stumbling upon strange gifts

peering out to a vanishing sea

The below video handed me a single message - endeavour to make art forever, if only to attempt to touch a sliver of what this painter could.

Late one night browsing the webs I came upon this video. It is in French because the video maker is French - so it takes effort to watch if you are not French, i.e. reading subtitles.

(i'm not French)

The difficulty may be a good thing. Lifechanging things are often hidden behind some small effort. Maybe it was the alternative cultural perspective that allowed this video to slice through my mind and hit me square in the mind/blown chakra. A Frenchman describing Polish art to an Australian.

Or maybe its just the paintings. Beksinski, as you will come to understand, was an artist beyond comprehension. Incredibly prolific, he had a window into something beyond the borders of reality. You might describe his work as dark, or disturbing, and it clearly will not be to everyone’s tastes. But what he saw, and brought back, feels so fucking real I cannot deny it has an existence as tangible as my own.

But the other reason this video is so good because the fellow who made it created something out of Beksinski’s paintings that added to them. He weaves a narrative that ties the paintings’ worlds together. The latter half of the film is taken up by this exploration through the world of Beksinski’s art, and I’m not being hyperbolic here when I say I’ve never watched anything like it. I can’t recall the last time I was so transfixed by something I saw on the internet. In fact, I’d come to doubt the internet could even present such things anymore.

This film solidified art in my mind as the most important thing in the world.