Atmosphere in art...the ability to create such a palpable, engrossing experience that the piece pulls the audience into itself, filling the nostrils of the viewer with the stench of the piece's world. Zdislaw Beksinski has mastered atmosphere (please look at his website...it's a piece of art in itself). He so effectively envelopes the viewer in his world as to make his art unforgettable - an experience rather just an image. He is able to create barren, hollow space as well as portray the various subjects of his art in gruesome, minute detail, and through all of these different levels of detail and scale maintain atmosphere.
Beksinski seems to pull a lot from medieval and Renaissance plague art (i.e. subject matter, color pallet, style, etc), though he claims other visual artists provided little inspiration for his own work. The figures in his images, with joint and skeleton pushing at skin's surface, are especially reminiscent of Breugel's work from the 14th century.
Beksinski bottom-left ||| Breugel bottom-right
Beksinski bottom-left ||| Breugel bottom-right
Beksinski was never formally trained as an artist and made a point to
never supply deeper meaning to his work, though he insisted that many
were in fact upbeat and positive in nature.
Whatever Beksinski's motivations, reasons, and inspirations for his work, the result, no the thought, is what stands out. Maybe I find the lack of meaning behind Beksinski's art more favorable than I would had he tried to make his work with some end result or thought in mind. His art, so full of atmosphere, is able to separate itself from the rest of reality (at least for me). This makes me think of his art more as a portrayal of specific events and locales of some other reality, presented as he sees them. Regardless of each viewer's individual thoughts on Beksinski's art, his mastery of creating mood as well as his physical skill in controlling paint to create such deep texture is, in the very least, admirable and worth observing.
