being drafted into the army, he committed an act of arson, by setting the outbuilding on fire - for which he was imprisoned for some time. There, being a creepy changeling of not very intimidating stature, quiet and clumsy, he became the victim of physical, psychological and sexual violence from fellow prisoners.
Fig.2 Nurse, tapestry by Marian Henel (1974)
What stands out against the backdrop of these whirlwind experiences is the changing nature of the role Henel took on – at times he was a victim, at others an abuser, though the exact balance of this dynamic remains a mystery. Generally speaking, the first few decades of the artist's life are shrouded in a veil of mystery – the only source of information on this subject comes from autobiographical anecdotes Henel shared with the staff at the Branice psychiatric hospital, where he ended up as a person disturbed with sexual disorders in 1960 after serving his sentence.
He wove epic tales of his own accomplishments with nervous self-confidence, in a way that reminded a ridiculed and scolded child, trying to craft an image of himself as a cruel man without fear or scruples. He seemed eager to display his own heartlessness and lack of inhibition as if they were a badge of honor, because he believed that such traits were worthy of respect – accustomed, as he was, to the idea that respect should be given to those who were cruel.
He told Stanisław Wodyński, his teacher from the Psychopathological Art Expression Workshop at the Psychiatric and Neurological Hospital in Branice, about his adventures in exploring emerging sexuality with the residents of the farming households’ participation.
Fig3 Untitled, tapestry by Marian Henel (1990)
Dominant Buttocks
In these tales, Henel recalled that he began masturbating at the age of nine, had his sexual initiation at the age of sixteen. Encouraged by his landlady, he entered the village room where he saw her lifting up her dress, leaning over the bed, and the sight of her protruding, obese buttocks was so significant that it became the leitmotif of his search for artistic form, both in the tapestries he woven and in the self-portraits he made using a self-timer apparatus of his own making, on black-and-white plates.
Fig.4 Vamp Woman, tapestry by Marian Henel (1972)
Fig.5 Big Butts, tapestry by Marian Henel (1981)
Fig.5a
Fig.5b
In Premium more on Henel's self-portraits, the similarities to Robert Crumb and Hieronymous Bosch, was Henel a lecher by nature or a product of his environment?, and much more.
Click HERE for an article on Javier Mayoral and his acrylic paintings for Postmodern bedrooms
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