Objects

War machines and leaves – an orderly, linearly organised still life by Teodor Bok once again evokes the wide range of the artist’s favourite motifs i. a. war machines – we see a tank-battleship, a machine with two barrels on two wheels and a cylinder, a wooden machine with a hook, a cannon-machine on a crate (signed: 780, GM) and on a cart; we also see some geometrical figures: cones and pyramids; weapons: two swords with ornamented hilts stuck in a flower pot (?); finally, a dancing figure, and glued dried leaves. In one of the panels of this still life we can see a turret with a barrel and a sight – at this point we can see the artist laughing sarcastically, as he is adding the word ARMATA [CANNON] with an arrow under the barrel and lower down the word KOŁ [WHEEL] with arrows pointing at four wheels.

This still life, composed with good taste, though grotesque, is – literally – a game, a board for tic-tac-toe. The artist is playing with us – the viewers; with our routine ways of communicating with art. In the last scene he has glued a dried leaf. On its petiole it has a piece of paper with the petiole’s outline on it and the numbers 1 and 2 on both sides. The leaf’s shadow is drawn. And why is there another leaf-cone drawn into the picture? The discovery of that we shall leave to the sensibility and ingenuity of our viewers.

Renata Piątkowska