The changes continuously affecting different areas of human
activity and transforming our reality, which are significant
determiners of the development of our consciousness and,
consequently, our attitude to reality cannot remain unnoticed by
art. The situation which has arisen here generates a demand for
a new aesthetics which focuses on intellectual rather than
sensual aspects, adjusted to current circumstances and
favourable to immediate contacts with art, which contacts would
be far from elitist and more direct than ever before. This would
condition the formation of a new aesthetic consciousness which
would approve of the aesthetics based mainly on mathematics and
logics as the criteria which are more objective and universal
than the cultural and historical ones and which result from
subjective individual or collective tastes which test the value
and usefulness of a work of art integrated with science.
Traditional aesthetic criteria seem to be increasingly
insufficient and non-operational as our desire to know the truth
makes us more willing to rely on our knowledge and understanding
rather than on our feelings, which are irrational and not
objectively justified.
A work of art, in the name of objectivised verifiability
and increasing exclusion of the inconsistent and accidental,
must be defined by universal and precise determiners-indicators
which intensify the artistic and cognitive aggression to such an
extent that there is no escape into narrow, unverifiable and
subjective irrationalities. The information conveyed by a work
of art must be undisputedly accepted by the recipient who must
become, regardless of their will, absolutely subordinated to and
overwhelmed by this information as a part of the reality covered
by it. This is the added value of art because the recipient will
be forced to find themselves, directly or otherwise, in a work
of art. This will be an individual and objective test of its
value, proving its usefulness for the process of signalling and
introducing a new reality into the consciousness of the viewer
who, in this situation, will become aware of himself.
Such a process of objectivising the reality of art in
terms of its subject and object cultivates the human ability to
think, which precedes knowledge. It is not erudition or cultural
and aesthetical sensitivity to the products of foreign
psycho-personality but rather extended subjectivity which
hinders communication, no matter how difficult it is itself, and
such a perspective, in the times of inconceivably wide and
constantly increasing knowledge, is really promising.
Structural poetry, originating from strictly rational
sources of mathematics and cybernetics, is the literary genre
which introduces these general aesthetic postulates in practice.
Although these postulates are difficult themselves, when encoded
into language, they become widely accessible and render language
precise and consistent. This language, being the language of
poetry and communication shortcut, is not, due to its mechanised
precision, a strictly literary language. The tension between
graphic systems of signs and systems of meanings outlines or
discloses itself by means of the key-title. The problems of the
contemporary human being living in a constant hurry and under
time pressure as well as the changes to his personality caused
by these factors, indicate that such a concise and communicative
form of conveying information is becoming really indispensable.
Using in its mainstream the word, which, owing to its
availability, is the widest means of communication, concrete
poetry does not reduce itself only to purely linguistic effects.
On the contrary, aware of the mechanisms of its own material, it
applies it for diverse purposes in the linguistic and
extra-linguistic, i.e. artistic mode.
The basic determiners of this material are a systems of
stereotypes and mechanised structures with only apparently
narrowing means of expression, which can be efficiently applied
for the revaluation of conventional means of expression of
poetry. Therefore, if we consider any new means of expression in
this field, we automatically approach a new content or a content
which has been formed anew. It does not have to, unlike science,
provide a thorough analysis of the problem; it is enough if it
signalises it to the recipient who decides on the intensity of
the reception, consisting in ‘creating a poetic text’ which is
preceded by the foundation of its ‘record’.
Applying abstraction, which enables us to systematise
concrete reality, provides us, besides its wide, universalising
field of signification, with an additional asset. Namely, it
shortens the perception cycle by removing the first stage, i.e.
the viewer’s ‘wandering’ from ‘the concrete’ created by the
author to ‘the abstract’ expressed by this ‘concrete’.
Therefore, there are only two stages left: from ‘the abstract’
of the author to ‘the abstract’ of the recipient and from ‘the
abstract’ of the recipient to ‘the concrete’ of the recipient.
Concrete and structural poetry may and should be created
and evaluated not only by those who are intentionally engaged in
literary creation but also anyone acquainted with the basic
principles of the material which this poetry operates with.
My ‘concept-shapes’, which graphically concretise the
material shape of the concept determined by scientific premises
but not result from an imprecise (subjective) act of artistic
creation, formally belong to this literary trend. They are a
kind of ‘record’ of an abstract character integrated in terms of
its form and content as feedback. These ‘records’, which refer
to structures of abstract notions, are universal in terms of
their designative capacity and facilitate expressing
timelessness and independence of place. Their temporal and
spatial relations, while they do not refer to every single
‘record’, may be approached against the time-space axis, which
would generate their positively apparent dynamics and spatial
aspect.
The verifiability of the text in terms of, for instance,
its cognitive value, so hard to measure and subjective in the
case of ordinary poetry, is far simpler in the case of
concept-shapes often endowed with mathematical or logical
formulas, which may function as their exponents or mottoes,
thereby allowing their thorough evaluation. The significations
systems of concept-shapes, although they remain open, are
preceded by mathematical and logical exponents which revaluate,
or more precisely, modernise, a word devaluated in literary
language, through leading it to such a state in which it would
mean so much that it would eventually cease to mean anything at
all. It would cease to ‘lie’ but would serve exclusively as an
inter-subjective associative sign of individual content and
would be understood in a particular communication situation only
through analogy.
As for their visual form, the concept-shapes may
resemble calligrams but that is only an apparent similarity as
the calligrams are only ‘self-illustrating’ works, whereas
concept-shapes, being also ‘self-analysing records’ are more
functional cognitively.
Therefore, concept-shapes are the codifiers of reality,
synthetic in terms of its form and content like ideograms,
integrating science (mathematics, logics) and arts (poetry,
visual arts) which once were unified and are nowadays inclining
to reunification. These are works developed on the borderline of
these two realms. Within minimum form they convey maximum
content and enrich our expressive capabilities with new
functions, leading even towards a perspective of poetry, an
international language, where translation, due to the
uniqueness, abstractness and symbolism of means of expression,
would be simpler or even completely unnecessary.
The text published in the monthly journal “Odra”, no. 12/1968 as
a self-commentary to the exhibition of Stanisław Dróżdż’s works
in the Gallery Pod Moną Lisą, which was held in December, 1968
as part of the join show of Zbigniew Makarewicz and Stanisław
Dróżdż. It was reprinted in the catalogue of his solo
exhibition: Structural Poetry. Concept-Shapes, odNowa
Gallery in Poznań, in March and April, 1969.