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The Drawings of Bruno Schulz

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This remarkable book, produced by poet and Bruno Schulz scholar Jerzy Ficowski, assembles more than 200 artistic works of the famed Polish Jewish author, best known for <i>The Street of Crocodiles</i>, produced in the 1990s as a play of the same name by Simon McBurney's London Theatre de Complicite. Thanks to that brilliant staging, easily one of the 20th century's most remarkable dramatic productions, audiences of tens of thousands learned of this obscure artist and writer.

Born on July 12, 1892, the third and youngest child of a merchant, Schulz lived and worked in Drohobycz, and reflected in all his works his close connection to his family and place. In 1939, the Soviets occupied eastern Poland, and Schulz survived that period without experiencing the deportation suffered by hundreds of thousands of others.

Still, he was unable to work. But in June 1941, when the Nazis entered the area, he was like all the Jews of Poland further enslaved. The infamous Viennese Nazi and Jew murderer Felix Landau also had a taste for art, and boasted of keeping a Jewish artist slave alive on one daily bowl of soup and slice of bread. Schulz survived a year under Landau's "protection," but on Black Thursday, Nov. 19, 1942, he was shot in the head by Gestapo officer Karl Guenther and buried at night by a devoted friend in a Jewish cemetery that has since disappeared, along with his grave.

Assembled here, with Ficowski's 28-page introduction and his 12-page essay entitled "Catepillar Cat, or Bruno Schulz's Drive into the Future of the Past," are more than 200 Schulz drawings and engravings, most of which reside in Warsaw's Museum of Literature. These include Schulz's <i>Book of Idolatry</i>, an early collection of 25 works, including drawings, circa 1919 and later, on which he worked for several years. It illustrates imaginary scenes of mythical pastorals, nymphs and weird men, fawning on women. There are scenes labeled "Masochistic," which are really more fetishist than the sort of full-blown evil one might expect, a series of nudes, and a 12-print section entitled "The Table," reminiscent of scenes from <i>Street of Crocodiles</i>.

In "Jews," readers are treated to 16 prints and sketches of Jewish worshipers, students and scholars. The collection also includes 16 self-portraits and 8 portraits, all of them remarkable in their intensity and precision. There are also several book covers. But my favorite section is the 44-page group of "Illustrations" from Schulz's writings, including <i>The Street of Crocodiles</i> and <i>Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass</i>.

There is one other collection, <i>Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz,</i> that contains some of these works. But those reproductions are few, and their quality far inferior. To my knowledge, this is the best gathering of the artists' pictorial works.

How much more of his work was lost altogether? We may never know. Schulz' brilliance was incalculable, the loss of his work and world, the more so.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Haunting drawings by brilliant Polish Jewish artist and author. Reality seems to be lurking in corners and shadows--present, but invisible. In the middle sit or stand beautiful women, objects of adoration and fear. Very spiritual art, in a strangely sensuous kind of way.

Bruno Schulz created a body of intense artwork. His work is not only about eroticism, but humanity and intimacy. This is a great book about his art (and maybe the only book.)

This book is an achievement for Jerzy Ficowski. His essays on the artist Bruno Schulz are focused on the graphic work rather than the literary work of Schulz and the times that Ficowski does refer to any of the literary work is to show how the graphic work complimented the literarily work. The book has over 200 reproductions of Schulz's drawings and prints, all printed in black and white. This is a remarkable collection considering the subject matter of the work, the turbulent times in which Schulz worked, the loss of much of the work after the Soviet take over of Poland, and the fact that the works were printed on low quality work which is now yellowing, brittle, and falling apart. Thus this collection records drawings that may not last much longer due to the paper quality on which they were drawn or printed. Of course Bruno Schulz is best known as the author of the book, The Street of Crocodiles, which is called Cinnamon Shops in the original Polish. This fact is important since Schulz selected to illustrate Cinnamon Shops including the binder front cover and thus the book of graphics contains many of the drawings meant for the publication of his book. Born in Drohobycz Poland, Schulz experienced the terrible turmoil of World War II. His death is highly dramatic and tragic for he became a kept artist for a Nazi officer who was also an art lover. He was protected for about a year but then executed by the Gestapo and buried in an unmarked grave in the Jewish cemetery. What a ridiculous waste of talent.
The book is divided into sections, each with a distinct theme. The first section, The Book of Idolatry, and a later section, Masochistic Scenes, have a very similar theme however the author felt that the section on Masochistic was more extreme. These drawings follow a central theme around ugly, small, sometimes crippled men idolize a young beautiful woman and often bow at her feet, lick her toes, take off her shoes, and sometimes worship the shoe. The women are totally indifferent, ignoring the men, or walking on them, or staring ahead with no emotion as one of these little men suck her toes. The men sometimes become beasts. Sometimes they are elderly and sometimes they are black male slaves. Sometimes the women have whips and sometimes there is a group of dwarf looking men. Now this could become repetitive to the point of boredom except that Schulz is able to make each piece unique, each woman is different, each setting is different, and in fact these works exhaust all the variations of this theme of the obsessed inadequate male worshiping female beauty. The works become extreme even by today's standards. For example there is a bidet often in the floor as the eternal beauty reclines on a bed. One drawing shows a crawling man drinking the water from the bidet while the beauty ignores him. Another series shows the tiny inadequate man at a table with two overpowering women. This theme is developed enough that there is a section just for these images. A fourth section is on the Jewish community in which Schulz lived, showing the elderly Jewish men. Other sections include self-portraits, portraits of his friends, and the illustrations he developed for his books. The style fluctuates from dark Goya-like works to angular images from German Expressionism. The subservient male who is fascinated and obsessed with the distant, beautiful female is explored over and over, as if this was a compulsion of Schulz that required repeated drawing. The variations are endless, including a young male Cupid removing the shoe of a 1920s flapper, ugly male circus clowns suppressed by a central female ring leader, and cringing men kissing the toes of prostitutes in a bordello. Thus Schulz's work constitutes an amazing collection of images that portray a sexual compulsion. Of course we can't say that this was the sexual compulsion of the artist, however it was certainly his primary theme in the works that survive.