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- Author Tadeusz Kantor
- Date of production 1989
- Place of creation Kraków, Poland
- Dimensions height: 144 cm, width: 132 cm, depth: 260 cm
- ID no. CRC/VII/323 /1-17
- Museum The Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor
- Subjects theatre, body, death
- Material wood, metal, plastic, fabric, natural hair, sponge, polyvinyl chloride
- Object copyright The Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor
- Digital images copyright © all rights reserved, The Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor
- Digitalisation RDW MIC, Małopolska's Virtual Museums project
- Tags theater , Tadeusz Kantor , 3D , school , audiodescription , © all rights reserved
“Children at their desk” from Umarła klasa [The Dead Class] is an art work (installation) by Tadeusz Kantor created in the spring of 1989 in the Cricoteka facilities on Kanonicza Street. It is one of several examples of works by this artist, drawing upon the idea of the Umarła klasa [The Dead Class] performance (version of “A boy at his desk from The Dead Class”, “School Class — Closed Work”, various kinds of drawings, sketches and paintings from the years 1975–1990) that was specially prepared for the future Museum of the Cricot 2 Theatre.
more“Children at their desk” from Umarła klasa [The Dead Class] is an art work (installation) by Tadeusz Kantor created in the spring of 1989 in the Cricoteka facilities on Kanonicza Street. It is one of several examples of works by this artist, drawing upon the idea of the Umarła klasa [The Dead Class] performance (version of “A boy at his desk from The Dead Class”, “School Class — Closed Work”, various kinds of drawings, sketches and paintings from the years 1975–1990) that was specially prepared for the future Museum of the Cricot 2 Theatre.
On a platform made of worn-out and decrepit boards there are four simple school desks with eleven mannequin pupils from Umarła klasa [The Dead Class]. “They are sitting (...) like in an old photograph (...); they clearly do not represent this world or this time (...)”, observes Wiesław Borowski[1]. The male pupils are wearing black linen uniforms, while the female pupils have black linen dresses and bare feet. The hands, head and feet are made of polyvinyl chloride; dimensions of the entire installation: height = 145 cm, width = 132 cm, depth = 260 cm.
Kantor called the children at their desks “bio-objects” (the pupils constituted one organism with the desks) and the “memory machine”. “At their desks one could sit, lean and stand; there was a place for all human states and emotions: suffering, fear, love, the first flickers of friendship, coercion and freedom. The desks contained a natural live human organism that constantly had the tendency to chaotically use the space to instil discipline and order. They were like a placenta (matrixes) from which something new and unexpected was born, something that, for a time, tried to go beyond the desks into this black and empty space and that always returned and moved back to them (desks) like to its home-placenta!” he wrote[2]. He also added that “life can be expressed in art only through the lack of life”.[3]
The described object was repeatedly exhibited, reproduced and displayed when Kantor was still alive, e.g., at his individual exhibition, “Plus Loin, Rien!” [“Nothing ahead”] (Galerie de France, 22 June — 1 September 1989), and a year later in Rome at the "Tadeusz Kantor. Opere dal 1956 al 1990” exhibition (Spicchi dell ‘Est, Galeria d’Arte, 11 June — 20 July 1990).
“School desks always stand in the CLASSROOM. But this was not a CLASSROOM—IT WAS A REAL PLACE.
This was black emptiness in front of which
the entire audience
stopped.
It seemed mockery that a thin string acted as a barrier.
There must have been some other, much more powerful and frightening, barrier.
In this hopeless black emptiness the school DESKS on set constituted a striking example of a BIO-OBJECT.
At the desks one could sit, lean and stand; there was a place for all human states and emotions: suffering, fear, love, the first flickers of friendship, coercion and freedom.
The desks contained a natural live human organism that constantly had the tendency to chaotically ‘use’ the space to instil discipline and order.
They were like a placenta (matrixes) from which something new and unexpected was born, something that, for a time, tried to go beyond the desks into this black and empty space and that always returned and moved back to them (desks) like to its home-placenta!”[4]
/T. Kantor/
Elaborated by Józef Chrobak, Justyna Michalik (The Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor), © all rights reserved
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