•     It has been emphasized in the history of art that the birth of photography contributed to profound changes in art. For a while it wasn't uncommon to perceive this as the beginning of the end for art. However, it occurred quite soon that in fact photography took nothing away from art. Instead, it delivered it, to a certain specific degree, from the obligation of representing the outside world - the role attributed to art at least since the times of Socrates. In the second half of the 19th Century paining began to gradually free itself of the principle of mimesis it had obeyed for Centuries. In the process, it put more and more emphasis upon its own genuine nature and autonomy of its rules and it wasn't long until it sort of faced the wall in purist abstract works by Kazimir Malevich or Ad Reinhardt. Rather than the death of painting, however, this only heralded crucial changes of the way it was described and evaluated. What was rejected in the process were some outdated paradigms, such as the art's mimetic approach to reality, purity of species and techniques or the imperative of novelty and the concept of linear "growth". At the same time, photography gradually attained the status of independent field in art and its relations with painting became more intensified, leading to new and original solutions within both media
  
  
•     The work of Warsaw-based painter Paweł Nocuń is an example of such a fresh photographic inspiration in painting. His new series of paintings is rooted in the work and personality of charismatic American photographer Diane Arbus. It's worthwhile to point it out: the work and personality - as Paweł's paintings are neither just substitutes of the photographs nor hyper-realistic etudes conveying Arbus's photos 1:1 onto the linen, not even their pictorial transformation in the style of Luc Tuymans. Instead, in his work Nocuń endeavours to explore the very process of creating the photographs - it is, in a way, about reconstructing the way Arbus approached her sessions. The painter and thus the viewer sort of watch Diane Arbuz at work. Usually the picture composition stands us in a specific spot so we look across the back of the artist busy with her camera toward the scene she shoots. Alternatively, we witness the action standing on a side. This kind of cleverly created narration keeps us detached from what might seem crucial i.e. Arbus's photographs and the distance grows even larger, extended by Nocuń's technique as he reaches for effects we know from Francis Bacon's painting. By the way, the work of the Irish classic of new figuration actually seems much more significant to Nocuń's painting than photographs of Arbus - due to at least a couple of reasons. First and most obvious of them is colour: non-existent in Arbus's monochromatic photographs, in Nocuń's work it plays an important role in articulating details and creating the mood. Secondly, just as in Francis Bacon's work, broadly painted tracts of copper green, purple and black contribute to an effect of simplified spatial structure of the picture. This peculiar simplification is one of the key tools Paweł applies to get the mood of focus verging on solitude, though rarely reaching as far as extreme alienation, so typical of the Irish painter. Thirdly and finally, in his Inspired by D. Arbus photograph "Couple in Bed, N.Y.C. 1966" Paweł goes for deformation of a figure - similar to the one found in Bacon's three studies of figures on beds (1972). While Paweł seems to be thematically inspired by Arbus's work and personality, he looks for expressive style in the tradition of modern painting, including, in particular, new figuration. Sometimes he looks further back - for example, his Inspired by D. Arbus photograph "Family One Evening on a Nudist Camp, Pa. 1965" can be seen as slight transposition of Paul Cézanne's "The Bathers", while the figure of a dwarf from Inspired by D. Arbus photograph "Mexican Dwarf in a Hotel Room, N.Y.C. 1970" reminds us about picassian deformation. Perhaps the only painting in which Paweł directly and faithfully represented Diane Arbus's work is the one depicting the face of a little baby: Inspired by D. Arbus photograph "A Very Young Baby N.Y.C. 1968". However, even with such an obvious quotation the painter stops the original from imposing the entire composition. The fragment executed with photorealism is limited to the baby's face - in fact, not even the whole of it, as the mouth meets the lower frame of the picture and the left eye is partially hidden from view by Diane's head seen from the rear. Here, the same point of view from beyond the photographer's back is used in a different way, rather than watching the photo session, the viewer witnesses the moment when Arbus contemplates a huge print of her work hanging on the wall.
  
  
•     Paweł Nocuń's paintings can mainly be seen as reflection upon the Diane Arbus and her relation to her models. One can sense some kind of personal, if unilateral, bond between the painter and the photographer, as also affirmed by several portraits of Arbus. It is this kind of close personal relation, as well as regarding photographs only as a distant inspiration and a clear priority given to means typical to painting that Paweł skilfully uses to avoid the trap of recently fashionable photo-realistic if flashy and shallow current in painting and to prove genuine nature of his art.

Jakub Dąbrowski

•     Diane Arbus, born 1923, d. 1971 in New York. She originated from a wealthy New York-based Jewish family, her father David Nemerov being the owner of Russek's fashion house). Growing up in 1930s she was insulated from facing the consequences of the Great Crisis, but she suffered from poor relations with her parents - her father was all about the business, while her mother, struck with recurrent depression, had children cared for by a governess.
  
  
•     At 18 Diane married Allan Arbus. Both founded and for about 10 years owned a commercial photographic studio. In separation since 1958, Diane and Allan Arbus finally divorced in 1969. Diane found her real passion for photography while studying, from 1956 on, with Lisette Model. It was about that time that she gave up commercial photography.
  
  
•     She feared she might be regarded a photographer of freaks and indeed she was because that was perfect truth. Her most renowned photos include that of Eddie Carmel, known as the Jewish Giant due to his height of 8 ft 9 in; Andrew Ratoucheff - a dwarf who imitated Marylin Monroe and Maurice Chevalier; Louis Thomas Hardin, called Moondog or the Viking of the 6th Avenue (after his freakish outfits he designed for himself and the place he could be seen most of the time) and who was also a musician, composer, poet and instrument-maker. That intriguing variété also included transvestites, nudists, circus performers and many more.
  
  
•     Diane Arbus was known of entering in strong relations with her models, many of whom she photographed repeatedly over the years. In 1972, one year after her suicidal death, Arbus's work was shown in the Venice Biennale - the first US photographer to be honoured this way. On 18 Oct. 2011 the Jeu de Paume gallery in Paris will see the opening of retrospective exhibition of over 200 photographs of Diane Arbus, the largest show of her work in France yet.