What is specific in the art of a »Ion Grigorescu«? Recently, in the retrospective of one of the other erratic artistic figures from the former socialist Eastern Europe, Július Koller, in Bratislava, a Romanian artist said spontaneously: that is an »Ion Grigorescu«. Neither the formal language nor the aesthetic intentions of these two artists are alike. What is similar is however the willingness to experiment and the variety, strategies and practices aimed at creating special places of artistic expression, and the coherence, aesthetic rigour and autonomy of this practice.

What is the work of this »Ion Grigorescu«? How did the status of his work since 1972 change in a Romania marked by socialism and the »special« dictatorship of the Ceausescus – in a Romania that, in the eighties, during the so-called »thaw« of Gorbachev, once more suffered (and still suffers today) under increased state restrictions? How does his work relate to the post-socialist present?

It is an immensely varied oeuvre, and only a part of the works, chiefly the explicitly political ones, have received wider international notice in the past few years. This is despite the fact that the artist was one of the leading voices during the period of dictatorship, and even challenged the despotic comrade to a fictive debate in an eight-minute film: »Dialogue with Comrade Ceausescu« (1978). »Electoral Meeting« (1974), a 28-part photo series, also shows the artificially created crowds at election events where there was no other choice. Organised as union events, the union bosses were at the same time paid members of Securitate (former Romanian secret police) and had the whole situation under control.

In 1974 you were still allowed to take photographs in Bucharest; later, cameras were banned. Another political work with a documentary character from these years is »Cult of Personalities« (1974) – snapshots from state-run television with the respective commentaries. Needless to say, these works could not be shown until after the revolution.

One of the earliest group of works (1972-78) by Ion Grigorescu is the »Body Art Series«, which shows the artist in his studio, his kitchen or other private rooms in more or less intimate situations, confronted with the mechanical apparatuses that made the photographs: the artist designed theatre scenarios with mirrors, wrote short film scripts, produced voyeurism, illusions, excitement and manipulation of and with optical devices. The first photographic auto-portrait was based, according to Grigorescu, on the »psychoanalytic theory that a naked man represents a threat for the viewer. The first photographic auto-portrait was based, according to Grigorescu, on the »psychoanalytic theory that a naked man represents a threat for the viewer.« These actions explore the limits of his body, his intimacy, and captured a mechanical and psychological dialogue with the camera or 8-mm film camera.
These actions mostly took place without an audience or only in front of really »good« friends, to avoid the danger of denunciation.

Grigorescu was the only artist in Bucharest in the seventies who had the use of a film camera. In the mid-seventies, in Timisoara, he met Constantin Flondor, Sefan Bartalan and Doru Tulcan, members of the Sigma group, who also made films, and showed them his films. In communist Romania, there was no opportunity to publicly show experimental films. They were seen only by a small group of intellectuals. These experimental films by Grigorescu are still waiting to be specifically examined and reappraised in an international context.

»Self« (1977) shows the artist in his studio in multiple exposures – a portrait of a child on the easel, on the table a picture of a woman crouching, an enlarger and various instruments for developing photographs – and in between, the artist sitting, standing, crouching down, turning his back to us. Grigorescu presents himself from different angles, doubled; his portraits often overlap and are projected and superimposed by means of mirrors. Subjectivity is exposed as a construction, identity as an interplay between multiple, fragmented aspects of the Self. Feeling at one with the image entails the inclusion of many conscious and unconscious factors, and also means a game with fictions.

Ileana Pintile characterises this phase in Grigorescu’s work as a sign for »the disappearance of the private sphere that was characteristic of this period – for the dictatorship this was an important stage in the creation of the >New Man<, that terrible hybrid whose personal and collective memory were both deleted. This figure was one of the artist’s frequent themes.«
»Poor materials« are used in the series »Oil Pictures on Photographic Paper«, which were sometimes in absurd harmony with the political development. The shabby appearance of the photos matched the political restrictions on food, heating and light for the Romanian population. Because there was no photographic paper for colour photographs, Ion Grigorescu treated black-and-white paper like colour paper and appealed to the imagination of the viewers, or sometimes applied paint by hand. Sometimes found-footage material is used, as in »Party« (1977).

Ion Grigorescu rejects the idea, much cited by art historians, of a »schizophrenic« situation during the dictatorship. »Perhaps I do not accept this word in this connection because I am ashamed. In my youth I felt myself almost penetrated by military uniforms, and distrusted all public institutions. While teaching drawing at a secondary school, I got to know corruption. The general tenor at home and among colleagues was to criticise the dictatorship. People even went so far as to say that the Securitate, which had infiltrated everywhere, didn’t hear the criticism; that you were suspicious if you didn’t criticise, because then they would think you had something to hide. I joined the artists’ association and tried to criticise it; I wanted to test out the limits. Doing this did not mean you were in a schizophrenic situation, but rather in the middle of self-censorship.

And I made films and photos that I didn’t exhibit, but all these things were known or suspected. There wasn’t any scandal, the regime didn’t want scandals. A schizophrenic creates scandals, liberates himself, becomes an open dissident, he is locked away and given medical treatment. Why schizophrenic? Just because we wanted to liberate ourselves and return to a normal situation, corruption is a discontinuity!«
The cycle of body art was gradually replaced by writing and criticism, until, in the eighties, Grigorescu had had enough of art, of his own career, the demands of artists, and asked himself whether he was a liar, whether he only created art for art’s sake, isolated and without any connection to real life. He looked for anonymous life, people’s everyday life, and was given the chance to restore frescos far away from the city. Even in the texts from the seventies, the social field is for Grigorescu a »framework for that which makes up the real«. It is »an unusual form of composition; it lives through the artist’s ability to communicate and resembles a political discourse«. In 1991, in a heated political climate, Ion Grigorescu appeared publicly in Timisoara with an installation. The title of the work, »The Country Does Not Belong to the Military, the Securitate or the Communists«, could be read on a banner in a large public square.

Since the late seventies, he repeatedly engaged with forms of memory. His performances went beyond art and led to the private sphere, to personal life. His most recent works are everyday confessions. They show pictures of his family, intimate moments. The viewers see moments of participation as guests, and not, as in his earlier works, aspects of voyeurism as intruders. The photos have almost cinematic qualities; they have a densely woven presence, they stop time, as if single frames were suddenly to stand still and the story to go on slowly, very slowly. Meditative presence and selective remembrance in the language of everyday life.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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