Poglądy estetyczne Jana Kleczyńskiego

Abstrakt

Jan Kleczyński was as a critic and theoretician of art in the years 1896-1939. He did not, however, created a consistent aesthetic system, a system which would satisfy the requirements of aesthetics as an academic discipline. His works resemble postulates and generalizations made on the basis of his observations of concrete endeavors and phenomena. They most often took on the form of loose remarks written in the margins of reports on the current artistic events.

Kleczyński's views on art, its origin, character and tasks are deeply rooted in the ideology of Young Poland, and stem from a metaphysical conception of the world. Art is a great and mystic Mystery. It exists in the extrasensory reality, and its source being Absolute Consciousness. Art is a process of giving Beauty a physical and visible shape. Now, beauty exists as a transcendent being, an idea which remains in direct relation with the Absolute Being. It derives from the same source as religion and moral obligation. Scraps of beauty are spread over the world. To collect and fix them is the subject-matter of artistic work.

The question of relationships occurring between art and reality occupies an important place in the writing of Kleczyński. Reality is the material of art. This is not so that art should imitate or duplicate reality. Drawing on the inspirations from the really existing shapes, art creates its own new reality, which is as real as primary. Art is a kind of non-empirical cognition which only may give man a full image of the world understood as a synthesis of psychical and physical elements, as a spiritual and material union. Only art can reach the essence of being and discover absolute values. Only art may communicate metaphysical contents and constitute incorporation of the transcendent truths. The artist discovers these truths via intuition and inspiration derived from the Absolute Consciousness. Thus he becomes a mediator between people and the Absolute Being.