Artists - Part 51

Paweł Althamer

Paweł Althamer, born in 1967, is a Polish artist living in Warsaw.  In 1991, while a student in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he did this performance art piece called Kardynał (Cardinal).  It consisted of him, naked, setting up a bath tub filled with water that was dyed purple ...

then he got into the tub.  All the while there was an audience watching.

Then he proceeded to smoke pot while religious music played.  Was it art?  Apparently it's art  if the artist says it's art.

In 1993, instead of showing up for his oral exams, he provided this life-size statue Autoportret (self portrait), made from wax, hair, grass, hemp fiber, and animal intestines (and wearing glasses, like the artist).

Here's a rear view of Autoportret.

In addition to the statue, he provided a video showing him taking a bus out of town to a forest, where he got naked and walked through the forest and then across a field, disappearing into the distance.  Above are some excerpts from that video.

Again, is it art?  Well, the Academy of Fine Arts accepted the statue and video and gave him his masters degree.

Althamer seems to have a thing for naked self-portrait sculptures.  Above is Paweł and Monika, 2002, depicting himself and his wife.

On a much grander scale was this balloon self-portrait, 2007.

Here you can see the size of it.  That's a big dick!

MAMA, 2016, is a more intimate self-portrait of the sculptor at work on some small piece in his lap.

Not everything he creates is a self-portrait, though most of his pieces are naked.  This is Hermes from a set of sculptures called Emissaries of Light, 2002.

This is Wiktor from Emissaries of Light.

But the self-portraits keep coming.  This 2022 sculpture is MAMA III, again showing the naked sculptor working on something in his lap.  This artist is an unashamed male.